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[W:97] ***Vietnam Veterans

Risky Thicket

Risky Thicket

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Today walking out of Walmart I saw a guy sitting on a bench inside near the door. He was wearing a hat that identified him as a Vietnam Vet. I stopped and introduced myself and said, "Welcome home" as is sometimes or frequently said to Vietnam Vets because we didn't get much or any of that when we rotated back.

He was a crusty old war dog who earned his chops up around Kontum, in the central highlands. As we sat and talked he still had wonder and amazement in his eyes. You can't fake that.

He had pictures in his wallet he showed me.

We shared war stories and laughed and sometimes just sat there for a while enjoying the company and a mutual understanding that didn't require words.

I love old war dogs. God, they make me proud!

It is difficult to know exactly how many of us are left. Best estimates are only a third of those who served are still living.

Estimates are that between 9 and 12 million men falsely claim to be Vietnam Veterans when less than 3 million Americans served in Vietnam, less than 10 percent of the population during the Vietnam War.

Next week will mark my 50th anniversary of having shipped over. It often seems like yesterday. It will be a huge week for me and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The old war dog I talked with told me how he had a difficult time coming home. He was excited and afraid to come back. Me too! He soon decided that he no longer fit in America and volunteered to go back. Me too.

It never goes away. Sometimes you just miss the hell out of it and that scares the **** out of you. And then you dream about it or you meet some crusty old ****er sitting on a bench in Walmart and neither of you can stop talking about it.

I remember reading once where in an interview someone asked a Vietnam Veteran when was the last time he was in Vietnam. The vet said, "Last night."
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

OMG. What a touching, sad, and yet wonderful story. Thank you for your service, Risky, and thank you for being the wonderful man that we all know today. :kissy:
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Risky Thicket said:
Today walking out of Walmart I saw a guy sitting on a bench inside near the door. He was wearing a hat that identified him as a Vietnam Vet. I stopped and introduced myself and said, "Welcome home" as is sometimes or frequently said to Vietnam Vets because we didn't get much or any of that when we rotated back.
Click to expand...

A grateful nation salutes the both of you.

soldierthanks.jpg
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

It's like seeing an old pal, we are glad to know that heartwarming story of yours.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Risky Thicket said:
Today walking out of Walmart I saw a guy sitting on a bench inside near the door. He was wearing a hat that identified him as a Vietnam Vet. I stopped and introduced myself and said, "Welcome home" as is sometimes or frequently said to Vietnam Vets because we didn't get much or any of that when we rotated back.

He was a crusty old war dog who earned his chops up around Kontum, in the central highlands. As we sat and talked he still had wonder and amazement in his eyes. You can't fake that.

He had pictures in his wallet he showed me.

We shared war stories and laughed and sometimes just sat there for a while enjoying the company and a mutual understanding that didn't require words.

I love old war dogs. God, they make me proud!

It is difficult to know exactly how many of us are left. Best estimates are only a third of those who served are still living.

Estimates are that between 9 and 12 million men falsely claim to be Vietnam Veterans when less than 3 million Americans served in Vietnam, less than 10 percent of the population during the Vietnam War.

Next week will mark my 50th anniversary of having shipped over. It often seems like yesterday. It will be a huge week for me and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The old war dog I talked with told me how he had a difficult time coming home. He was excited and afraid to come back. Me too! He soon decided that he no longer fit in America and volunteered to go back. Me too.

It never goes away. Sometimes you just miss the hell out of it and that scares the **** out of you. And then you dream about it or you meet some crusty old ****er sitting on a bench in Walmart and neither of you can stop talking about it.

I remember reading once where in an interview someone asked a Vietnam Veteran when was the last time he was in Vietnam. The vet said, "Last night."
Click to expand...

Had an uncle who was in Vietnam, he died about 10 years ago. From what my mom told me, he was never quite the same after coming home. He was always a little crazy & drank to much. He never really talked about what happened over there.

Sorry anyone has to go through that. Welcome Home, hope you can stay for a while.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Risky Thicket said:
Today walking out of Walmart I saw a guy sitting on a bench inside near the door. He was wearing a hat that identified him as a Vietnam Vet. I stopped and introduced myself and said, "Welcome home" as is sometimes or frequently said to Vietnam Vets because we didn't get much or any of that when we rotated back.

He was a crusty old war dog who earned his chops up around Kontum, in the central highlands. As we sat and talked he still had wonder and amazement in his eyes. You can't fake that.

He had pictures in his wallet he showed me.

We shared war stories and laughed and sometimes just sat there for a while enjoying the company and a mutual understanding that didn't require words.

I love old war dogs. God, they make me proud!

It is difficult to know exactly how many of us are left. Best estimates are only a third of those who served are still living.

Estimates are that between 9 and 12 million men falsely claim to be Vietnam Veterans when less than 3 million Americans served in Vietnam, less than 10 percent of the population during the Vietnam War.

Next week will mark my 50th anniversary of having shipped over. It often seems like yesterday. It will be a huge week for me and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The old war dog I talked with told me how he had a difficult time coming home. He was excited and afraid to come back. Me too! He soon decided that he no longer fit in America and volunteered to go back. Me too.

It never goes away. Sometimes you just miss the hell out of it and that scares the **** out of you. And then you dream about it or you meet some crusty old ****er sitting on a bench in Walmart and neither of you can stop talking about it.

I remember reading once where in an interview someone asked a Vietnam Veteran when was the last time he was in Vietnam. The vet said, "Last night."
Click to expand...

Thank you, Risky Thicket! My father was in Vietnam also, and Korean War and WWII. I remember when he was in Vietnam—it was a hard year for our family. Our country called, and you went—God bless you!
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

I served with hundreds of Vietnam vets, mostly guys that were on swift boats, PBR's, and other Riverine type duties, and I have 3 Vietnam Vets (cousins) in the family.

Most of them came through it ok, but for some of them........... the Navy just let them put their time in because they were too far gone to function.

I am still in contact with quite a few of them today.

One of my Vietnam Vet cousins (Army) who I was very close to drank himself into oblivion for 15 years after he came home, and right up until they found him frozen to death in some cabin back in Maine. He was the one guy that knew how to handle a street punk kid like me, and ended up putting me to work in the woods and doing masonry work with him after I quit HS. He was the one to sign the paperwork as my guardian when I committed to the Navy with the delayed entry program. He would also insist on driving me to night school just to make sure I went. I was on a ship and deployed at the time when I got the news. I guess I always knew something like that was going to happen sooner or later with him, but it still affected me pretty bad for a while. The ship offered to put me ashore in Italy and give me a couple weeks leave, but he had told me many times before boot camp to never come back to this "****ing **** hole"......just go and make a life away from here.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

When I was in Saigon a few months back I sneaked out of the hotel room after my son was asleep to get a beer. Met an old man beside me at the bar who was an American. Had a few beers with him and found out he was a Vietnam vet. When I asked him why he was in Saigon, he told me it was about closure. I thanked him for his service.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Risky Thicket said:
Today walking out of Walmart I saw a guy sitting on a bench inside near the door. He was wearing a hat that identified him as a Vietnam Vet. I stopped and introduced myself and said, "Welcome home" as is sometimes or frequently said to Vietnam Vets because we didn't get much or any of that when we rotated back.

He was a crusty old war dog who earned his chops up around Kontum, in the central highlands. As we sat and talked he still had wonder and amazement in his eyes. You can't fake that.

He had pictures in his wallet he showed me.

We shared war stories and laughed and sometimes just sat there for a while enjoying the company and a mutual understanding that didn't require words.

I love old war dogs. God, they make me proud!

It is difficult to know exactly how many of us are left. Best estimates are only a third of those who served are still living.

Estimates are that between 9 and 12 million men falsely claim to be Vietnam Veterans when less than 3 million Americans served in Vietnam, less than 10 percent of the population during the Vietnam War.

Next week will mark my 50th anniversary of having shipped over. It often seems like yesterday. It will be a huge week for me and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The old war dog I talked with told me how he had a difficult time coming home. He was excited and afraid to come back. Me too! He soon decided that he no longer fit in America and volunteered to go back. Me too.

It never goes away. Sometimes you just miss the hell out of it and that scares the **** out of you. And then you dream about it or you meet some crusty old ****er sitting on a bench in Walmart and neither of you can stop talking about it.

I remember reading once where in an interview someone asked a Vietnam Veteran when was the last time he was in Vietnam. The vet said, "Last night."
Click to expand...

Different people...different reactions.

This year, it will be 50 years since I dropped out of high school, enlisted in the Army, went to Basic and AIT...and shipped off to Vietnam from Ft. Lewis on December 9th. I was certainly affected by my experiences...I was only 18, after all...but I can't that I was damaged. Besides a couple of war-related brushes with death, the worst that happened to me was that I left with an extreme addiction to alcohol.

After my first tour, I was sent to Germany...you know, constant training on how to be an effective speed bump in the Fulda Gap. That wasn't enough for me, so I volunteered (actually, I made it a part of my re-enlistment contract) to go back to Nam. So, it wasn't that I didn't fit in America...I didn't fit in a non-combat Army. I needed an actual war. Again, I can't say I was damaged, except that by this time I had replaced my addiction to alcohol with an addiction to weed. (I consider that trade off beneficial, in the long run)

I've since dealt with the addiction problems...don't drink, don't smoke and don't do drugs. When I read about how Nam affected the lives of others, I can relate...but I consider myself lucky that I wasn't affected the same way.
 
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Re: Vietnam Veterans

Risky Thicket said:
Today walking out of Walmart I saw a guy sitting on a bench inside near the door. He was wearing a hat that identified him as a Vietnam Vet. I stopped and introduced myself and said, "Welcome home" as is sometimes or frequently said to Vietnam Vets because we didn't get much or any of that when we rotated back.

He was a crusty old war dog who earned his chops up around Kontum, in the central highlands. As we sat and talked he still had wonder and amazement in his eyes. You can't fake that.

He had pictures in his wallet he showed me.

We shared war stories and laughed and sometimes just sat there for a while enjoying the company and a mutual understanding that didn't require words.

I love old war dogs. God, they make me proud!

It is difficult to know exactly how many of us are left. Best estimates are only a third of those who served are still living.

Estimates are that between 9 and 12 million men falsely claim to be Vietnam Veterans when less than 3 million Americans served in Vietnam, less than 10 percent of the population during the Vietnam War.

Next week will mark my 50th anniversary of having shipped over. It often seems like yesterday. It will be a huge week for me and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The old war dog I talked with told me how he had a difficult time coming home. He was excited and afraid to come back. Me too! He soon decided that he no longer fit in America and volunteered to go back. Me too.

It never goes away. Sometimes you just miss the hell out of it and that scares the **** out of you. And then you dream about it or you meet some crusty old ****er sitting on a bench in Walmart and neither of you can stop talking about it.

I remember reading once where in an interview someone asked a Vietnam Veteran when was the last time he was in Vietnam. The vet said, "Last night."
Click to expand...

I have great great respect for Vietnam vets.

Most were drafted, snatched from their lives and sent to war. Much different than post Vietnam soldiers.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all who served in vietnam. When my time came to go, I was 'saved' because I was a heroin addict at fifteen and still was when the time came for my selective service registration, it kept me out of vietnam. I used the word 'saved' from vietnam and then went on to abuse heroin for over twenty years. Thankfully I've been clean from my demon now for thirty years. I had the opportunity to visit the traveling wall. I looked for the time period that I would have been there, found it, ran my hands across the names and cried. Some of my friends came back as heroin addicts and others with drinking problems. My thoughts are this, many went to a foreign land to a war they never wanted to be in, some signed up for it and in my opinion, most once there realized we were there for??? I think that is the big part of the problem, people after being there for a while thought it was bull**** we were dying for all the wrong reasons. Came home to a very unfriendly america and thought WTF? To use the proper military term it was a huge SNAFU to the returning service folks. It was an all around bad time for america. Again my heartfelt thanks to all who did serve.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Checkerboard Strangler said:
A grateful nation salutes the both of you.

View attachment 67250312
Click to expand...

Not to denigrate their service, but what are we supposed to thank them for? We were the bad guys in Vietnam. We had no business in Vietnam, and it has nothing to do with American freedoms or service to Americans> it's not the soldiers fault, they were doing their jobs
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Risky Thicket said:
Today walking out of Walmart I saw a guy sitting on a bench inside near the door. He was wearing a hat that identified him as a Vietnam Vet. I stopped and introduced myself and said, "Welcome home" as is sometimes or frequently said to Vietnam Vets because we didn't get much or any of that when we rotated back.

He was a crusty old war dog who earned his chops up around Kontum, in the central highlands. As we sat and talked he still had wonder and amazement in his eyes. You can't fake that.

He had pictures in his wallet he showed me.

We shared war stories and laughed and sometimes just sat there for a while enjoying the company and a mutual understanding that didn't require words.

I love old war dogs. God, they make me proud!

It is difficult to know exactly how many of us are left. Best estimates are only a third of those who served are still living.

Estimates are that between 9 and 12 million men falsely claim to be Vietnam Veterans when less than 3 million Americans served in Vietnam, less than 10 percent of the population during the Vietnam War.

Next week will mark my 50th anniversary of having shipped over. It often seems like yesterday. It will be a huge week for me and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The old war dog I talked with told me how he had a difficult time coming home. He was excited and afraid to come back. Me too! He soon decided that he no longer fit in America and volunteered to go back. Me too.

It never goes away. Sometimes you just miss the hell out of it and that scares the **** out of you. And then you dream about it or you meet some crusty old ****er sitting on a bench in Walmart and neither of you can stop talking about it.

I remember reading once where in an interview someone asked a Vietnam Veteran when was the last time he was in Vietnam. The vet said, "Last night."
Click to expand...

My father passed about 3 years ago now....he did three tours in nam, with his first ending with a sniper bullet hitting him on Christmas Day in 1965. He returned twice more between 1965 and 1972....and my mom, and my brothers and sisters were always wondering if and when he would return. But he did....a very quiet man, for a very long time. And he never spoke about that experience until much much later in his life. When he was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma, he moved in with me and the wife for his last couple of years. We had the best conversations of our life during that span....and I am forever grateful for that time with him.

He brought a lot of guys back to the house for dinners on occasion, but they too were very quiet and reserved. I think that war changed the lives of many of great men, and we as a country did a great disservice to them. I know politically the war wasn’t popular, but these young men did what they were asked to do....or ordered to do more specifically, and to treat them as baby killers when they returned was just wrong.

Anyway...thank you for your service, and the gentlemen you met. I hope you have been to the wall in DC....I took my dad there every Memorial Day for years so he could have an hour or two with his buddies.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Sampson Simpson said:
Not to denigrate their service, but what are we supposed to thank them for? We were the bad guys in Vietnam. We had no business in Vietnam, and it has nothing to do with American freedoms or service to Americans> it's not the soldiers fault, they were doing their jobs
Click to expand...

Because their country called, and they answered....simple enough

They didn’t make the decisions to go to war....they were kids mostly

The politicians you can denigrate and abuse....the soldiers deserve your respect and your support
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

RetiredUSN said:
I served with hundreds of Vietnam vets, mostly guys that were on swift boats, PBR's, and other Riverine type duties, and I have 3 Vietnam Vets (cousins) in the family.

Most of them came through it ok, but for some of them........... the Navy just let them put their time in because they were too far gone to function.

I am still in contact with quite a few of them today.

One of my Vietnam Vet cousins (Army) who I was very close to drank himself into oblivion for 15 years after he came home, and right up until they found him frozen to death in some cabin back in Maine. He was the one guy that knew how to handle a street punk kid like me, and ended up putting me to work in the woods and doing masonry work with him after I quit HS. He was the one to sign the paperwork as my guardian when I committed to the Navy with the delayed entry program. He would also insist on driving me to night school just to make sure I went. I was on a ship and deployed at the time when I got the news. I guess I always knew something like that was going to happen sooner or later with him, but it still affected me pretty bad for a while. The ship offered to put me ashore in Italy and give me a couple weeks leave, but he had told me many times before boot camp to never come back to this "****ing **** hole"......just go and make a life away from here.
Click to expand...

Kinda reminds me of that old song, I think by Poison, with the description "a suicidal Vietnam Vet".
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Sampson Simpson said:
Not to denigrate their service, but what are we supposed to thank them for? We were the bad guys in Vietnam. We had no business in Vietnam, and it has nothing to do with American freedoms or service to Americans> it's not the soldiers fault, they were doing their jobs
Click to expand...

I've seen some of your posts alluding to this mindset, so I am aware of it, and I won't even try to engage in a battle of wits with you on it because I already know that you'll never get it, so it would be a waste of my time.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

gdgyva said:
I think that war changed the lives of many of great men, and we as a country did a great disservice to them. I know politically the war wasn’t popular, but these young men did what they were asked to do....or ordered to do more specifically, and to treat them as baby killers when they returned was just wrong.
Click to expand...

I simply feel that if we are to apply a moral standard to war, it has to be both something that we can live with, and also something that can allow us to live if applied conversely to us, however being ever mindful of the fact that another government might not ever stop to think of applying any standard whatsoever, save one.
And that's because that is what war is.

All wars, even defensive ones, are the manifestation of the actionable acknowledgment that all else which would prevent war has ultimately failed. The soldier is not the mind and brain behind such lofty decisions, he is the muscle.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

PoS said:
When I was in Saigon a few months back I sneaked out of the hotel room after my son was asleep to get a beer. Met an old man beside me at the bar who was an American. Had a few beers with him and found out he was a Vietnam vet. When I asked him why he was in Saigon, he told me it was about closure. I thanked him for his service.
Click to expand...

Does Saigon (now Ho Chi Mihn City) still stink of Nuoc Mam fish head sauce and excrement? When I was there in 67-69 there were people using the gutters for bathrooms.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

bongsaway said:
Thank you, thank you, thank you for all who served in vietnam. When my time came to go, I was 'saved' because I was a heroin addict at fifteen and still was when the time came for my selective service registration, it kept me out of vietnam. I used the word 'saved' from vietnam and then went on to abuse heroin for over twenty years. Thankfully I've been clean from my demon now for thirty years. I had the opportunity to visit the traveling wall. I looked for the time period that I would have been there, found it, ran my hands across the names and cried. Some of my friends came back as heroin addicts and others with drinking problems. My thoughts are this, many went to a foreign land to a war they never wanted to be in, some signed up for it and in my opinion, most once there realized we were there for??? I think that is the big part of the problem, people after being there for a while thought it was bull**** we were dying for all the wrong reasons. Came home to a very unfriendly america and thought WTF? To use the proper military term it was a huge SNAFU to the returning service folks. It was an all around bad time for america. Again my heartfelt thanks to all who did serve.
Click to expand...

You're welcome. I've always believed we were there fighting for the freedom of the South Vietnamese, and fighting against communism. I still believe that. We weren't ultimately successful but we did hit a mighty lick against the North Vietnamese butchers - one they'll remember for a long time.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Logicman said:
You're welcome. I've always believed we were there fighting for the freedom of the South Vietnamese, and fighting against communism. I still believe that. We weren't ultimately successful but we did hit a mighty lick against the North Vietnamese butchers - one they'll remember for a long time.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your service.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Sampson Simpson said:
Not to denigrate their service, but what are we supposed to thank them for? We were the bad guys in Vietnam. We had no business in Vietnam, and it has nothing to do with American freedoms or service to Americans> it's not the soldiers fault, they were doing their jobs
Click to expand...

I'm going to have to disagree here. The primary reason the United States and its allies are thought are of as the bad guys in the Vietnam War is because they lost. Look at the somewhat similar Korean War (I know the conflicts weren't identical, with Korea being a conventional war and Vietnam being an unconventional/guerrilla one, but bear with me). The South Korean government was a dictatorship at the time of 1950-1953, but the United States and its allies managed to keep it independent, and now it's a prosperous liberal democracy. Imagine how we would view the Vietnam War if we had won it. South Vietnam would still be independent. While it, too, was a dictatorship in c.1956-1975, the odds are good that it, too, would have evolved into a prosperous liberal democracy, like South Korea or Taiwan. It's true that atrocities were committed by the American-led coalition in South Vietnam (like the My Lai Massacre), but these incidents don't invalidate the righteousness of the mission anymore than the brutal firebombing of Tokyo during World War II does. The Vietnam War was a necessary war to stem the tide of communism (although it was probably fought the wrong way, with not enough attention given to "hearts and minds"). The United States and its allies had to put up a fight there, or where else would they? Like I said earlier, the United States is only viewed as the "bad guy" in that war, because we lost and never got to see what South Vietnam could potentially blossom into. It was unpleasant war for sure, but aren't they all?
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Logicman said:
Does Saigon (now Ho Chi Mihn City) still stink of Nuoc Mam fish head sauce and excrement? When I was there in 67-69 there were people using the gutters for bathrooms.
Click to expand...

It's a modern city, LM. You ought to go there and check it out. The food is wonderful and the people are nice. And many people still refer to it as Saigon (even locals).
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

I enlisted, hated the draftees, and yah, yah, I was just following orders. There's nothing about serving in SE Asia to thank anyone for. It was brutal, it was boring as war always is, it was destruction and death in a place we shouldn't have been. It was a waste of lives, no excuses. I'm sick of hearing the disingenuous "Thank you for your service" from those who never served and don't have a clue with their vacuous eyes. Empty words won't bring back the wasted dead. Platitudes and nothing else.

For the few who see combat up close, they are never the same as they were before. So what? No different than any other war. Face facts, it was the most unpopular war America fought. The tenor of today's times changes nothing. Nor does the passing of time. A sad footnote in the history of our nation and we've learned nothing from it. We're still ready to fight WWII all over again. Wars are just, when winners say so. Politics of war. There is no glory, there never was, only fear. Death and destruction, disease and pain, between boring days of waiting. There is no glory, only the mud we're buried in.
 
Re: Vietnam Veterans

Gen. H.K. Johnson the Army CofS saw the error of Gen. Westmoreland's command in Vietnam which was to do what he'd been trained to do for almost all of his career, i.e,. fight the Russians. Westmoreland essentially ignored the insurgency and focused on NVA regular forces. This explains how the US won the battles but lost the war.

So you guys need to stop beating on yourselves. Your senior military commanders failed you. The entire Army and Marine officer corps in Vietnam was trained and focused to fight the Russians, which is what they did against the Vietnam insurgents. Problem was of course the Russians were still in Russia, which is where they stayed throughout it. I graduated Rotc and was commissioned in 1966 and didn't have to go to VN -- nor did I volunteer -- but my point here is that as a 2LT of infantry I and every 2LT was completely prepared to fight the Russians. Fighting the Russians was all we got and it was everything we got. What insurgency? WTF is an insurgency?!?

I invite Vietnam Vets and others to read this horror story of it and it's only a small part of the total picture of how the US national command authority failed our troops in Vietnam, to include the Joint Chiefs of Staff led by chairman Gen. Maxwell Taylor who was just awful in the position, which was compounded when his term was not renewed so LBJ sent Taylor to Saigon as ambassador where he continued to sh!t the bed with his gradualism.

The Wheeler referred to in the second paragraph is Army Gen. Wheeler CJCS after Taylor. Other JCS members are identified sufficiently.


The Collapse of Generalship

Johnson was certainly a poor wartime commander in chief, but he remained a canny manipulator of men. In mid-1965, he cajoled the Joint Chiefs, “You’re my team; you’re all Johnson men.” They were not his men, they should have said—they were the nation’s men. Yet the president had measured them well, for, in fact, they would behave as his minions when they met with members of Congress and failed in their duty to be truthful.

Finally, in November 1965,Wheeler and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff got up the nerve to go to the White House and present President Johnson with a united front. They called for an end to his policy of gradual escalation and lobbied to replace it with a major military offensive against North Vietnam. He did not offer them seats, though he listened attentively as they stood in a semicircle to present their recommendations.

When the Chiefs finished, the president turned his back on them for about a minute, leaving them standing while seeming to weigh their counsel. Then he whirled on them in a fury. “He screamed obscenities, he cursed them personally, he ridiculed them,”recalled Charles Cooper, then a Marine major, who had been brought to the meeting to hold maps. Among the names the president spewed, recalled Cooper, who later rose to the rank of lieutenant general, were“****heads, dumb ****s, pompous assholes.”After the Army chief of staff and the Marine commandant confirmed their support for a sharp, swift escalation of the war, Johnson again yelled at them.“You goddam ****ing assholes.You’re trying to get me to start World War III with your idiotic bull****—your ‘military wisdom.’” Then he ordered them to “get the hell out of here right now.”

(continued)
 
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Re: Vietnam Veterans

(the continuation)

In his car afterward, Admiral David McDonald, the chief of naval operations, said, “Never in my life did I ever expect to be put through something as horrible as you just watched from the president of the United States to his five senior military advisers.” Johnson had counterattacked powerfully. Henry Kissinger, meeting General Wheeler three years later, saw him as a beaten dog, resembling “a wary beagle, his soft dark eyes watchful for the origin of the next blow.” General Harold K. Johnson, the Army chief of staff, told students at the Army War College years later that at one point he had decided to resign as chief of staff of the Army.“And then on the way to the White House, I thought better of it and thought I could do more working within the system than I could by getting out,”he recalled.“And now I will go to my death with that lapse in moral courage.” He also seemed to retreat in place emotionally and professionally. “I acquired the feeling, the sense, that I was an observer, I was not a participant—particularly in my role as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

The U.S. Army [commanders] in Vietnam displayed a willful ignorance. It did not see a need to send senior officers to the British Jungle Warfare School in Malaysia. Nor did it choose to study the French experience in Vietnam a decade earlier, even though the French arguably had fought harder, with higher casualty rates. Pentagon analyst Thomas Thayer recalled being told by the French defense attaché in Saigon that during the first 18 months of his assignment, only one American had visited him to inquire about the lessons the French might have to share. For years, American generals refused to recognize mistakes, to the point of self-deception. As historian John Gates put it,“The stubborn commitment of the high command to error defies belief, but the evidence of it would seem to be overwhelming.”

The Collapse of Generalship | HistoryNet


In short, contrary to the myth the civilians lost the war, both the civilian leaders and the JCS and commanders in-country screwed the pooch. You guys were well down the pecking order and you guys were the ones who suffered for it each day you were there. And since. So please don't beat up on yourselves because it was Washington and the US government in Saigon who did the royal screwup. You guys answered the call and it was the call that went sour fast.
 
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