When I was a kid, I read and viewed every documentary on WWII. I knew early that an amazing thing had happened. World War II was a "good" war. I thought all wars were like WWII.
Like many youngsters I considered WWII a long ago war, even though I was born two years after it ended. But the veterans of WWII were heroes, they had stopped fascism. Patriotism was solidified around the "good war".
II graduated in 1965 from high school, headed to Stanford with a football scholarship, any boy's dream, while "it" was building.
In 1965 "it" was fairly popular. The Army was involved, but only with "advisors", the draft was still at peacetime levels.
I met a guy named Romney my first year at Stanford. He even went to the Quad, and carried a sign supporting the war. HIs Dad was going to run for President so he supported the war. At the time, so did most everyone else.
Not much was said, nobody really opposed "it" in those days. Most didn't really even know where "it" was.
As 1965 dragged on, Lyndon Johnson virtually declared war, and the draft increased remarkably. College deferments were suddenly at risk. The Administration decided to fight the war with draftees, and not rely on the reserves as had occurred in the "police action" in Korea.
Johnson was aware of whole towns that had their young men wiped out, when National Guard and Reserve units were rushed to the front in Korea, poorly trained, and were consumed.
Many joined the Reserves after WWII, and went to meetings with no basic training requirement. When they were activated, they went to Korea with NO training at all. Many didn't even know how to load the weapons they were hastily given. The reserves in Korea, at the beginning, were a disaster.
With this legacy, and for political reasons, the "ready reserve" was not called up, and the draft was used.
Johnson thought it was the safest political decision. Fight a marginally popular war with draftees? Limiting the "tour" to one year only, Johnson hoped would limit the exposure to combat and keep the war popular.
In retrospect it was incredibly stupid, but in 1965 "it" ran decision making. As with most wars, old politicians made decisions for young men.
And one of those decisions put college deferments squarely on target. Married men couldn't go. The reserves couldn't go. Thousands of troops needed to be in Korea, Japan, and Germany, not withstanding the millions needed to man the ready response in the United States to the Soviet "threat" could not be spared.
So, Johnson used the draft.
The National Draft Test was thought up, all underclassmen had to take it, and those in the lowest percentile would lose their deferment.
And I was at Stanford, for God's sake. I was competing with 4.07 GPAs...
At the last minute, realizing the unfairness of this, Johnson changed his mind. College deferments were kept.
So the draft fell on the poor, the high school graduates, the unmarried, and minorities.
It wasn't until after the war, that it dawned on us that "it" was the first war America fought with integrated combat units. So, after 200 years, the Army fought with African-Americans next to Dixiecrats; its a wonder anybody survived!
Married with children got men out of the draft all the way through the war. Many marriages began earlier than expected, or unexpected. Have a baby, stay out of "it". The baby population boomed.
And the resistance began quickly, because the academic community at first, and everyone later, questioned our mission in Vietnam.
It became evident early that Vietnam was a Nationalist War against colonialism, not a war to contain Communism. The Soviets aided the North Vietnamese too be sure, but China, a natural enemy of Vietnam, did not. So the mission was clouded very early. "It" had no clear mission.
It was not even as clear as Korea, which was the "forgotten war" because the mission there was not that evident either. But at least America had the United Nations support in Korea. In "it" America was basically alone.
In short, within the time I was an undergraduate at Stanford, the country swung from support of the war to overwhelming opposition.
And meanwhile the draft took the uneducated, the poor or those who just were plain unlucky. And the casualty numbers mounted. The battles intensified. The percentage of combat deaths were mostly made up of draftees; the tool rose from 25 a week to 250.
The injured were those who didn't have a clue why they were in "it".
Meanwhile, back home returning veterans, who spent only 12 months in "it" were greeted as monsters, as the bad guys.
And, in a sense they were; they were being used to fight an unjust and wrong war, and were being used by the politicians to take the bad publicity fall.
And then came Me Lai, and other slaughters were reported. "It" seemed to not be capable of getting worse, and then it got worse. Now, the American G.I. image, who had saved Europe, were shown as baby killers.
The draftee, trying to make it the twelve months, began rebelling, acting out in ways to insure their survival by "wasting" everything. What little discipline the Army had over a reluctant soldier, broke down.
So, when in a fire fight, they didn't aim, they killed everything in front of them, villages, children, everything.
To be fair, the Viet Cong purposefully hid in the civilian population, taking advantage of the standing orders to "win the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese civilian population. Many casualties were a product of hesitating in close quarters firefights, and getting hit, because kids were in the way. It became evident to "waste" everything. Soldiers began writing F.T.A. on their helmets, writing the number of days left "in country" on their backpacks and gear. Many refused duty in the last months of their tour.
The objective was not to win the war, the objective was to survive.
I remember a conversation with my father in law, a heavily decorated veteran of WWII and an career Army Officer. He agreed with me that what finally ended "it" was the realization that the United States Army was about ready to fall apart in the early 1970s. We either ended "it", or the Army would be a state of rebellion, while the Cold War still was in evidence.
They were all "gooks" anyway. American units were filled with inter-racial tensions. The Army did not have time to work on blending whites and minorities together, they just threw everyone in together. So, the Army turned in on itself, and in a firefight, turned in unison on the "gooks". "Wasting" them was a common term, morality became as usual a casualty of war.
This took place while America was carpet bombing North Vietnam, killing millions. What was to stop a G.I., from wasting a village, killing women and children,when the Air Force was doing the same thing? What difference, G.I.s said, does it make?
What difference, in war anytime, does it make?
And "it" happened to everyone. The draft dodging young men, had decisions to make when their deferments ran out: get drafted and go into "it" (the green some called it), and kill, go to Canada, join another branch of the service that had less chance of going to Vietnam, join the National Guard or Reserves, that for some strange reason were being withheld from Vietnam.
The "grunts", combat infantrymen, were not the only victims of "it". The country began to implode in the late 60s, and then there was Kent State.
The choices were viable, there were many ways out of "it", and a majority of young men used them.
Why not, the war was wrong, and getting worse all the time? A majority of Americans wanted us out from 1968 on, after the Tet Offensive.
And the damage of "it" on all of us, especially on the survivors of the draftee Army in Vietnam, were tremendous.
Post Traumatic Syndrome is at its worst in Insurgent Wars. When you can't identify the enemy, and kill civilians by "mistake", it ruins people. Regular war, with a defined enemy made up of enemy soldiers also ruins people, but killing civilians really ruins people.
Most people are not born killers. Killing is NOT a natural state of men. "It" ruined lives, ruined innocent young men and women; sometimes for life.
America looked up, and millions of combat veterans were returning from Vietnam seriously "f....up". "It" then turned them on the rest of us, who had dodged going into the meat grinder, or who had simply joined a branch of the service that was safer.
It didn't matter, a generation was torn asunder, veterans against everyone else, draft dodgers against pro-war, or anti-war veterans; World War II vets against the young, Republicans against Democrats, the country split in on itself.
"It" killed the American Spirit.
I learned, when I joined the National Guard toward the end of "it" that there were dozens of ways to get out of combat duty in "it" if you half way knew what you were doing.
Many "veterans" of Vietnam are walking around today, who made that choice. They are veterans, I am even considered one, but never came within a thousand miles of combat.
A whole generation of future politicians, used deferments to avoid service completely, then turned around and became apologists for "it". Dick Cheney comes to mind, a "hawk" who led us into Iraq, with no experience with "it". We had a generation whose leaders, of both parties, who had not seen any service at all during the Vietnam era. President Clinton used deferments to avoid "it". President George W. Bush joined the reserves, using service to avoid "it" just like many other veterans did.
The ones who did get snared in "it", the "sh..." many call it; have lived over forty years now, with "it" plaguing them everyday. Many have become homeless, many have committed suicide, many have simply lived out their lives, drinking too much, self medicating with drugs, angry, bewildered and above all ridden with guilt, waking up at night seeing the children lying beside the village they burned down,or the dogs dead in the street.
"It" was a national nightmare. "It" was war, as naked and rotten as war always is. In a sense, "it" may have taught us once again the undeniable brutality of war, and the irrationality of it.
And then we went into Iraq, and did basically the same thing.
Every Memorial Day, it comes home more to me. The unbelievable tragedy of war, of "it". Vietnam was the wrong war in the wrong time; it is America's most unpopular war. It was not bad enough to end war. "It" was a war of human tragedy.
They all are.
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