Salute!
Thank you so much,
SAS
Many of us share a lot of your views.
Your last words strike home to this old warrior.
Combat forges a special bond between those who go through that experience and I am blessed to have been allowed to serve alongside some very good Soldiers.
We did on a daily basis what most people cannot even conceive of....and did so out of a sense of duty and commitment to one another.
We served our Nations honorably and paid a heavy price for doing so.
So very true, and I must remind the armchair warriors here to place themselves in our chairs at those times and in those situations. Try hard. Imagine two of the seven guys you trained with not coming back after 6 months. Imagine your class from the trade school having more POW's than all the other classes combined ( until late 1972 in Linebacker II).
and then SAS concludes:
Was it worth it?
When I stand in front of the Vietnam Memorial and see all those names.....so many of them my friends.....I just don't know....I really don't.
My initial thot about "was it worth it?" is ,
hell no. It wasn't worth it.
And then I have to step back and consider that the fiasco was, and should be, a very harsh lesson about well-intended "nation-building" that we seemed to have forgotten since 1991 and Desert Storm.
The blitz then was run by a buncha Viet Nam vets that were determined not to get bogged down and not to re-structure a country and their people's idea of everyday life. Closure of Desert Storm was a clear goal, and made possible by lack of micro-management on part of the national command authorities. My connections then involved the overall commander of the air forces - Horner, and plenty on his staff who were contemporaries before I got out. For chrissakes, I flew with the F-117 folks when we were back in SLUF's and early Vipers. I got to see some of my Viper students wave at the cameras as they taxiied in or out.
I only went back twice, and last tour was just covering Saigon in late April 1975 and Mayaguez tragedy for brave Marines and USAF helicopter crews I trained with for CSAR and spec ops insertion. My closure was in December when I led the last flight of fighter-bombers outta the whole damned war. See my vitae on the profile link.
Many friends have gone back to gain closure, but I had mine. I still see one of my A-37 VNAF dudes at the local fish market. He escaped with his family after the fall and has gone on to have a successful life here. Some of my friends have gone back, and one even went to a village that he bombed during the SAR we conducted for Kansas 01B. I was Sandy 'x" for that one and had the backup Jolly when the first one got shot up and I had to bring the backup in and escort both of them outta the place. The survivor came out in March of 1973. Unlike some adversaries, the Vee ( most ethnic and military groups, not the political ones) will sit down with you and have a beer, and let the war behind. We can joke - "if I didn't miss your gun, you wouldn't be here", and that gunner would chuckle and reply, " just a foot more lead from my 57mm and neither would you!"
We can have a very private forum someplace to discuss our feelings and theories, but I shall stop after relating one incident on my second tour that may shed light on my private feelings. Draw your own conclusions.
Our wing deployed in October 1972 to "help". Flew outta Korat over many familiar venues in Laos and VietNam. I went back to Bien Hoa in early November 1972 to help with our turn around detachment. We couldn't remain overnight in South VietNam, but we could fly a mission, land/rearm and fly another on the way home to Korat. I was a senior captain by then and wanted to see my old haunts of 1968. U.S. forces had been there since 1961 or so, and over half a million of us were in-country in 1968 for my first tour. Morning of the election, 1972, I asked Mama-san who she wanted to be elected as the U.S. President. She said she wanted Nixon to continue, because then "we" wouldn't leave.
Gums sends...