30th Anniversary of the end of Vietnam

I rank the end of the Vietnam War right up there with the historic collapse of the Oilers in the infamous playoff game in Buffalo; something never to be spoken of again.

 

Damn. Why would you bring that up again? Those is some painful memories.

 

This is a link to an article from Vietnam Magazine. It's the story of the last Americans to leave from the Embasy in Saigon. It pretty much sums up the problems of the war in a concise alegorical way.

The short form, if you can't/don't want to read is that the Vietnamese people who were helping us at the Embasy, the Marines, and the Embasy personel, were told that the Americans were going to be airlifted out, and the Vietnamese would come along.

In a story echoed in the film Tears of the Sun, the helecopter pilots arived with orders to take only the Americans, and only enough room for them. As this was happening, there were angry communists breaking down the wall around the Embasy, and the people were basically being left behind to die or be tortured. The Americans all refused to go unless the Vietnamese were taken first. In this case, as with reality, the people on top bugged out and blew it, forcing the Marines to evacuate when they were just about (but not quite) done evacuating the Vietnamese. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

That's sort of the whole deal with that war. The apparently not infrequent episodes of valor on the ground were equaly intermixed with cowardise, mismanagement, and apathy from above. The perfect endpiece microcosm to summarise the entire war.

 

Hopefully someday we'll be talking about the end of the current war.

 

The end of a war which changed this nation in ways we're still coming to terms with. It was the penultimate spark for a social revolution, one I remember well, and was neck deep in. It affected the lives of millions and millions of Americans, not to mention the Vietnamese, and others beyond count. It brought about the creation of our superb volunteer military... long may it stay that way. It changed the perception the world had of the United States, and not for the better.

And it certainly showed that you don't go to war without a damned good reason, a damned good plan for executing it, and a damned well thought out exit strategy. Decades later, an American President, who didn't fight in it, and didn't protest it, forgot every lesson that was so hard earned with American blood and treasure.



Keep D&D Civil!!

 

No personal involvement, since I was 14 in 1975. I do remember seeing the war on the evening news each night (my folks watched the news every night) and I remember when I was about 9, in 1970, my summer camp counselor one day carried a transistor radio with him everywhere and was acting really detached. They were pulling the draft numbers and he was waiting to see what his number would be. If I remember correctly, he hit the low 300s so he was not drafted.

 

I was 11 in 1975 and still vividly remember plane loads of wounded POW's coming home on strecthers/wheel chairs etc...

It was one of the first news moments that truly affected me. Like the world is bigger and scarey than my family and small home town.

I also remember vietnamese refugees being moved to our home town and the kids coming to our school and hardly being able to speak english. As I remember thought they were treated really well by the other kids. I remember our family taking one boy in my class to a parade and other families helping them with food and clothes.

On another note: A friend of mine was a medic and he talked about how they would set up a "clinic" off base to take care of the local prostitutes (try to keep them clean) and of some wild r&r's to bangkok. Apparently nothing was off limits.

 

I remember in January of 1967, I was 8 years old, at the airport in San Diego waiting for my Dad to get off the plane after a one year tour of duty in Vietnam. I was supposed to wait behind a rope, but when I saw him walking across the tarmac I ran to him as fast as I could and hugged him as tight as I could. Man he was thin.

He didn't talk about it much, after all I was 8. I have found out more later. He was not in a *combat* role, so I didn't ask much and didn't find out until very recently some interesting things:

- planes he was flying were hit twice by antiaircraft fire, once while landing and once while taking off, both shot by *peasants* working in the rice paddies

- he had the honor of taking a new mine-sweeping device on its virgin run in a Swift boat - hmmmm, I think I'll pass on that one

- one time my Mom complained that my Dad didn't call home after our grandmother died - my Dad replied - people got shot waiting in line to use the phone - my best friend got killed watching a parade - I was just trying to get home alive.

War sucks, and we treated our Vietnam vets like sh*t.

 

I'm glad to hear that your community treated the Vietnamese refugees well. Unfortunately a lot of refugees got treated badly especially in Kemah and around the Galveston Bay. I remember growing up in Houston there was a lot of racism directed towards them tthere too.

As an Asian American growing up in Houston it was kind of weird because for the first ten years of my life there were very few other Asians and then suddenly in the 80's there's a whole bunch of Asians but I had nearly nothing in common with them.

 

That was a real sad part of the Vietnam war and one that we as a society have learned from. I obviously opposed the current war but have the utmost respect for people who served and think that is the same through most of the anti-war movment.

One thing we learned from Vietnam is that soldiers are sent to war on the orders of civillian political leaders and those leaders are the ones who are ultimately responsible.

 

Any Vietnam vets posters?

It seems to me that in the last few decades public opinion of soldiers of any war is turning more to respect (I know it's too little too late but I think the stigma has turned to admiration).

I was wondering if there are any Vets if they agree with this.

I know this may be a stupid question because it seems like a 40yr old is old on this bbs.