Stories of Vietnam

Stories of Vietnam

In 1968 and 1969, my husband was a Green Beret in Vietnam. He has a lot of good stories about his experiences there. Vietnam is a part of our history now and I felt it was important to record these stories for our children and for anyone else who might be interested in personal accounts of the war. The Vietnam war era was certainly a turning point for America. It was a time of contrasts for our country and culture. While our boys were fighting an unconventional enemy who used guerilla warfare and hid in tunnels in the jungles of Vietnam, the kids at home were in the streets protesting the war. While the soldiers were dealing with the Tet Offensive, the youth at home were attending Woodstock. The generation gap widened. Drug use proliferated on both sides of the world, which complicated things even further.
Our boys came home to a culture that was very different from when they left. This made it hard for many of them to assimilate back into American life. There were not many welcome home parades and in some instances our fighting men were scorned. It has deeply affected our culture and our national discourse. As Deborah Leff said, "While war is always wrenching, the Vietnam War tore apart this country in ways from which we have never recovered. To many, it was a loss of innocence, the event that led to what has been called a permanent adversarial culture in the United States." Deborah Leff, director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, 2006.
True Stories of Vietnam "Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.
Stories of Vietnam Part Five
True Stories of Vietnam "This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart." --Marshall McLuhan, 1975 "Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America." -.
Stories of Vietnam Part Four
True Stories of Vietnam "Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam." - Marshall McLuhan, 1975 "Our purpose in Vietnam is to preven.
True Stories of Vietnam "The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars." William Westmoreland "Once upon a time our traditional goal in war. was victory. Once upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military power.