The veterans of The Second World War are referred to as the Greatest Generation due to the sacrifices that they made and the victories that they achieved. In retrospect it brings to mind another Greatest Generation that sacrificed so much to achieve a victory that was elusive. Who were these people of another Greatest Generation?
Fredrick the Great once made the comment, “Be careful who you call a hero because you may leave someone out!” With that in mind, I recall another “Greatest Generation”, and that is of the veterans of the Vietnam War.
In Second World War the American people and the free world for that matter were 100-percent behind the war effort as well as all those who served in the conflict. The home front produced war material at an unprecedented rate as production of civilian goods was severely curtailed or eliminated. Farmers, artists, actors and actresses, factory workers, writers, railroad employees, and more, all had a hand in the war effort. America was at war and nothing was spared to supply the men in uniform exactly what they needed. Weapons of all types were fielded to bring a quick end to the war and minimize the loss of life among those who served. The President of the United States and all those below him did whatever was needed to end the war…to include using two atom bombs. When the men left for war they were given a boisterous send off at the pier. When the war ended they were greeted with open arms and gratitude by a nation that was jubilant by the unconditional surrender of the vanquished. They were our heroes for delivering the world a victory from the greatest cataclysm ever to sweep across the earth. Yes, they were one of the Greatest Generations!
Sometime after the French defeat in Indochina in 1954, the United States began a slow slide into another war. When did the Vietnam War start; was it right after the French pulled out of Indo-China or possibly when the first U.S. combatants died in the July, 1959 or maybe it was at the questionable Gulf of Tonkin incident when those in Washington, D.C. needed a casus belli! That is the best that one can say as there was no declaration of war as in Second World War.
First we sent in “advisors” who trained the South Vietnamese army in counter-insurgency warfare. However, these same advisors could not shoot at the enemy until shot at and were not eligible for any combat decorations! The United States fought the early stages of the war on a budget using old, obsolete weapons from World War Two and Korea. The ammunition sent to Vietnam was also pulled out of depots where it had languished for decades. Close air support consisted of T-28 trainer aircraft outfitted with bomb racks. Later we transitioned to F-100’s, F-105’s and then F-4 Phantoms etc. The conflict eventually grew through a policy of gradualism and flexible response. To increase the troop strength in Vietnam, the draft grew as more and more men were required for this undeclared war.
More men were required to fight a jungle war, however, the enemy installations in the north were not bombed nor were the harbors mined. This did not happen until the mid- 1960’s. The bombing started and then was halted and then started again while the North Vietnamese expanded and improved their air defense system. Enemy aircraft could not be engaged leaving an airfield until their landing gear was stowed. Every military move was orchestrated by the President and his Secretary of Defense. Defoliants were dumped on the jungle, and our own men, to deny the enemy a place to hide along the rivers. The effects of these chemicals still linger in many veterans. Our military could not invade Cambodia or Laos which was deemed “neutral”, even though the North Vietnamese used it as a supply depot for its army.
On the home front the American public was not behind the Vietnam War as they were in the Second World War. Protests became more and more frequent and more and more violent. When veterans of the war returned home, they we greeted at the airports with insults, such as “baby killer” and worse. They were spit on, had rocks thrown at them, and had to be taken from the airport to the military installation in buses with heavy screening on the windows to keep protesters from breaking the windows. When elements of the 1st Cavalry Division fought a horrendous battle of the Ia Drang in November, 1965, they suffered 234 KIA and 242 WIA. President Johnson told the press that over 350 men killed that week (the highest casualty list of the war to date) and then went off to a gala dinner for Princess Margaret and attended by many of the movers and shakers of society. This was the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Military. Meanwhile, back in Vietnam, the survivors of the Ia Drang battle gathered up their dead comrades and placed them in body bags for the trip home!
The press, both television and the printed venue, showed the carnage of war that was inflicted on the U.S. fighting force. They showed the negative side of what our soldiers did and did not dwell on the atrocities committed by the enemy. The press deemed the Tet Offensive a loss by the United States even though some 50,000 enemy combatants were killed. They did not dwell on the thousands of civilians executed by the Viet-Cong and North Vietnamese army during the Tet Offensive.
But through all of this, these men of the United States armed forces soldiered on; in the hot humid jungles with search-and-destroy missions lasting weeks, on riverine boats traveling up the mine laden Mekong and lesser rivers, bombers going on missions knowing that the enemy was waiting for them with some of the heaviest concentration of anti-aircraft artillery ever used in warfare. Doctors and nurses ministered to the needs of a never ending flow of wounded. Those who served during the Vietnam War were thought of as scum in the eyes of so many Americans but they soldiered on and did their duty. Throughout the war those in charge of its execution pursued an on-again and off-again policy of the “stick and the carrot.” But the American fighting man assigned to the war in Vietnam merely said, to quote Tennyson in his poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, “Mine is not to ask why, but to do or die.”
Recently I went to a local book store and counted 150 books of the Second World War, but only 20 books on the Vietnam War located on the very bottom shelf! Most people who lived during the period of the Vietnam War remember more about Woodstock, Haight Ashbury, Kent State and the myriad protests around the country than they do of the Ia Drang Valley, Chu Lai, Khe Sanh, Pleiku, Hamburger Hill, the Tet Offensive or Operation Linebacker.
When the Vietnam veterans came home to a dismal reception at best, they went to work as civilians and tried to forget the war. With physical and mental impairment, they just carried on and lived among us, an ungrateful nation. After World War Two the veterans received $130.00 per month under the G.I. bill. In 1966, the those who served during the Vietnam War period received $100.00…some 20 years later!!
Once the draft ended, the protesters started to fade from the stage. Many of these vitriolic protesters went on to make names for themselves in politics and the entertainment industry. They were hailed in these positions, with their past as protests against the war forgotten. They had protested as the American fighting men and women labored against ever increasing odds of winning this confrontation. Our Vietnam War veterans are still not appreciated for what they did against such adversity.
It is my belief that these poor souls who were dragged into a no-win war are too, one of our Greatest Generations. Never have so many fought so long and so unappreciated by so many in a no-win war. Yes, let’s not forget this Greatest Generation. What should be the legacy for those who fought in the war? Will speeches and parades right the wrongs of the past? It may be a little too little and a little too late!! We cannot resurrect the past and right the wrongs of decades ago, but maybe we can reassert our goal not to engage in hostilities unless the nation is one hundred percent behind those fighting and we let the military fight the war with all of the weaponry at our disposal for a swift and just victory. The Vietnam War was not lost by our men and women on the battlefields of South Vietnam but in Washington, D.C., just as the French Indo-China war was lost in Paris and not at Dien Bien Phu. We should always remember that wars are fought with men with families and not abstract “boots on the ground”; war is war and is not putting men, euphemistically speaking, into “harm’s way”!! We need to support our fighting men with everything in our arsenal or stay out of the war. The present wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are cases in point. As one writer stated; “Wars are too terrible to be left to soldiers and peace is too precious to be left to politicians!!”
We need to remember the past, so that we do not repeat it in the future and take our hats off to another “Greatest Generation”…the Vietnam veterans.
