VIETNAM GENERATION by Jim Webb



A BIT LONG...BUT A GOOD READ...


Heroes of the Vietnam Generation By James Webb

The rapidly disappearing cohort of Americans that endured the Great
Depression and then fought World War II is receiving quite a send-off from
the leading lights of the so-called 60s generation. Tom Brokaw has published
two oral histories of "The Greatest Generation" that feature ordinary people
doing their duty and suggest that such conduct was historically unique.

Chris Matthews of "Hardball" is fond of writing columns praising the Navy
service of his father while castigating his own baby boomer generation for
its alleged softness and lack of struggle. William Bennett gave a startling
condescending speech at the Naval Academy a few years ago comparing the
heroism of the "D-Day Generation" to the drugs-and-sex nihilism of the
"Woodstock Generation." And Steven Spielberg, in promoting his film "Saving
Private Ryan," was careful to justify his portrayals of soldiers in action
based on the supposedly unique nature of World War II.

An irony is at work here. Lest we forget, the World War II generation now
being lionized also brought us the Vietnam War, a conflict which today's
most conspicuous voices by and large opposed, and in which few of them
served. The "best and brightest" of the Vietnam age group once made
headlines by castigating their parents for bringing about the war in which
they would not fight, which has become the war they refuse to remember.

Pundits back then invented a term for this animus: the "generation gap."
Long, plaintive articles and even books were written examining its
manifestations. Campus leaders, who claimed precocious wisdom through the
magical process of reading a few controversial books, urged fellow baby
boomers not to trust anyone over 30. Their elders who had survived the
Depression and fought the largest war in history were looked down upon as
shallow, materialistic and out of touch.

Those of us who grew up, on the other side of the picket line from that
era's counter-culture can't help but feel a little leery of this sudden gush
of appreciation for our elders from the leading lights of the old
counter-culture. Then and now, the national conversation has proceeded from
the dubious assumption that those who came of age during Vietnam are a
unified generation in the same sense as their parents were and thus are
capable of being spoken for through these fickle elites.

In truth, the "Vietnam generation" is a misnomer. Those who came of age
during that war are permanently divided by different reactions to a whole
range of counter-cultural agendas and nothing divides them more deeply than
the personal ramifications of the war itself. The sizable portion of the
Vietnam age group who declined to support the counter-cultural agenda, and
especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during the
Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades have
claimed to speak for them. In fact, they are much like the World War II
generation itself. For them, Woodstock was a side show, college protestors
were spoiled brats who would have benefited from having to work a few jobs
in order to pay their tuition, and Vietnam represented not an intellectual
exercise in draft avoidance, or protest marches but a battlefield that was
just as brutal as those their fathers faced in World War II and Korea.

Few who served during Vietnam ever complained of a generation gap. The men
who fought World War II were their heroes and role models. They honored
their father's service by emulating it, and largely agreed with their
father's wisdom in attempting to stop Communism's reach in Southeast Asia.

The most accurate poll of their attitudes (Harris, 1980) showed that 91
percent were glad they'd served their country, 74 percent enjoyed their time
in the service, and 89 percent agreed with the statement that "our troops
were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would
not let them win." And most importantly, the castigation they received upon
returning home was not from the World War II generation, but from the very
elites in their age group who supposedly spoke for them.

Nine million men served in the military during Vietnam War, three million of
whom went to the Vietnam Theater. Contrary to popular mythology, two-thirds
of these were volunteers, and 73 percent of those who died were volunteers.
While some attention has been paid recently to the plight of our prisoners
of war, most of whom were pilots; there has been little recognition of how
brutal the war was for those who fought it on the ground.

Dropped onto the enemy's terrain 12,000 miles away from home, America's
citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity and quality that may never be
truly understood. Those who believe the war was fought incompletely on a
tactical level should consider Hanoi's recent admission that 1.4 million of
its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 58,000 total U.S. dead.

Those who believe that it was a "dirty little war" where the bombs did all
the work might contemplate that is was the most costly war the U.S. Marine
Corps has ever fought: five times as many dead as World War I, three times
as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in all of
World War II.

Significantly, these sacrifices were being made at a time the United States
was deeply divided over our effort in Vietnam. The baby-boom generation had
cracked apart along class lines as America's young men were making
difficult, life-or-death choices about serving. The better academic
institutions became focal points for vitriolic protest against the war, with
few of their graduates going into the military. Harvard College, which had
lost 691 alumni in World War II, lost a total of 12 men in Vietnam from the
classes of 1962 through 1972 combined. Those classes at Princeton lost six,
at MIT two. The media turned ever more hostile. And frequently the reward
for a young man's having gone through the trauma of combat was to be greeted
by his peers with studied indifference of outright hostility.

What is a hero? My heroes are the young men who faced the issues of war and
possible death, and then weighed those concerns against obligations to their
country. Citizen-soldiers who interrupted their personal and professional
lives at their most formative stage, in the timeless phrase of the
Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, "not for fame of
reward, not for place of for rank, but in simple obedience to duty, as they
understood it." Who suffered loneliness, disease, and wounds with an
often-contagious elan. And who deserve a far better place in history than
that now offered them by the so-called spokesmen of our so-called
generation.

Mr. Brokaw, Mr. Matthews, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Spielberg, meet my Marines. 1969
was an odd year to be in Vietnam. Second only to 1968 in terms of American
casualties, it was the year made famous by Hamburger Hill, as well as the
gut-wrenching Life cover story showing pictures of 242 Americans who had
been killed in one average week of fighting. Back home, it was the year of
Woodstock, and of numerous anti-war rallies that culminated in the
Moratorium march on Washington. The My Lai massacre hit the papers and was
seized upon the anti-war movement as the emblematic moment of the war.
Lyndon Johnson left Washington in utter humiliation.

Richard Nixon entered the scene, destined for an even worse fate. In the An
Hoa Basin southwest of Danang, the Fifth Marine Regiment was in its third
year of continuous combat operations. Combat is an unpredictable and inexact
environment, but we were well led. As a rifle platoon and company commander,
I served under a succession of three regimental commanders who had cut their
teeth in World War II, and four different battalion commanders, three of
whom had seen combat in Korea. The company commanders were typically
captains on their second combat tour in Vietnam, or young first lieutenants
like myself who were given companies after many months of "bush time" as
platoon commanders in he Basin's tough and unforgiving environs.

The Basin was one of the most heavily contested areas in Vietnam, its torn,
cratered earth offering every sort of wartime possibility. In the mountains
just to the west, not far from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North Vietnamese
Army operated an infantry division from an area called Base Area 112. In the
valleys of the Basin, main-force Viet Cong battalions whose ranks were 80
percent North Vietnamese Army regulars moved against the Americans every
day. Local Viet Cong units sniped and harassed. Ridgelines and paddy dikes
were laced with sophisticated booby traps of every size, from a hand grenade
to a 250-pound bomb. The villages sat in the rice paddies and tree lines
like individual fortresses, crisscrossed with the trenches and spider holes,
their homes sporting bunkers capable of surviving direct hits from
large-caliber artillery shells. The Viet Cong infrastructure was intricate
and permeating. Except for the old and the very young, villagers who did not
side with the Communists had either been killed or driven out to the
government controlled enclaves near Danang.

In the rifle companies, we spent the endless months patrolling ridgelines
and villages and mountains, far away from any notion of tents, barbed wire,
hot food, or electricity. Luxuries were limited to what would fit inside
one's pack, which after a few "humps" usually boiled down to letter-writing
material, towel, soap, toothbrush, poncho liner, and a small transistor
radio.

We moved through the boiling heat with 60 pounds of weapons and gear,
causing a typical Marine to drop 20 percent of his body weight while in the
bush. When we stopped we dug chest-deep fighting holes and slit trenches for
toilets. We slept on the ground under makeshift poncho hootches, and when it
rained we usually took our hootches down because wet ponchos shined under
illumination flares, making great targets. Sleep itself was fitful, never
more than an hour or two at a stretch for months at a time as we mixed
daytime patrolling with night-time ambushes, listening posts, foxhole duty,
and radio watches. Ringworm, hookworm, malaria, and dysentery were common,
as was trench foot when the monsoons came. Respite was rotating back to the
mud-filled regimental combat base at An Hoa for four or five days, where
rocket and mortar attacks were frequent and our troops manned defensive
bunkers at night. Which makes it kind of hard to get excited about tales of
Woodstock, or camping at the Vineyard during summer break.

We had been told while training that Marine officers in the rifle companies
had an 85 percent probability of being killed or wounded, and the experience
of "Dying Delta," as our company was known, bore that out. Of the officers
in the bush when I arrived, our company commander was wounded, the weapons
platoon commander wounded, the first platoon commander was killed, the
second platoon commander was wounded twice, and I, commanding the third
platoons fared no better. Two of my original three-squad leaders were
killed, and the third shot in the stomach. My platoon sergeant was severely
wounded, as was my right guide. By the time I left, my platoon I had gone
through six radio operators, five of them casualties.

These figures were hardly unique; in fact, they were typical. Many other
units; for instance, those who fought the hill battles around Khe Sanh, or
were with the famed Walking Dead of the Ninth Marine Regiment, or were in
the battle of Hue City or at Dai Do, had it far worse.

When I remember those days and the very young men who spent them with me, I
am continually amazed, for these were mostly recent civilians barley out of
high school, called up from the cities and the farms to do their year in
hell and he return. Visions haunt me every day, not of the nightmares of war
but of the steady consistency with which my Marines faced their
responsibilities, and of how uncomplaining most of them were in the face of
constant danger. The salty, battle-hardened 20-year-olds teaching green
19-year-olds the intricate lessons of the hostile battlefield. The unerring
skill of the young squad leaders as we moved through unfamiliar villages and
weed-choked trails in the black of night. The quick certainty when a fellow
Marine was wounded and needed help. Their willingness to risk their lives to
save other Marines in peril. To this day it stuns me that their own
countrymen have so completely missed the story of their service, lost in the
bitter confusion of the war itself.

Like every military unit throughout history we had occasional laggards,
cowards, and complainers. But in the aggregate, these Marines were the
finest people I have ever been around. It has been my privilege to keep up
with many of them over the years since we all came home. One finds in them
very little bitterness about the war in which they fought. The most common
regret, almost to a man, is that they were not able to do more for each
other and for the people they came to help.

It would be redundant to say that I would trust my life to these men.
Because I already have, in more ways than I can ever recount. I am alive
today because of their quiet, unaffected heroism. Such valor epitomizes the
conduct of Americans at war from the first days of our existence. That the
boomer elites can canonize this sort of conduct in our fathers' generation
while ignoring it in our own is more than simple oversight. It is a
conscious, continuing travesty.

****************************************************************************
********
Former Secretary of the Navy James Webb was awarded the Navy Cross, Silver
Star, and Bronze Star medals for heroism as a Marine in Vietnam. His novels
include The Emperor's General and Fields of Fire.
Reply

Jim Webb was a helluva Marine. He paid the price and the only complaint I've ever heard from him is that we weren't allowed to complete our ultimate mission.

Fuck Chris Matthews, the whiney puss, and all like him! The older I get the more I miss my friends who didn't come home and the less patience I have for Jane Fonda and her ilk.

Semper Fi

3rd MarDiv
I Corps, RVN
1MAY66-15JUN67

Thanks for the post.

Chris Matthews and his pals are all douchnozzles.

Semper Fi

1stMarDiv
I Corps 70-71

An aside, for what it's worth, and in my own experience.

Early on, a lot of the "Greatest Generation" veterans had little use and/or respect for Vietnam Veterans. For the most part that attitude has changed for the better.

My Dad was a tin can sailor in the South Pacific during WWII and while I really don't think he was ever thrilled about the Vietnam conflict, he respected all veterans, regardless of how or where they served.

All the veterans I know aren't thrilled about wars either.

I was blown away by how many Marines were killed and wounded in Nam compared to WW2.
20,000 KIA in WW2 and 15,000 in Vietnam. Couldn't get an exact figure on wounded in WW2.
I served with a buddy that instead of re-uping with the Marines, enlisted in the Army. He was at Khe Sanh. One hell of a man.

Webb is quite the historian.
His Fields of Fire was riveting.
His work on the Scot Irish is seminal.

If you haven't seen it on the Smithsonian Channel don't miss it.

http://thehistoricpresent.word...-myth-born-fighting/

Truth v. Myth: “Born Fighting”

Posted on August 5, 2011. Filed under: American history, Colonial America, Revolutionary War, Second Amendment, Truth v. Myth | Tags: Born Fighting, James Webb, Scots-Irish, Truth v. Myth |

Senator James Webb (D-VA) published his book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America in 2004, but the Smithsonian Channel just broadcast it recently. It was aired in two parts. Part 1 focused on Scotland, beginning with Hadrian’s Wall, and followed the eventual appearance of Protestantism in Scotland, the conflicts with England over non-conformism, and the recruitment of Protestant Scots by England into the north of Ireland to settle land seized by the English government from Catholic Irish landholders (thus changing the Irish population, it was hoped, and calming the place down for English rule). The Scots encountered growing hostility from the native population they were helping to colonize, and after the siege and battle of Londonderry, in which they received no help from England in beating off the Catholic Irish, many of the Scots—now called Scots-Irish or Scotch-Irish by the native population who did not accept even those born in the country as Irish, left for another English colonial land: America.

This first part of the documentary was not perfect, but it was at least technically accurate in most of its details. The second part goes dramatically off-course into the damaging kind of us-vs-them, who’s-a-real-American, America-is-about-violence, and racial politics that is characteristic of myth. We’re going to take the time to rebut the myth perpetuated by one of our Senators because it’s important to call people in high office on the damage they do to historical truth and our own citizens’ perception of what our country stands for.

Like most people who have a thesis that one group of people, one invention, one idea, etc., has shaped the course of world history, Webb consistently makes statements about the Scots-Irish that could be true of any group. “This culture shaped America”, he begins, “…creating the very basis of American democracy.” Which culture that is part of America has not shaped it? Which culture has left no imprint on our government, political history, treasured ideas, or important battles? And since our democracy has been constantly evolving since 1775, no one group can claim to have established the basis of that democracy. (If you had to choose, you’d have to say Americans of English descent. The men who framed our government and put its ideals and principles into law were overwhelmingly of English background.)

Webb’s elevator description of the Scots-Irish is “fight, sing, drink, pray”. This to him sums up their willingness to fight any war, their resolve and determination, their rebellious refusal to submit to “outside” law, and their serious morality. Again, it’s not hard to think of other groups do not have the same reputation: the Irish, Greeks, and Mexicans come to mind. But Webb begins part 2 with the story of the first Scots-Irish in America, again recruited by the English to put down the locals and act as colonizers. Scots-Irish people settled in Pennsylvania on the borderlands between Quaker settlement and Native Americans. Webb characterizes their experiences there in what he calls “the unimproved wilderness”. The word “wilderness” comes up frequently, and is never questioned as inaccurate (as the land had been settled, hunted, and known by its native inhabitants for millennia). The Quaker refusal to fight is mentioned repeatedly, and seems to be put out there to deride the Quakers and anyone else who questions the value of violence and war. This is a theme that runs through the show.

Again, at the end of the Pennsylvania section, Webb says that the “flood” of Scots-Irish immigrants that followed “would eventually transform America”, and again it’s a claim you could make about anyone, including the English, French, and Germans who preceded or came along with the Scots-Irish just about wherever they went.

It is almost funny when Webb describes the pioneers in the Shenandoah Valley who “carried their few belongings with them” (unlike all other pioneers?) into the “wilderness” only to discover “they weren’t alone”. The fact that the land was inhabited is, of course, the first indicator of its not being a wilderness. The Native Americans whose land the pioneers were settling are basically presented as threatening, though it is of course the natives who were threatened by white settlement and claims of land ownership.

When the French and Indian War began, Webb says, the Scots-Irish fought eagerly and made their name as “unflinching fighters”. He characterizes their attitude as “This is my land and I’m going to stay here and protect it and if I have to, I will fight for it.” Which again is the precise attitude of every group of people in human history who have been in a war on their own territory. Only the Native Americans, in this case, really had the right to say it.

Already, Webb is making a case he will repeat many times: the Scots-Irish a) like to fight, b) are brave(r than anyone else), and c) show their independence by fighting. The first tenet really discredits the second two. People who like to fight aren’t really brave, and they don’t fight for independence, but because it’s what they do. The Scots-Irish on the frontier fought because that’s what they had been hired to do by the British governors who brought them in (payment being the right to settle and the grant of religious freedom) and they wanted to keep the land they had settled. That is not really about bravery or independence.

In fact, we have seen the Scots-Irish now as established colonizers, people with no hesitation to help a colonial power destroy native people in return for those people’s lands. It is odd that this is never addressed in Webb’s tale of the Scots-Irish as freedom-loving people who always fought tyranny.

His description of the period between the end of the French and Indian War and the beginning of the Revolutionary War is, politely put, difficult to understand. “Britain tightened its grip over America’s east coast. And now, isolated from British colonial rule to the east, the Scots-Irish frontiersmen settled into their American roots… and turned their backs on bigotry in America’s colonial towns”.

The bizarre inaccuracies—British rule had always been most present on the east coast (which is why the British brought in the Scots-Irish to colonize the western frontier); but after the war concentrated more and more on controlling the western frontier; as frontierspeople the Scots-Irish had always been isolated from coastal society; and bigotry is never relegated to urban areas (see plantation life)—slowly make sense only as the show goes on and Webb talks about Andrew Jackson. Webb reveres Jackson, and has apparently bought into the idea Jackson and his followers evangelized for, that “elites” were running America and a cabal of “aristocrats” in the cities was ruining the nation. The idea that Jackson put power in the hands of average people is not true; he put his friends and financial backers into federal office regardless of their qualifications, he was a wealthy slaveholder, and he had no special regard for the rights of the “little guy”, as any Native or black American would tell you.

As for the idea that the previously isolated Scots-Irish were isolated still after the war, it’s not really true. Germans and Huguenots moved in large numbers into the American south from the mid-1600s right up to the Revolutionary War. Many of the Germans were Protestants unable to worship as they wished at home, and of course the Huguenots left everything behind in France to come to America in the name of religious freedom. Webb would have viewers believe the Scots-Irish were the only people in America (maybe in the world) who sacrificed for their freedom of religion, left everything behind, and braved the hardships of the frontier with no help from outside. All of the colonies of the south were first settled, of course, by the English. Most of them were non-conformists, just like the Scots-Irish, who refused to compromise their faith and left all behind in the name of freedom. In North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky, the Scots-Irish came in after the Huguenots and Germans.

The Revolutionary War saw many Scots-Irish enlist, just as it saw many members of all the groups in the colonies enlist. Webb focuses on the Battle of King’s Mountain of 1780, in which 900 Scots-Irish militia men routed 1200 British soldiers. The British, rigidly sticking to “European battle formation”, were mown down by the sniping Scots-Irish who were smart enough to use guerrilla tactics. Webb states there were 500 British casualties and 28 American. The ragged, poor militia “destroyed” the British army.

But it wasn’t completely that way. The British did not remain in formation, standing still waiting to get shot, but instead made repeated bayonet charges, which, while unsuccessful in winning the battle, at least made some sense. Of the five American militia leaders, one was of Huguenot descent (John Sevier), two were governors, two served in Congress, and two served in state legislatures; three were born into wealth, and one married into it. So the leadership was not completely rag-tag. The casualties were 244 killed, 163 wounded, and 668 taken prisoner for the British, and 29 killed and 58 wounded for the Americans. One reason for the high British death count was that the militia men continued firing after the British put up a white flag.

We’ll end this post with Webb’s second bizarre leap away from historical fact: he claims that “In 1783, America acknowledged the efforts made by the overwhelmingly Scots-Irish militiamen in the south in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution”. First, the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791 with the rest of the original Bill of Rights (the Constitution wasn’t written and ratified until 1787). Second, a starkly modern political agenda is expressed here as historical fact. Webb goes on to say basically that people in the south care so much about gun ownership because they were once frontiersmen, and the frontiersman’s duty to protect his family over time turned into a right “for people with a long history of mistrust of the central government. There’s a saying around here: I’ll give up my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

Where to begin. First, what region of our nation never had a frontier? Is it that the north was never frontier land? The west? Every region of the present United States began as frontier land, where people had muskets or rifles to hunt with and to fight Indians and to use as part of the local militia in times of war. Second, either gun ownership is about self-reliance (the frontiersman) or it’s about not believing in government. If it’s that southerners never trusted the federal government, that’s not about the frontier. That’s a mistrust of the federal government that was shared by New Englanders, Mid-Atlantic states residents, and every other region you can think of. That’s what made creating the federal government in 1787 so difficult; even the “elites” on the east coast had their doubts about it turning into a tyranny. (It’s funny that this suspicious government is the one that made a special Amendment to preserve the rights of the Scots-Irish. One wonders what prevented them from looking more kindly on such a government.)

Webb, I think it’s fair to say, is looking at 1791 through the lens of 2011 and 1865 to say that the south is right not to trust the unfair northern government that oppresses it today and has oppressed it since the end of the Civil War. (You’ll see why I say this in the next post.) But the Second Amendment was not written to give people a way to create a state; our Founders believed that our system of law, our democracy, would keep people safe and free. It’s our government and the laws it is based on and that it enforces that create our liberty, independence, freedom, whatever you like to call it. Guns are not law, they are an alternative to law. So I quarrel with Senator Webb’s description of the origins of the Second Amendment, and the validity of the southern (as he calls it) attachment to weapons. The Amendment was not written as a thank-you to the Scots-Irish, and it is not about substituting gun ownershp for centralized government.

Next time: Jackson, the Civil War, and how the entire middle class is Scots-Irish

WTF? An unattributed and long article having absolutely nothing to do with the OP??? Thanks for playing, now go home.

Interesting story, at least to do with the RVN War.

I was a 21 year old SSGt in the Army Rangers, and we had just relocated to Danang from Chu Lai. The CIA, etc, liaison there was under a SMG Robert Christensen and Lt Sean Penn. We ran a few "errands" for them from time to time.

At the SHOT Show, OTIS Technology sponsored space in their booth for the Wounded Warriors Project people. One of the wheels was a retired Army CSM Bob Christensen.

Yes, it was.

Rich

the erstwhile draft dodgers are finding out that they have nothing in their middle to old age to brag about or look back on with pride. They are not looked up to for their actions, just considered cowards and dopers.
I like that; chickens do, indeed, come home to roost.

Rich
Sua Sponte

I have good friend who served three tours in Viet Nam, he doesn't talk about it and I don't ask. But, I do listen to the stories when he does happen to mention something. I do know that he is very familar with a 50 cal. machine gun and packed a Remington 7.62 rifle with a 14x scope. He said that rifle "saved his ass" on numerous occasions, that's all I needed to know. He did his duty and put his life on the line and never questioned why he was there. He is a good man and I am very glad to count him as friend and is always welcome at my home day or night.
He is old enough to be my dad, but I relate to him more like he was my brother. Jane Fonda can kiss my ass...........

"And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

Henry V