OT: A Must Watch for All of YOU

[clob94]

Netflix........... Ken Burns--- the Vietnam War.


Since there's little in the way of sports on the weekend now, save a random Astros game, I highly suggest you gents watch this. Family members and older friends of mine that served just won't talk about it. This is unbelievable, and I pride myself in being a war history buff.

 

[2300 Nueces]

Netflix........... Ken Burns--- the Vietnam War.


Since there's little in the way of sports on the weekend now, save a random Astros game, I highly suggest you gents watch this. Family members and older friends of mine that served just won't talk about it. This is unbelievable, and I pride myself in being a war history buff.

Burns Civil War documentary is top notch as well.

 

[Oldmanastro]

Anyone watch the Netflix “Evil Genius”? Creepy stuff.

 

[BringBackRoyal]

Ken Burns is a national treasure.

 

[oldhorn2]

you need FB's take on the show. If he says it is good, then it will be. The Vietnam war was led by the poorest generalship in USA history.

 

[clob94]

you need FB's take on the show. If he says it is good, then it will be. The Vietnam war was led by the poorest generalship in USA history.

You can underline that and star the sh!t out of it and you couldn't be more correct. We take a hill and then abandon it only to have to take it again a week later. I've always known how badly the Kennedy johnson and Nixon administration's stepped on their own d!ck regarding Vietnam, but I guess I didn't realize it was the most epic d!ck stepping in history. In one 11 day bombing campaign we had 16 of our B-52 bombers sshot down because the generals in Washington were too stupid to listen to the majors in the field who were telling this their bombing run pathways were flawed. There was a literal mutiny by the pilots who refused to fly missions until parameters were changed.

 

[oldhorn2]

William Westmoreland was the worst field commander since Custer

 

[oldhorn2]

I those days you got drafted right out of high school unless you went to college. If you flunked out you were guaranteed to be in Vietnam within 12 weeks, maybe 15 weeks on the outside.Then they started drafting guys in college.

When you were going to college or starting to work after high school what was your biggest worry?

 

[clob94]

Nothing near as threatening as being shipped off to a sh!thole to have my coin purse blown off......

I those days you got drafted right out of high school unless you went to college. If you flunked out you were guaranteed to be in Vietnam within 12 weeks, maybe 15 weeks on the outside.Then they started drafting guys in college.

When you were going to college or starting to work after high school what was your biggest worry?

 

[CAHorn47]

I those days you got drafted right out of high school unless you went to college. If you flunked out you were guaranteed to be in Vietnam within 12 weeks, maybe 15 weeks on the outside.Then they started drafting guys in college.

When you were going to college or starting to work after high school what was your biggest worry?

Sweating out that 1st lottery on December 1, 1969. Didn't have to wait long, my number was 6.

 

[FlourBluffHorn]

Its a good Documentary, a lot it doesn't show, it doesn't show the company that split up at the river to go the flank and walked into a VC ambush with 3 corner m60's crisscrossing them, they where all dead in 4 mins , I believe 36 of them and it was ni and the other platoons could not rescue them and watched in the dark the red flashlights the VC took from the GIs stripping their bodies and mutilating them after they was dead, the next morn they found them chopped up, naked, shit like this made other GI's just shoot anything, had a friend in another Batt that says if the VC can't sing the Star Spangled Banner then shoot his ass! and thats all I got to say on that, so be scared of IED's, there is always something worst in the night. Going thru shit like this and then having the Home crowd throw crap at you at the Airport, a lotta Vets will tell you that we fought for ourselves as brothers and not for the USA...



Hook'em

 

[clob94]

Sweating out that 1st lottery on December 1, 1969. Didn't have to wait long, my number was 6.

Wait......... you were literally the 6th person take in the Dec 1 draft? Like......... of the entire draft on that day? Or was this the draft lottery with the little blue balls and you were born on Sept 6?

 

[outhereincali]

I've watched this and it's very good. Peter Coyote was a masterful narrator. My brother and I talked about it on the phone. We thought part one was the best. We talked about how we thought we knew most of the Vietnam war but t part 1 really opened our eyes. I already knew this but a lot of people didn't know that Ho Chi Minh lived in the United States. I don't want to give the rest of it away bit clob is right thisis a must see documentary.

 

[clob94]

I've watched this and it's very

Very............?

 

[FlourBluffHorn]

Shows ya why all the names are on the wall! LBJ and McNamara what a team of killers..



Hook'em

 

[outhereincali]

A Vietnam movie worth watching is We Were Soldiers Once. It's a Mel Gibson movie and it tells the story of Gen Hal Moore who is also in the documentary as well. Hal Moore was quite a soldier and this is worth watching.

 

[2300 Nueces]

My Uncle who died last year in the Dallas VA of lung cancer served as a Marine in Nam. He had a mortar shell land next to him. It blew part of his skull off but the tough sucker survived. He was in recovery for a long time. He never recovered mentally and suffered from agoraphobia the rest of his life. He never wanted to leave his house. He was in and out of jail for various things and lived a sad existence. He claimed the agent orange gave him lung cancer.

 

[clob94]

My Uncle who died last year in the Dallas VA of lung cancer served as a Marine in Nam. He had a mortar shell land next to him. It blew part of his skull off but the tough sucker survived. He was in recovery for a long time. He never recovered mentally and suffered from agoraphobia the rest of his life. He never wanted to leave his house. He was in and out of jail for various things and lived a sad existence. He claimed the agent orange gave him lung cancer.

We'll never fully know the exact toll that the war took on individuals. Between the millions of tons of bombs dropped (more than all the bombs dropped in WWII by ALL combatants), the chemicals used to kill jungle foliage (agent orange) and the sheer volume of napalm spread around, it's a wonder that grass still grows over there. I'm certain there are people to this very day that suffer both physical and mental effects of JUST the chemicals used.

Fvcking sad.

 

[oldhorn2]

Ho Chi Min's political hero was Thomas Jefferson. Our dumbassed leadership screwed us big time there.

I have a friend that is an author. He does not even blink when he says that the only reason for that war was to make a few guys rich. No stratigic importance in Vietnam at all.In fact the Vietnamise would have been a good buffer for China. The reason the FBI and CIA had Kennedy killed was he was going to pull us out.

 

[oldhorn2]

For the record...I was not sent to Vietnam....I was sent to Korea instead for reasons I still dont understand.

FB is right about being spit upon when returning from Nam....hell for being in the Armed services at all.

 

[2300 Nueces]

We'll never fully know the exact toll that the war took on individuals. Between the millions of tons of bombs dropped (more than all the bombs dropped in WWII by ALL combatants), the chemicals used to kill jungle foliage (agent orange) and the sheer volume of napalm spread around, it's a wonder that grass still grows over there. I'm certain there are people to this very day that suffer both physical and mental effects of JUST the chemicals used.

Fvcking sad.

Ya, 20 years ago I had a men's soccer team in the Fort Worth open division. I had mostly 18 to 30 years old guys on the team, except for one. I had a 56 year old gentlemen from South Vietnam... He was quick and durable as hell. He was a great sweeper even at that age. His last season with us he came to a game complaining of back pain, so I told him to sit it out no biggie. Well he didn't and kept playing... I found out later that he was having radiation treatment for cancer. He fought with the South Vietnamese against the North on our side and was given asylum here after we vacated. The cancer killed him. I'm sure it was a result of the chems in the war.

 

[2300 Nueces]

Ho Chi Min's political hero was Thomas Jefferson. Our dumbassed leadership screwed us big time there.

I have a friend that is an author. He does not even blink when he says that the only reason for that war was to make a few guys rich. No stratigic importance in Vietnam at all.In fact the Vietnamise would have been a good buffer for China. The reason the FBI and CIA had Kennedy killed was he was going to pull us out.

Yes, the CIA and FBI were complicit but Kennedy crossed the financiers of the war and wanted to put us back on a silver/gold standard which if you're financing the war wouldn't be very popular. Yes pulling out was part of the reason but there were even bigger implications of what he intended to do.

Edit: To clarify, Kennedy going to a silver/gold standard would have created 2 currencies. A new on with a backing and an old one of fiat which the financiers would have been paid in... The older fiat would have undoubtedly been inflated at a rate that the financiers would have taken it in the shorts so Kennedy had to go.

 

[outhereincali]

Ho Chi Min's political hero was Thomas Jefferson. Our dumbassed leadership screwed us big time there.

I have a friend that is an author. He does not even blink when he says that the only reason for that war was to make a few guys rich. No stratigic importance in Vietnam at all.In fact the Vietnamise would have been a good buffer for China. The reason the FBI and CIA had Kennedy killed was he was going to pull us out.

I may not remember this right but in that documentary it stated that at Versailles Ho Chi Minh met Woodrow Wilson asking for assistance and was rudely dismissed.

LBJ and Westmoreland kept thinking that all we had to do was send more and more troops and the results were disastrous. Colonel Charging Charley Beckwith said that the Viet Cong were great soldiers but apparently nobody listened. Fwiw, the French Foreign Legion who are considered by some to be the world's best army were humiliated in Vietnam.

But I just don't know about Kennedy pulling the troops out after he was reelected. I grant you that only 150 or so men died at the time of his death and the military personnel that was there were advisers not soldiers.

But in the United States a President just can't lose a war. It's in the American psyche that were the United States we don't lose wars. By the time we realized that the Vietnamese people were united it was to late. The Kennedy supporters have always acted what would have happened and it annoys the h*** out of me.

 

[LongfellowDrew]

I always want to hear about the war but my grandfather will not talk about it and my friends dad passed away but didn’t like talking about it. My cousin was killed in Vietnam but again no one really got much information. I’ll check out the documentary.

 

[outhereincali]

For the record...I was not sent to Vietnam....I was sent to Korea instead for reasons I still dont understand.

FB is right about being spit upon when returning from Nam....hell for being in the Armed services at all.

Fwiw, soldiers returning home from Korea were treated the same way as Vietnam vets.

 

[oldhorn2]

Hell....All military was treated like shit by the public. When I was at Ft Bragg, it was an article 15 offense to be off base in uniform. Soldiers were actually attacked for being identified as military. This was especially hard on all the guys that were drafted in the first place.

 

[CAHorn47]

Wait......... you were literally the 6th person take in the Dec 1 draft? Like......... of the entire draft on that day? Or was this the draft lottery with the little blue balls and you were born on Sept 6?

The latter...born on 9/6/1947

 

[FlourBluffHorn]

The VC was mean little bastards, give me a Batt of VC and a Batt of ROK marines , I would have ISIS ass within 3 weeks time, the VC was scared shitless of the Rok's


Hook'em

 

[clob94]

Hell....All military was treated like shit by the public. When I was at Ft Bragg, it was an article 15 offense to be off base in uniform. Soldiers were actually attacked for being identified as military. This was especially hard on all the guys that were drafted in the first place.

Bragg...... so you were airborne or going to ranger school..... 82nd?

 

[oldhorn2]

No....I was transportation corps. ....SOMEBODY had to haul those crazy Rangers to their planes....

I was the OIC of the TMP (post motor pool). In those days....to give ya'll some perspective....We operated 16 to 21 sedans every damned day of the week on what we called casualty runs. That was where an officer and a sargent had to in person inform a wife or mother that their son/husband had been killed in Vietnam. Think about that....just in the area within 150 miles of Ft Bragg 16 to 21 every damned day of the week. That did not even include the number wounded......So much tradgedy ....every damned day.....and for what?

 

[outhereincali]

The VC was mean little bastards, give me a Batt of VC and a Batt of ROK marines , I would have ISIS ass within 3 weeks time, the VC was scared shitless of the Rok's


Hook'em

You know I was going to post something about this. Only 3 of our allies sent troops Vietnam. There's one I can't remember but the other two were Australia and South Korea. From my time in the Army guys who served in Vietnam or Korea said that the ROK army was bad ass.

 

[outhereincali]

You know I was going to post something about this. Only 3 of our allies sent troops Vietnam. There's one I can't remember but the other two were Australia and South Korea. From my time in the Army guys who served in Vietnam or Korea said that the ROK army was bad ass. He said they left a trail blazing half a mile wide and killed everything in sight. He was exaggerating of course but I got the impression.

 

[oldhorn2]

I thought it was Turkey....but I dont know why I thought that

 

[FlourBluffHorn]

You know I was going to post something about this. Only 3 of our allies sent troops Vietnam. There's one I can't remember but the other two were Australia and South Korea. From my time in the Army guys who served in Vietnam or Korea said that the ROK army was bad ass.

From what I heard that where they camped at , they had cutoff some heads of the VC and put them on stakes around the perimeter of the camp and that they carried some big ass knives...tough little fukers!


Hook'em

 

[oldhorn2]

Phillippeans, Taiwan, New Zealand Thailand....No Turks