“Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
~Errol Morris
In my family, it was common practice to eat dinner with the TV on.
Certainly by today’s standards nobody would give this revelation a second glance, but the year was 1972 and the TV was on for reason.
Like most of the families who lived in my small Midwestern town, we would–night after night after night–watch the coverage of the fighting in Viet Nam while we ate.
And in between our bites of swiss steak and green beans, we were force fed huge helpings of terrifying images that showed platoons of young men engaged in mortal combat.
Even at the age of 12, I remember thinking how fucked up the whole thing was.
Pawns of the politicians, countless boys lost arms and legs fighting over square inches of land that mattered not–except of course to the fat cats and bureaucrats who were too self-righteous and stiff-necked to withdraw our troops from this godforsaken place.
Looking back, its hard for me to imagine that tens of thousands of high school kids were systematically drafted and sent to places like Dien Bien Phu, Khe Sanh, Laos, and Haiphong. And in return for their sacrifice, U.S. soldiers were scorned and spit on when they came home.
Except, of course, for the 58,000 who came home in body bags.
I hope to God there’ll never be another time in our nation’s history like this one.
In March of 1973, the last American combat soldiers left South Vietnam, though military advisors and Marines, who were protecting U.S. installations, remained. For the United States, the war was officially over. Of the more than 3 million Americans who served in the war, almost 58,000 were dead, and over 1,000 were missing in action. Some 150,000 Americans were seriously wounded.
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