VLVL 4: War, politics and love

[pynchonoid]

Otto:
>Most of the US-troops indeed had left the country in
>1973

True enough, but not all of them. Enough US troops and
spooks remained in Vietnam to create quite a bit of
tragedy all the way until the US crayfished out of
there completely in '75, and I know from personal
experience that the US Army was still sending troops
to Vietnam in January of '73.

re RC:  Rural Northern California is rife with Vietnam
Vets, draft-dodgers, and deserters.  I know some of
them.  Some of the combat veterans (and I think jbor
may be correct to assume that a "bush vet" in this
context is a US combat grunt in Vietnam) came back so
shook up that they sought the peace and solitude of
the boonies (which we also call, here in California,
the "tules" -- say "toolies" and that might be another
note in T's tiresome "VL is about WORK"  refrain). 

In Korea, our company (Wow! Another BUSINESShad one
Vietnam Vet who was so shook up after several tours 
of duty as a "lurp" (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol
-- soldiers who went out alone, often armed with a
shotgun so they could sneak up close enough to
Vietcong and North Vietnamese army units to count the
troops and inventory their equipment, and still defend
themselves if discovered) that they sent him chill out
in Korea for awhile before letting him return home
(yes, as company clerk I knew his personnel file, and
got more of the straight poop on him from my buds at
Division HQ), in our unit, a mechanized infantry
battalion a couple of clicks south of the DMZ. He
didnt' chill very well, except when he was nodding on
smack (he was the only heroin addict at Camp Howze
that year, '73), and he wound up stabbing a Korean cab
driver to death in a dispute over the equivalent of
about 75 cents;  for all I know he may still languish
in a Korean prison -- I carried him on the company
daily report for the remainder of my year there,
noting his off-base assignment every day.

If indeed RC did serve in combat in Vietnam, he would
be another solider in that same grand US imperialist
tradition that jbor has recently lauded here re the US
wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.  If RC was a
draftee, as so many Vietnam combat vets were, he would
have found himself in a real dilemma:  had he been
opposed to the War before he was drafted, he might
have been just another patriotic American hypnotized
by the sort of propaganda that the Bush Administration
has used to enlist the support of the people like RJ
(speaking of funny-sounding self-chosen names) and T
for their criminal war in Iraq. Many Vietnam Vets, and
especially combat vets, came to oppose the war once
they got to Vietnam and saw what the US was actually
doing to innocent people and nationalist patriots
there -- and some of those vets went on to take direct
action, many refusing to fight, some finding
opportunities to eliminate their gung-ho leaders by
"fragging". 

And, Otto, there was a highly visible and active
"counterculture" element among the US troops in
Vietnam -- the film "Apocalypse Now" has that right,
they were listening to the same rock music as the
hippies were Stateside, smoking better pot, taking the
same LSD, and, as mentioned above, many became
anti-war activists, and drop-outs (a.k.a. "deserters),
too -- before they ever came home, and of course too
many of them didn't managed to do that except in a
body bag.

jbor:
>pure stereotypes of the sort of godawful names which
>hippie folk lumbered their kids with back in the
>'60s.

That would be a matter of personal taste plus a
willingness to insult these people you appear to share
with T. I knew a delightful young woman named Rainbow
while I was going to school at Berkeley, daughter of
some old hippies. Somehow, that appeals to me more
than something boring like, say, "Robert Jackson" --
but again it's a matter of personal taste, hardly
worth arguing about. 







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