Shot of the Day - # 19 - Viet Nam…Some Thoughts

I’ve been watching the excellent Ken Burns documentary on the Viet Nam war and all manner of thoughts and memories have been brought back into focus. They are about lessons learned and forgotten as we are mired for years in another part of the world with no hope of ‘winning’. They are about how we were lied to by our presidents and generals and how badly the war was prosecuted. They are about an immature city kid who had little idea what he was going to do after college but faced the possibility of trading his biology degree for an M-16 and jungle rot on the other side of the world.

General Westmoreland’s Grave, West Point (22 September 2007)

The United States Military Academy has a cemetery with a 

few notable residents like George Armstrong Custer and Winfield 

Scott. Also present is William Westmoreland, the Commander of the

U.S forces from 1964-68. We had over a half-million troops there

when he was relieved of duty and still requesting 200,000 more. 

I had a student deferment and when I graduated, it was gone and my draft classification was 1-A…ready to be called up…prime cannon fodder. By then the draft lottery was in effect and I had to sweat it out with Number 195 as my draft board recruited up to Number 193. With each passing year, I slipped further back in the pack. The war ended in 1975 and my education and career continued.

New Life on the Wall of The Dead, 
Viet Nam Memorial, Washington, D.C. (15 October 2006)

Not just from watching this show but regularly in the decades since that war, I have wondered what I would have been like…how my life would have changed had I experienced combat and exposure to that mayhem, horror and death. I’m lucky to have avoided all that and so very sorry that many good people did not.

May those who died rest in peace. May those who still struggle find some modicum of comfort. May those responsible for this travesty of leadership be forever remembered for their damnable actions.