It was a hot, humid night in July 1968 in Nha Trang, South Vietnam. Not far from my barracks was a huge U.S. Air Force Base, and a South Korean Army base. Nha Trang was a seaside town that used to be a vacation spot during the French colonial period. I was assigned to the First Field Force of II Corps. I had finally finished my 12 hour shift in the Personnel office and had gone to bed in my double bunk surrounded by my mosquito net. Reading Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms had captured my intense attention. No one ever wrote with such skill as Hemingway. As I'm reading I could picture in my mind the horrors of war he was describing during World War I. It all made sense. I had now spent my first two months in a war zone. I arrived in Vietnam just after the Tet Offensive that started in February 1968. As my Continental Airways passenger jet full of Army soldiers made its landing approach to Bien Hoa military airport, I first got a taste of the chaos of a war zone. Looking to my right, I can seen the flash of artillery firing. Upon landing we're loaded on a Isuzu bus and driven to the Cholon section of Saigon. The sounds and noise of war was everywhere.
Upon arrival at the St. George Hotel in Saigon I could see that the front of the hotel was full of bullet holes. I'm thinking that I had just landed in hell. Helicopter gunships were circling the area, and the rat,tat, tat sounds of machine guns was everywhere. We were at the hotel awaiting our assignment in country. After unloading my gear I see a fellow soldier holding out a recording device out of the window. When I asked him what he was doing, he said that he was recording the sounds of the battle so he could send it home. I asked him if he was kidding; he was not. At the hotel bar I can see about six or seven Australian soldiers having a beer. Before resting for the night I got the assignment of patrolling the perimeter of the hotel with my M-14 Rifle that I had trained with in Fort Ord, California. I don't remember sleeping that night. Having spent and entire year in a war zone, I think I can speak with experience that war is no party or no glory. I will not spend any time defending the Vietnam war here; my purpose is a little different.
As an Italian immigrant to the United States, I occasionally was asked were I was from, since I did not look like the typical blond, blue eyed Scandinavian looking fellow. When I answered that I was from Sicily, Italy, I was often told idiotic Italian jokes about the Italian military (referring to World War II). The most frequent quip was "what is the smallest book in the world? A list of Italian military heroes." Why a person would intentionally insult me to my face is beyond my understanding. I suppose if I had been a tough hombre, I would have levelled the person with a left hook or picked him up and tossed him into the freeway, or out of the building, but I did not. I feigned a smile, unprepared for such idiocy. This did not happen once or twice but many, many times. Happily I have not heard it in the last 10 or so years.
I've never been able to figure out the mentality of such insults. Surely, people making these sick jokes have never been nor could they ever handle being in a war. The intellectually challenged person making such jokes has never walked in another man's shoes. The Vietnam veterans were betrayed by their own people when they returned home. Here was a man who left home, left his parents, brothers and sisters, his girlfriend and all his friends to fight to the death in the Ia Drang Valley or Khe Sanh. Or how about going to a war that you could not win because you were fighting with rules that put you in a box where you could not go out of. A war that made no sense and the politicians refused to let you win. If you survived and came home the people often spat at you and called you a killer. The draft dodger that fled to Canada was considered the smart one, the brave soldier who died for his country was forgotten.
Where was the idiot who makes such jokes? was he in the foxhole? Was he thrown into a situation where it was hopeless to win or get out of? As a history buff, I often watch military documentaries. One of most poignant one is the documentary of the Siege of Leningrad during World War II where the entire German 6th Army, about 500,000 men, was condemned to die from war, cold or starvation because a lunatic such as Hitler had sent them there and then refused to let them withdraw when it was hopeless. Would the idiot making such jokes have been to such a place? I don't think so.
