Et tu Brutè?

Et tu Brutè?  (you Brutus?) were the last words of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. when he was assassinated by being stabbed in the back by his good friend, Marcus Brutus.  One of the most shameful episodes in American history was the shameful betrayal of the brave men and women who answered their country's call to serve in Vietnam.  The Vietnam Veterans were treated as common criminals would be treated.  Returning Vietnam Veterans were not only not appreciated; they were despised.  What makes this even worse is that the men, most of them, were drafted and served their country honorably in a war that could not be won.  The war could not be won because American politicians put them in a box for which they could not get out of.  In Vietnam, you could not go after the enemy in their home turf.  You had to fight him within the confines of South Vietnam.  Advantage, the enemy.  The enemy could wait and attack you at their liking and at their advantage.  If they lost an engagement, as they often did, they would re-group at their convenience in North Vietnam.  No army can win with these conditions.  The Vietnam war was lost before one soldier hit the ground in Vietnam in the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s.

Today, whenever we see a soldier in uniform, most people go up to them to thank them and sometimes pay for their meal.  This is great; that it the way it should be.  The Vietnam Veteran had a very different reception.  The returning vet would be spat upon or called "baby killer."  Let me recount my experience, and my experience was not the worst, by any means.  When I returned from Vietnam in May 1969, the commercial jet full of returning soldiers landed in Fort Lewis, Washington.  No one was there to greet us.  I remember thinking why the Army did not even think of welcoming us home?  No one thanked us.  No one talked to any of us.  I felt totally abandoned and forgotten.  All of us got out and disappeared on our own; most to other airports for flights to our home.  When I arrived at LAX, the only ones waiting for me were my family.  No one even looked at me, let alone thank me for your my service.

Prior to leaving for military service I was a college student and had worked part-time for Calavar Corporation, a Santa Fe Springs, California company that serviced the telephone company (Pacific Telephone), vehicles.  I had not planned on returning to this type of work but since I had not found other work, I decided to ask this company if they had any work for me.  Calavar hired me.  Upon reporting for work I was not assigned any particular work; I just roamed around and helped out anyone who asked me; I had no supervisor.  They basically left me alone; no one talked to me.  After the first week, someone presented me with my first check.  This person said absolutely nothing to me, just handed me the check without a word.  Upon opening the envelope.  I read the word Termination on it;  nothing else.  I never asked anyone anything; I just left.

Most people blamed the American soldier for losing the war, not the real culprit, the incompetent and self-serving politicians in Washington DC who's idea it was to send us there.  I went to Vietnam willingly, never questioning the cause.  As I think about it today, I recognize the absolute folly and idiocy of this war.  This was a war not based on any facts but on what we would call neurosis.  In those days, the West was afraid of the possible spread of communism.  This developed into a neurosis about it.  The  "Domino Theory"was trotted out by our government as the reason to fight communism.

As for the Vietnamese, they were fighting for their freedom.  They had been colonized by France for several hundred years.  After World War II they fought and defeated the French with the final climactic battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.  The French fought brilliantly, but they were fighting, again, a war they could not win, no matter what.  The United States learned nothing from the failure of the French.  We ended up paying the price:  60,000 American dead and about 500,000 wounded; many wounded for life. Yet, when it came to thanking the American soldier for his sacrifices they spit in our face.  In a recent article President Obama recognized the shameful treatment of the Vietnam Vet.  Click here for the story.

There have been many wars where men lost their lives for no good reason and only for the folly, sometimes criminal folly, of such leaders as Hitler and Mussolini   The Nazis, for example, condemned over two million of their own men to death and 3.5 million wounded in Russia alone for a war that they could never have won.  Mussolini, condemned over 200,000 Italian soldiers to death in the Russian campaign of World War II supporting the Germans. The Hungarians, Romanians and Croats also sent troops to Russia and were eventually destroyed as well.  In 1805, the ambitious and despotic Napoleon Bonaparte, sent 500,000 French troops to Russia; only 5,000 returned alive.  All these men died in vain. All these men could say et tu Brutè? As my theme on this blog states:  Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

A Farewell to Arms

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.