SwiftVets.com

[reconflyer]

My earliest recollections of Vietnam were when I was four or five years old and my father would watch the evening news while stories came across the screen of battles and events during that war. I remember the grainy footage and the images of the GIs in battle dress carrying the wounded and pointing at enemy positions. I didn't understand any of it then, and my dad offered no explanations...

A couple of years later, when I was six or seven, I remember seeing the UH-1s being shoved off the deck of an aircraft carrier during the evacuation of Saigon. I didn't understand why they were shoving perfectly good helicopters off the deck of a ship into the waters below, and no one in my family ever talked about it or offered an explanation.

Still, I somehow knew that those soldiers that I had seen, those helicopter aircrew, those sailors, those marines, they were kindred souls. They were intrepid young men from my country, and for those brief minutes that I saw them on television as a child, I empathized with them, and I wanted to be with them. If someone was going to pilot a helicopter over an embassy and upload people who wanted leave, I wanted to be that guy, their pilot of goodwill. If someone was going to carry an M-16 into a dark jungle in search of the enemy, well, I wanted to be that guy too. Of course I didn't understand the terrible cost of close quarters combat, but that didn't matter.

As a youngster I read every book I could get my hands on that dealt with WWII. I especially liked reading about the war in the Pacific theater, and at 12 years old I considered myself very well versed on the subject. At the time, looking back, WWII wasn't that far behind our country.

At 18 years old I started a job working at a beef packing plant. One of my buddies there joined the Air Force, he was one of the best workers in the plant, but he was looking for something more, and it was at the height of the Cold War, and so I followed him. Besides, my best girl had given me the boot, it was time to move on. My dad was shocked at the news.

I enlisted in the summer of 1986. There were still plenty of Vietnam vets in our ranks. They were the men that were very senior to us, they were the men that were on the verge of retirement, and they were the men that told us their stories. For some, it was less bombastic, duty in Thailand, generating sorties with bombs and fuel for the fighters. For others it was more involved, flying as aerial gunners on the AC-130s, busting trucks on the Ho-chi-mihn trail. It was a strange time, because we were a Cold War Air Force that was mostly in garrision, but we were taught by "expeditionary" warriors that had service in Southeast Asia.

Movies like "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket" left us in awe. Not to the politics, mind you, but to the personal sacrifice that our forebears had offered. Sure, "Platoon" is a political movie, but we didn't see it that way. We identified with the service. Still, in a way that the director of that movie would never understand, it steeled us. We would never do the things that could bring dishonor (of course this is what we thought and we didn't really know ****). Nonetheless, it seemed Vietnam was something that we didn't want to forget, we wanted to know more about it.

In my service's young life (Air Force, born 1947), we have had two enlisted Medal of Honor winners, John Levitow, a loadmaster on an AC-47 and William Pitsenbarger, a pararescueman. Both of the medals were awarded for action during Vietnam. Their gallantry awes us to this day.

Desert Storm came and our service did a great job. It served to be the bridge between the Cold War Air Force that we were to the Expeditionary Air Force that we are today. Many of us that served in the Gulf War number one consider it a defining moment of our time, and yet our time is coming to a close. Much like we were the people to fight in a conflict, as were those who fought so valiantly in Vietnam, there were no detractors worth mention when we came home from Desert Storm.

So now, as an old crusty sergeant who will retire in a couple of years, I look back at how we treated Vietnam. The men and women who laid down their sacrifice in Vietnam were my role models as a junior enlisted man. It is funny how the generations overlap. Now the young ones look at me as an old warhorse because I had time in Gulf War I.

Still, I think the American people as a whole never lost faith with their Vietnam vets, although some people did.

It is for that reason that the Swifties have had success, and they will continue to command an audience, and as well they should.

The people John Kerry accuses of being murdering animals is none other than the heart and soul of this country, our own Sons and Daughters of a generation past. If his accusations are true, then our own heroes are a falsehood, and I don't think that is the case. If his accustations are true, then we are indeed a failed people, and I of course don't believe that to be the case. But then we all know his accusations are false, and damning, and not very sympathetic with the plight of our servicemen/women of that era...

To the Swiftees... Thanks for having the Guts! You guys are the best!