pafret Loc: Northeast

"Being John Wayne, Or Not..."


"Being John Wayne, Or Not..."
by CoyotePrime

Being a dumbass kid whose mind was full of delusional “John Wayne” hero nonsense, I enlisted (with the required parental consent) in the Marine Corps at 17. It was late 1968, the VietNam war was raging, and the military had a tremendous need for fresh bodies. (The first draft wouldn't happen until July, 1969. Incredibly, my birthdate was picked number 1! So my sorry self was going anyway.) I went through bootcamp at Parris Island, then Advanced Infantry Training at Camp Geiger, N.C. Those of us now officially MOS 0311’s, Infantry Rifleman, were assigned to the 2nd Marine Division base at Camp LeJeune.

The day after our arrival at Camp LeJeune the sergeant entered the squad bay and shouted, “Who wants to go to ‘Nam?” En masse we rushed forward to volunteer, eager to defend democracy and kill those nasty commies. Within a week, all who volunteered were given new orders sending them to VietNam- except for me, and 4 other guys, who were still only 17. See, you had to be 18 to die for your country, and we’d have to wait our turn, which eventually came, sadly. My best buddy, a guy named Jim Hart, with whom I’d gone through both bootcamp and AIT together, was one of the “lucky” ones. As he prepared to leave, we tore a dollar bill in half, promising to buy a beer with the re-connected pieces when we saw each other again. We never drank that beer.

I and the other 17’ers were sent on a “Med Cruise”, as part of the landing battalion aboard the Navy’s 6th Fleet ships patrolling the Mediterranean. We soon began receiving mail from our buddies in the ‘Nam. Things weren’t going so well, guys were getting killed, and where was John Wayne when we needed him? Eventually a letter came to another guy, telling of the slaughter of most of our friends. The VietCong, clever as they were, had dug up a misfired 155 mm artillery round and made a booby trap of it. In their new unit our buddies came boppin' down the trail, and someone stepped on it, killing 11 of them, including my friend Hart, all ripped to pieces by the tremendous explosion. My most terrifying thought was that if I’d been a few months older, I’d have been either in front or behind him at that moment, and killed with the rest.

This was another life changing moment. This was for REAL! People were really getting killed! And I had to know why. Not just the bullshit, flag-waving, “bringing freedom and democracy” crap- does that sound familiar right now?- but what were the real forces that made wars happen, and why did so many people die in these tribalistic mass murders. Tragically, the answer is economic: we are in competition with other nations for control of resources of every kind like oil, rubber, metals, natural gas, and food, and all the other necessities we need to sustain our current way of life. And, of course, the money and power that comes along during the process, to a privileged few. They won’t ask you to die for Exxon/Mobil, and you’d tell them to go to hell if they did, but they’ll volunteer to die defending Mom, apple pie, and the good old “American way of life”. We'll die for an ideal like "patriotism", but not for the truth. And that’s how they’ve worked this deal, since the dawn of man. War is a very, very bad thing...

https://youtu.be/XU9k5S8NXEw

"War In A Nutshell"

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oUc6WpOAwto/THGXahb1jwI/AAAAAAAAaB4/cNKsVYPcYzA/s1600/From+Clipboard.jpg
"War In A Nutshell"
by Eugene Debs

"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles (whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine) concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war.

The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives.

They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. And here let me emphasize the fact- and it cannot be repeated too often- that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace."

Happy Veterans Day 2017


We thank you and honor your service.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Just returned from the weekend festivities with my Brothers. Thanks so much for the thoughts, Pafret.

Hemiman Loc: Communist California

Sounds like a speech Chamberland would have given.There are people in this world that have to be stopped and sometimes it requires a war,no sane person likes it but at times it must be done,the consequences for not going to war sometime are worse than the war itself and in the long run create more victims.

GmanTerry

Wow. My story is much the same. Parris Island, Camp Geiger, but the Marine Corps had other plans for me. So I never carried the 0311. I was formed into a 6621. Aviation Electronics Tech. I have never regretted my decision.


Semper Fi

acknowledgeurma

Hmm...I think it sounds more like a speech Debs would have given at the outbreak of WWI. Some think WWII was just a continuation of WWI. And think, if there had been no WWI, there would have been no Hitler, no Bolshevik revolution, no Soviet Union, no Cold War, no Korean Police Action (aka War), no Vietnam War, etc. The fruit of war seems to always carry the seeds of future wars.

You say, "no sane person likes [war]". I ask, can a sane person actively participate in war?

oldroy Loc: Western Kansas (No longer in hiding)

I listened to a song that was said to have been Vietnam in nature. It's main lines were the same as I heard lots of fools repeating for an hour or so while marching in the company square with their dicks in one hand and their rifles in the other. Oh yeah, this good old infantry speech came from long before 1969 which was the date in that song and the video you provided. I always said they would never get to make me say, This is my rifle and this is my gun, One is for killing and the other is for fun" and it never happened. In fact, in basic training they called me a great soldier but I had enlisted in the ASA and went that way. This took place in 1954 for me and that saying came from long before that.

I was thinking about my days in the Army on Veterans Day and realized that I had never had to stand guard anywhere but one night on bivouac. Our company had to stand guard one Saturday for the whole post and like always I tried to be the most shaped up soldier in the bunch. The major who was the OD that day was really impressed with how clean my rifle and bayonet were along with the way I could shoot all those standing orders back at him. Anyway he made me the Colonel's Orderly and sent me back to the company area with orders not to let anybody tell me I had to do anything, since the Colonel may need me.


My asshole squad leader refused to believe me since one of our real slobs had been sent back to clean his rifle. Anyway our platoon sergeant told me to sit my butt down and he went after that ah. He then told me that he knew I didn't like the squad leader and to beat his ass if he came after me again. The sergeant and I got along very well.

I now wear a cap that has an ASA (Army Security Agency) patch and the words Cold War Veteran on it. I am not sorry that I had to go in in 1954 since the war was still cold and we weren't in Vietnam yet. I missed Korea and served in Germany and Italy.

pafret Loc: Northeast

I publish these pieces in honor of those who served in combat and those who made the ultimate sacrifice. They are in no way indicative of my own service.

I too entered in 1954 at the age of seventeen. Boot camp had all of the annoyances that everyone complains about but it was a marvelous learning experience for me. It quickly taught me about consequences for stupid, unthinking actions, responsibility, of what physical endurance I was capable, what human predators looked and behaved like and a host of other things. The transition from boy to man was virtually overnight.

After boot I had 9 months of training in the Signal Corp Schools in Electronics and emerged as a Radar Repairman. My posting was to White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico where I participated in development of panoply of guided and ballistic missiles. I volunteered for the International Geophysical Year expedition to Ft Churchill Canada where we installed a missile firing facility for High Altitude Research. I worked as technical support for various University teams who brought their payloads to be injected via high altitude research rocket into the Van Allen Belts around the Polar Region. Each posting increased my skills, knowledge, and capabilities. Recognition was swift; I rose through the ranks to sergeant in two years

Along the way there were boondocking expeditions in the New Mexican back country. Excursions to Juarez for the bullfights, booze and broads, Skiing, horseback riding, trips to Carlsbad Caverns and other notable places, photography labs and classes where I learned to shoot photos, develop my own films and print them, with all of the techniques and tricks taught buy professionals who had been drafted. I even learned enough mechanics to restore my own 1928 Model A in the military supplied garage facilities.

My fellow soldiers were mostly draftees but these men came with great educations. We had one individual who held a doctorate in physics but refused a commission because he was essentially a pacifist and would not lend his expertise to furthering war. Most of the rest of the sixty men in my barracks were engineers, chemists and metallurgists; I was one of the least educated with only a high school diploma. I benefited greatly from association with these men, the old adage if it looks like a duck, walks and talks like a duck and associates only with ducks it must be a duck held true. These men were steady, spoke intelligently and accomplished marvels. I was like a sponge soaking up everything I could.

It was a full and active life without any threat of war or combat and if I ignored the uniform and the military aspects, it was a great life for a seventeen to twenty year old. After leaving the military I took advantage of the GI bill to pay for my college education.

So, I experienced great benefit from my service through luck.

Most of the men on OPP who served experienced nothing like this and our modern army seems only to be a burger grinder. Even if they return in one piece they are shredded mentally. Yet, their plight is recognized by our politicians who want to deprive them of their second amendment rights because they are mentally unstable. They do not however, press for exceptional treatment for these mental problems nor do they push for peaceful solutions to international problems.

The only solution our politicians know is bomb the crap out of peasants living in huts or leveling cities. Send in the troops. It has been so since the time of the Spanish American war and never ends. The Wrappy, the Dogface, the Gyrene, the Jarhead, the Swabby, whatever you call him the American Soldier has left his sanity or his body and its parts rotting on the battlefields in stinking hell holes across this globe

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile--
To serve your captives' need . . ..

Damn, damn, damn the Filipinos!
Cut throat khakiac ladrones!
Underneath the starry flag,
Civilize them with a Krag,
And return us to our beloved home.