CNN: The Seventies: Peace with Honor

CNN - The Seventies - CNN.com‎

Adwww.cnn.com/TheSeventies‎

Catch Up on Every Episode with a Seventies Marathon on CNN Thursday!

I was 21 in 1969 so I remember the 1970s well. I was lucky in that I wasn't drafted so I didn't have to serve in the Viet Nam War.

Watching this "Peace with Honor" segment of the CNN Series: The Seventies, took me right back there to those times. However, you do have to remember that even 1974 was 40 years ago now. So, my recollections were different than this program in many different ways.

My experience of it was that the Viet Nam war was socially even more divisive to Americans than the Civil War was. This is sort of difficult to explain unless you lived through it. Most people who were of what I would call the old guard are now dead and the young people my age or younger (I'm now 67) have taken over the world so to speak and it becomes more like this every day now.

But, the people who ruled the U.S. then thought more like people did in World War II. But, that war had been over in 1965 already 20 years. By the 70s the war had been over 30 years and everyone in my generation had no memory of it other than from "Victory at Sea", "Combat" and war movies and stories from old veterans from World War II.

However, the Viet Nam War our friends my age were dying in that were drafted right out of high school or if they dropped out of high school. So, the people that went and died there often didn't have much of an education unless they were officers from West Point or Annapolis. So, most that died in Viet Nam didn't know which end was up very much. And the rest of us knew this who chose to go to college. And we were angry at our friends who likely shouldn't have been driving cars or motorcycles either, we sent to Viet Nam and were soon dead.

This is the memory of my generation that sticks the most with me. Why did so many of us have to die in a war that really made no sense to most of us? 56,000 died and over 150,000 were so wounded many never recovered. Veterans Hospitals are still full of some of the survivors of the Viet Nam War still today along with the volunteers from Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

AT least in more recent wars people volunteered and weren't drafted right out of high school like in Viet Nam. IF they came home in a body bag at least it was their choice to go (even if others might have questioned that choice).