Feeling in Vietnam is that most backhomers, including lawmakers do not understand or accept, the truth that the conflict in Vietnam is war, That the bulk of America considers Southeast Asia with confusion and mild contempt.
A soldier returning home from Vietnam will find that people can't yet point the country out on a map, can't guess the number of weekly casualties there, can't figure out who the enemy is, and can't understand what it's all about except they guess freedom is involved.
"You think Vietnam is bad?, a statesider will grin. "Brother you should have been in New York during the blackout."
"Too bad your home," another adds grimly. "Traffic's terrible."
"DaNang?" a third will say. "Nothing, you should'a seen the battle off the Bulge.
Now that was a real war.
Vietnam is still a pop art oddity 12,000 miles away. The public worries more about living with a possible tax increase. Officials worry about living with world opinion. The GI worries only about living.
His world there is nightly blackout and mortar traffic. It's alive with booby traps that can blow his legs or his life to shreds. It's occupied with an enemy and ally that look exactly alike.
He would give a month's pay for a sound sleep. And 10 years of his life for a night at home,
He is not a bit player in a comic opera conflict., not the trump in an international card game and not 12.,000 miles away but as near as the muddy and bloody pictures in the newspapers.
Moreover, he is usually a very young American citizen in a hell of a fix. The average age of a combat GI in Vietnam is 18.
A pink-cheeked., tousled-haired., tight-muscled fellow who, under normal circumstances, would be considered by society as half-man, half-boy., not yet dry behind the ear, a pain in the employment chart.
But right now., he is the beardless hope of free men.
He is for the most part unmarried and without material possessions except for possibly an old car at home and a transistor radio here. He listens to rock 'n' roll and the 105 mm howitzers.
He has just got out of high school within the past year, received so-so grades,played a little football. and had a girl who broke up with him when he went overseas or who swears that she is still faithful although he is half the world away.
He has learned to like beer by now because it is cold and because it is "the thing to do." He smokes because he gets free cigarettes in his C-rations packages and it is also the thing to do.
He never cared much for work, preferred waxing his own car to washing his fathers, but he is now 10 or 20 pounds lighter than before because he is working or fighting from dawn to dark., often longer.
He still has his trouble spelling, and writing letters home is a painful process. But he can break down a rifle in 30 seconds and put it back together again in 29.
He can describe the nomenclature of a fragmentation grenade, explain how a machinegun operates and, of course, utilize either if the need arises.
He obeys now, without hesitation. But he is not broken,
He has seen more suffering than he should have in his short life. He has stoodamong hills of bodies and he has helped to construct those hills.
He has wept in public and in private, and he is not ashamed in either place,because his pals have fallen in battle and he has come close to joining them.
And he has become self-sufficient; he has two pairs of fatigues, washes one and wears the other. He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth., but not his rifle,
He keeps his socks dry and his canteen full.. He can cook his own meals, fix his own hurts and mend his own rips, material or mental.
He will share his water with you if you thirst,, break his rations in half if you hunger, split his ammunition if you are fighting for your life.
He can do the work of two civilians, draw half the pay of one and find ironic humor in it all. He has learned to use his hands as a weapon and his weapon as his hands. he can save a life or., most assuredly take one.
Eighteen-and-a-half years old.