ULTIMATE OBSCENITY of WAR!

The kind of war a soldier experienced depended on where in nam he fought it. An Army rifleman's thirteen month tour among the densely settled hamlets around PHU BaI bore few resemblances to that of a reconnaissance scout's twelve month tour in the sparsely populated central highlands around PLEIKU. The kind of war a soldier experienced also depended on what he did in it. A slightly built Army combat engineer, with a flashlight in one hand and a .45 caliber pistol in the other, as he crawled into an enemy bunker complex to install explosives, had a very different view of the war than did the infantry soldier hiking through dense jungle, fighting for his life in close mortal combat on a daily basis. No matter what your MOS, you had job to do and the infantry soldier did it well. 

 

WE GOT THE JOB DONE!!....HOORAH!! DEATH?...What do you know about DEATH?

Well, let me tell you what I know....

DEATH is the ULTIMATE OBSCENITY of WAR!

 

Most American soldiers who fought in Vietnam were of an age when men believe that death to be a long way off. Vietnam quickly taught us otherwise. The average age of the combat soldier was 19, not 26 as in WWII. The inevitability of death was forced upon each and every man who fought in the Nam, to be carried with them from that time on. Of course, we all had seen death in our lives, but it had been death from illness, old age or accident, the kinds of death to which young men feel they are IMMUNE. There was NO such feeling in the Nam. In fact, it sometimes seemed that SURVIVAL was just a matter of CHANCE.