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Title: Forget? Hell No! (Louis Beam on Vietnam)
Source:
louisbeam.com
URL Source: http://louisbeam.com/forget.htm
Published: Dec 14, 2004
Author: Louis Beam
Post Date: 2009-05-03 13:49:11 by Deasy
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Keywords: Huey, No Win Wars, Veterans, Afghanistan
Views: 410
Comments: 15
Even after all this time there seems to be no way we can forget or let Vietnam descend into the past. I for one can not, nor would I---even if it were possible. Why should we? When we came home they threw blood in our faces, and feces on our caskets. No excuses now will change that. It could have been prevented. But there was no desire to prevent it. It was allowed, encouraged, and even promoted by the very people who sent us over there. Now they think they can bury some poor soul in Arlington National Cemetery, and at the same time bury the guilt along with their conscience. Never! They can erect all the black marble slabs they want, have all of the fifteen year late parades they care to, but it will change nothing. Nothing at all. There is no relief, and can be none. We are forever trapped in the rice paddies and skies of Vietnam. We can neither go back or go forward, but are suspended for eternity in the place that they put us. Even now I see the sun shining down intensely upon us. So many thousands. In the distance men sweating in the sun, looking for shade, but unable to find it, never obtaining relief from the oppressive heat, which bakes all, like so many loaves of bread. The choppers drone overhead in their relentless search for Charlie, the sound of the blades mixing with our thoughts. Each of us is alone, yet seeking comfort in numbers. Young, unknowing, asking few questions, and never the right ones. Going straight to our death with the single hope that the yawning grave will be for another, rather than one's self; thinking that, believing it, praying for it: "Now I lay me down to sleep--I pray my Lord, my buddy to keep." Helicopters, heat, hope, nothing else. Night, pitch dark, darker than anything you have ever seen. Somewhere out in the blackness there are men. In the air over the jungle I am suspended in an ocean of darkness. A sense of desolation surrounds me, heightened by the fact that the helicopter is fifteen hundred feet in the air. Looking down into the darkness I pray the ship will hold together, somehow remaining in the air rather than fall into the blackness below. Tracers streak through the sky. F-104's come racing by with their cargo of death. Suddenly we break hard to the right as a phantom jet nearly collides with us. The chopper shakes and bounces up down from the rush of air. What a spectacular night show that would have made for the grunts down below who we have come to help. They could have used it. Someone else's death always makes you feel safer---it means your still alive. Those poor grunt bastards, all alone in the darkness of an impenetrable black jungle, with nothing but M-60 tracers to light their way. Going into the LZ my stomach begins to tighten. Food, ammunition, cigarettes, and toilet paper. What else can a nineteen year old ask for? Here we come, and they can say a prayer of thanks that a pilot brave enough to fly us in is at the controls. Down into the mouth of darkness we descend. Receiving fire Sir! From the blackness green tracers streak toward the ship. Am I going to die? "Permission to fire!" Answer me! damnit. Answer! let me kill some of these murdering wretches before they kill me. "Fire at will!" comes the reply. I heat the barrel of my gun until I am afraid it will curl up. A few seconds later the skids of the ship hit the ground hard, hands grope in the darkness, reaching for the ammo and supplies yanking them off the ship. Pitch dark, the only light is that of bullets and mortars exploding. One of the grunts yells "clear!" The pitch on the blade changes and they grab for hot air, slowly, ever so slowly, the ship rises above the trees. Finally, 1500 feet up and the trip back to the base begins. For the grunts, they now have all they need to live twenty-four hours more, or perhaps, more than they will need. Later, still in darkness, but this time in the quietness of a hooch laying in a cot, I wonder at the fact I am alive. This is what it feels like to survive. I sense that somehow in the mist of all this I am growing up. Turning older, not in years, but in days. I can't help but think about the sergeant. I never met him--at least not in whole. I don't even know his name, nor can remember if I ever did. Sergeant Teeth. That's all I know. Sergeant, with the white teeth. While I was flying today a new replacement came into the company. Fresh from the world on the other side of the earth. They dropped him off at the H.Q. building. He walked into the orderly room with his hat in his hand to report for duty. There he stood announcing his presence to the orderly when he ceased to exist. A mortar came crashing through the roof by the front door. When I got in they told me about the new sergeant. Three days in country, five minutes in our company. I looked at the place where he had been standing. Blood, blood, and teeth. Sergeant Teeth. That's all I will ever know about him. I flew out to the Fifth Mechanized Infantry, area of operations today. One hell off a battle going on. From the air it looked like we were winning. But when we landed a grunt said the C.O. cracked up, then the X.O. Hot, sweat, blood, always the blood. There is Bill! My friend who used to gun on a chopper in our platoon and then decided to return to his old meck unit. He is atop his armored carrier staring into the distance. "Bill what are you doing?" Finally he answers "My buddy was sitting right there" he said, pointing to the front of his armored personnel carrier. They blew his head off and his brains splattered in my face, on my lips. Part of his head--the part that was left--landed in my lap. I've had it. I've got to get out of here. No more, please dear God, no more." "Bill can I help you?" "Help me get out of here." I look toward the hedge line where the RPG's and bullets are coming from, then back toward Bill wondering what to do. A few feet away a turbine engine begins to spin. "My ships taking off, Bill, I'll talk to you later Bill." Years later, I discover that I, along with thousands of other soldiers, have been poisoned by the chemical defoliant "Agent Orange." The doctor at the V.A. hospital where "screening" is conducted (government gibberish for "your OK son, don't worry about a thing") wants to know if I have trouble sleeping at night. Is he joking? I haven't been to sleep in fifteen years. Post Viet Nam Stress Syndrome. Otherwise know as "PVSS." Sounds like the name of a boat. If it is, they should rename it the Titanic. There seems to be no end to it all. I wonder if stress can be defined as wanting to machine gun all the people who sent us over there, along with the ones who spit on us when we returned. Or, is perhaps stress something more simple like crying out for justice in the name of the mangled dead, and not being heard? Or is stress more of a mathematical function, like trying to figure out how much blood 57,673 bodies can hold? Let's see: three gallons to the body, times fifty-seven thousand six-hundred and seventy-three equals... It is not the death and destruction that makes one unsettled inside. It's the death and destruction for no reason. If these political whores who rule in Washington, think that by laying some mother's son to rest in Arlington, while mouthing a few empty words, that everything will be forgiven---or forgotten---then they have less brains in their head than Bill's friend. Forget? Not even if I could.
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#1. To: Deasy (#0)
Call ne bass ackwards, but it's our duty NOT to serve and NOT to vote (given the two party shuffle)
You know, I kind of thought something was wrong with me not caring so much for Russians. But now I can see it isn't just me. Yeah, I know, they all aren't bad, but most I have known aren't that good either.
God is always good!
My Father-In-Law was in the Battle of the Bulge, God Rest His Soul, and never could address what went on there. But I know he, while a Proud American, never trusted his Government after that. I wonder if he knew about this? And to Ike and all the rest of the Government whores.. I say Fuck You and all of yours.. May God personally send you to Hell and may the Devil take your soul and extend his evil to the very tips of your toes, may he use you as his play toy for ever and ever.. May the Lake of fire burn you each and every day, in a manner that never allows you to not feel it and may it always hurt and remind you of your evil deeds.. you mf'ers!!!!!
damn dude, that is some serious hate there. God sends no one to hell, they choose it themselves. And the devil won't be doing anything to anybody in hell, he will be suffering just like the rest of them.
God is always good!
An NSA analyst named Jerry Mooney was personally tracking 500 LIVE POWs in Southeast Asia at the time the loathsome Nixon and Kissinger were telling the American people on TV that all POWs were accounted for. Those 500, along with over 4,000 black ops KIA/MIAs were left in the jungles of SEA to rot by a stupid, lazy, despicable public that would not hold its government to account. An unspoken agreement is made between a country that sends its military to war and those it sends. It is in effect "I will lay my life on the line for you. If my life is forfeit in your service must bring me home" That agreement was broken by the American public to those men. I will NEVER forget, or FORGIVE. Boonie Rat MACV SOCOM, PhuBai/Hue '65-'66
On July 26, 1920, H.L. Mencken wrote " . . . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily (and) adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -
More proof that we are kept in the dark and fed continuous streams of disinformation by the mass media's centralized ownership. Freedom of the press is the most important liberty of all, and it's been lost to us for the past century at least. Thank you for your service in that hell hole, BR. My anti-war sentiments are in support of the troops, not against them. Please understand that I don't want to see Americans dying in any more wars for anything but immediate American security, and only then with complete victory as a strategy instead of these Kissingeresque "no win" skirmishes. The fight to protect our freedoms is now at home, for things like a restoration of the free press. That's topmost on my list.
My brother did two tours in Nam, and he would not fly in uniform because of the abusive protesters at airports. He was back home for six years with a coveted full time slot in the CA National Guard as a motor pool SGT when his demons began to visit-and he lost his mind. He had completely blocked out what he told our mother on his first trip home between tours, how he sneaked up behind an enemy guerilla and killed him with his bare hands. When he turned him over "the boy couldn't have been more than 12 yrs old", he told our mother. And, this and other ghosts wouldn't let him sleep unless he drank himself stupid at night. And then the Agent Orange related problems began. And the Pentagon claimed that his records were lost and there was no proof that he was in the spray areas, and (in his "final appeal") denied his claims. And then I got involved, and in two weeks he had a partial pension and he received a check once a year from the Agent Orange Fund which we didn't even know existed. And then at the age of 52, he died.
Thank you for sharing your brother's story with me. Many American families have had similar experiences. Not all involve agent orange. That war, and the others, have each done something terrible to our vets.
bump
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition For anyone that does harm like in this article, to any Military Personal, I want to set their payment.. I know, I know, I can't.. but if I could, all I can say is, they could never in their own, think of how far I would go in payment in kind..
nor I..
And even Hell is too good for those, who attacked your kin's service and duty, to his country..
Thank you. He was my half brother and his father was a "boy chief" in the navy, promoted to CPO to fill the spot of one of the thousands of older men who were killed in combat during WWll. (He was according to Mom a real sailor, too. He brewed his own beer in shiny, new garbage cans under the kitchen sink) My brother never knew his father, who died of cancer shortly after the end of the war.. But, my brother felt obligated to serve and he made no attempt to defeat the draft notice he received, even though he knew he was going to Nam. He told me that while in the bush if anyone came over to talk to him he'd lay on the ground to avoid being killed by snipers. And, he shaved every morning using his pot as a sink so he'd feel human even in that G_d forsaken Hell hole. Despite that he actually signed up for a 2nd tour, apparently unaware of the damage to his soul, or, perhaps because of it.
The pro-war crowd has no idea how much rage has been stored up. No idea. The borders being left open and the amnesty was the last straw.
20/20 went to Moscow seeking information on fifty or so American pilots shot down over North Vietnam and know positively by the Defense Intelligence Agency to have been transported to the Soviet Union where their technical skills were needed. Instead of finding the fifty Vietnam Vets, they found that 45,000 U.S. solders from World War II had died in Soviet prison camps. Men who had been transferred from German POW camps as they were over-ran by the Reds, to the Soviets Union. To make matters worse for Jim, 20/20 showed the graves of several WW II veterans who had died as slaves in the Soviet concentration camps. Suddenly, the POW-MIA issue has new meaning for the World War II generation.
#2. To: christine, IndieTX, lodwick (#0)
(Edited)
#3. To: Jethro Tull (#1)
#4. To: Deasy, Jethro Tull, christine, IndieTX, lodwick (#0)
Jim keeps thinking about Sgt. Wood, his friend in third platoon. During the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944, part of his regiment was overran by the Germans in their last offensive of the war. Third platoon had the right flank. The German Panzers swept over their position. Later when the Germans were driven back only 22 bodies were found out of 80 or so men, Sgt. Wood was not among them. Jim believes Sgt. Wood, and some of the others, may have ended up in Russian hands in Siberia. Part of the 45,000 Americans held for the last fifty years by the Soviets. But don't be mad at the Soviets, they offered to send them home to their wives and children if the U.S. government would hand over all the Russians who had fought with the Germans.
#5. To: Refinersfire (#4)
And to Ike and all the rest of the Government whores.. I say Fuck You and all of yours.. May God personally send you to Hell and may the Devil take your soul and extend his evil to the very tips of your toes, may he use you as his play toy for ever and ever.. May the Lake of fire burn you each and every day, in a manner that never allows you to not feel it and may it always hurt and remind you of your evil deeds.. you mf'ers!!!!!
#6. To: Deasy (#0)
Forget? Hell No!
#7. To: boonie rat, christine (#6)
That agreement was broken by the American public to those men.
#8. To: Deasy (#0)
#9. To: HOUNDDAWG (#8)
(Edited)
#10. To: RickyJ (#3)
(Edited)
#11. To: RickyJ (#5)
damn dude, that is some serious hate there. God sends no one to hell, they choose it themselves. And the devil won't be doing anything to anybody in hell, he will be suffering just like the rest of them.
#12. To: boonie rat (#6)
I will NEVER forget, or FORGIVE.
#13. To: HOUNDDAWG (#8)
And then at the age of 52, he died.
#14. To: Refinersfire (#13)
And even Hell is too good for those, who attacked your kin's service and duty, to his country..
#15. To: HOUNDDAWG (#14)
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