My View of the War in Vietnam
The Vietnam war was a loss. It was also illegitimate and illegal — a war that cost us 250,000 dead Americans, and more than 2 million Vietnamese, north and south — dead. And, for what purpose?
Why were we involvement there? To stop the spread of communism? Why bother? When I was ordered to Vietnam with my unit, a SeaBee Battalion (a Navy Construction Battalion), I and all us who serviced felt we were doing the patriotic thing—defending the American way of life. A month into my deployment, I realized what we were doing to this lush and rural landscape and its people was not right. I change my opinion.
I was the unit’s journalist, the editor of its monthly newspaper. I wrote about the good things my unit was doing, the military facilities we built, but also the “civic action” projects—building orphanages, medical facilities, market places, fixing roads for the Vietnamese people.
Flying up to Tokyo one day where my monthly newspaper was printed, I hitched a ride on a C-141 cargo plane. It was full of KIAs, hundreds of silver boxes filled the cargo bay. There was hardly room for me to sit. During take off, looking at this wall of body cases, I realized, this flight took off twice a week, bringing hundred of dead American service men home. That’s what we were doing here in Vietnam, expending the lives of guys, like me, to fulfill the desire of a bunch of old white men politicians and military officers who were bent on following an arcane ideology of American leadership in the world. Later, we found out, these officers were told to fudge the kill count, so back home the politicians could lie to the American public that “we were winning the war” when in truth, we were losing. What did we accomplished in Vietnam? Nothing!
An hour into the flight, the crew chief came down from the bridge and said his captain didn’t want me starting at these coffins for the next 4 hours, and I was to come up on the bridge with the crew.
I spent nine months in Vietnam—my military record credits me with a full year. While there, I saw millions and millions of American dollar—and lives—thrown away by the military generals and politicians to prove a point that didn’t need proving—all to satisfy egos, and line the pockets of the American War Machine. Don’t get me started.
Below is the link to a video that was produced in 2006. It was produced with a fellow Vietnam vet asking there questions, shot and edited by two of the one-week documentary classes at The Workshops in Rockport—the school I created and ran for 34 years.
https://vimeo.com/1805010">vimeo.com/1805010
I have a portfolio of photographs of my deployment—many are of the Vietnamese people.