http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/07/1...ozens-us-soldiers-to-receive-medal-honor.html
Pretty amazing. Must watch.
Nearly five decades after helping rescue dozens of American soldiers pinned down by enemy fire, a Vietnam War veteran is receiving the nation's highest military honor for valor.
:thumbsup:
My neighbor is a Vietnam vet with 2 purple hearts. Listening to his stories are incredible. Luckily he's one who actually talks about it, so it's very cool to hear. Every new story is crazier than the last it seems - talking about the booby traps, being pinned by gunfire for hours and hours, not being able to see a 3 feet in front of you because of how thick it was, and then him being hit in the thigh with shrapnel. He just had to get a wheelchair about 5 years ago I guess... due to the wound. I guess he was fortunate enough to make it that long. I help him out with whatever I can - shoveling snow, cleaning snow off his van, changing light bulbs, etc. His family appreciates it because they don't have to make a trip to his apartment to change a light bulb I buy him his favorite bottle of wine every Christmas, which also happens to be his birthday. Good guy.
Please honor this man by mentioning his name. He is retired Lt. Col. Charles S. Kettles.http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/07/1...ozens-us-soldiers-to-receive-medal-honor.html
Pretty amazing. Must watch.
:thumbsup:
My neighbor is a Vietnam vet with 2 purple hearts. Listening to his stories are incredible. Luckily he's one who actually talks about it, so it's very cool to hear. Every new story is crazier than the last it seems - talking about the booby traps, being pinned by gunfire for hours and hours, not being able to see a 3 feet in front of you because of how thick it was, and then him being hit in the thigh with shrapnel. He just had to get a wheelchair about 5 years ago I guess... due to the wound. I guess he was fortunate enough to make it that long. I help him out with whatever I can - shoveling snow, cleaning snow off his van, changing light bulbs, etc. His family appreciates it because they don't have to make a trip to his apartment to change a light bulb I buy him his favorite bottle of wine every Christmas, which also happens to be his birthday. Good guy.
More bombs were dropped during just the Tet offensive than all of the bombs we dropped on Germany in WWII.My teacher in JROTC told me they wanted to just make Nam a freaking parking lot. I believe it. We bombed the ever lived shit out of them. We may have lost the war, but by God we won ever single battle!
When we went through the villages and searched people the women would have all their clothes taken off and the men would use their penises to probe them to make sure they didn't have anything hidden anywhere and this was raping but it was done as searching… The main thing was that if an operation was covered by the press there were certain things we weren't supposed to do, but if there was no press there, it was okay. I saw one case where a woman was shot by a sniper, one of our snipers. When we got up to her she was asking for water. And the Lt. said to kill her. So he ripped off her clothes, they stabbed her in both breasts, they spread-eagled her and shoved an E- tool up her vagina, an entrenching tool, and she was still asking for water. And then they took that out and they used a tree limb and then she was shot.
Evil well and true.We moved into a small hamlet, 19 women and children were rounded up as VCS--Viet Cong Suspects -- and the lieutenant that rounded them up called the captain on the radio and he asked what should be done with them. The captain simply repeated the order that came down from the colonel that morning. The order that came down from the colonel that morning was to kill anything that moves, which you can take anyway you want to take it… I turned, and I looked in the area. I looked toward where the supposed VCS were, and two men were leading a young girl, approximately 19 years old, very pretty, out of a hootch. She had no clothes on so I assumed she had been raped, which was pretty SOP [Standard Operating Procedure], and she was thrown onto the pile of the 19 women and children, and five men, around the circle, opened up on full automatic with their M-16s. And that was the end of that.
Many of the thousands of women working as prostitutes during the Vietnam War were held against their will by pimps and lured with the promise of good-paying, respectable jobs so they could support their families in a country torn apart by war. They would never see most of the money, if any, paid to their pimps or the bar owners by the American soldiers. In some cases women were injected with silicone to make them more shapely so that the American soldiers would feel more “at home” with the Asian women.
While the U.S. military did not officially condone the practice of prostitution around military bases, they didn’t do anything to stop it, either. In many cases, soldiers on leave would go to surrounding countries where a similar set-up existed, such as in Thailand. Many of these hubs of prostitution were referred to as ‘rest & recreation’ sites. So even among the U.S. military, the practice was unofficially encouraged. If the men were kept happy, they followed orders and stayed in line.
And there were many instances of rape by soldiers during the war, among the other atrocities committed against the civilian population. It seems there has always been the misguided perception that allowing prostitution or establishing comfort stations would reduce rape, but that is a fallacy, as is the idea that the spread of sexually transmitted disease can somehow be controlled.