This is worth a read when you get a chance https://getpocket.com/explore/item/...ns-truly-adventurous?utm_source=pocket-newtab
When I was in college, a close friend of mine was in Marine Recon in 'Nam. Some of the shit he described would be right out of Putin's playbook in the Ukraine today. The Geneva Convention was something you wiped your ass with. I used to wonder how he slept nights. All his kills were up close and personal. He used to carry a 12ga instead of a M16. Said it was a better jungle weapon for close up work.
What young adults had to endure 50 years ago. The equivalent stressful situation to today’s young adults is calling a man a he.
It's kinda been a taboo subject in the family and rarely talked about, but every once in awhile he'll talk story (after some truth serum), and he told me the same thing, about carrying a 12ga in his jacket... and that Apocalypse Now was the 2nd most realistic Nam movie after Full Metal Jacket (said every other one he's seen was a joke, including Platoon)
Hard to top the current bunch of younger "entitlement generation" millennials IMO, but my dad has often echoed that statement about his own generation.... "My generation's got no F-n balls"..... Not everything Boston is bad @abyzmul @Dierking
I missed going to Nam. I turned 18 in Dec 73 and Nixon killed the draft I think in Jan 73. I had registered though and had a college deferment. Honestly, I thank God for the timing. A lot of folks I knew that went didn't come back physically or mentally.
Oddly and interestingly enough I just finished watching the documentary 'The Kill Team'. What a gut-wrenching film. I can't recommend it enough if you want to lose sleep or even if you don't. Bringing this movie up is in no way meant to detract from the extraordinary bravery of ordinary men and women. It's about Pvt Adam Winfield during the Afghan War. He was witnessing the murders and atrocities orchestrated against innocent people by a psychotic Sargent and told his father (ex-military) because he was really tortured by it. The army didn't care. Winfield got sucked into the vortex in the end and became the fall guy (what else) but you have to see the whole movie to understand why he caved. That guy will never be whole again. I probably should have put this in the General Film Talk thread but it somehow seemed to fit here. For the record I am a huge supporter of the military. The unconscionable rate of suicide needs to be addressed a lot more fervently than it is. It's getting there, but not fast enough.
