It wasn’t until I was a senior in high school (1990) that I started to understand just how bad the anti-war propaganda about Vietnam was. My social studies teacher was a marine over there for a year and spoke to us a little bit about his experiences, and how the Tet Offensive was a complete military disaster for the communists but was portrayed in all of our media of the day as being the exact opposite. Speaking to him outside of class I found another person who absolutely loathed Dan Rather. Actually, I can count on one hand the number of vets that don’t despise the man for his Vietnam reporting
I recall sometime in the early 80s a panel of some sort with Dan Rather and others talking about reporting in Vietnam. I can't find it online, but I remember him saying he either did, or hypothetically would if the situation came up, sit as an observer to a VC ambush of US forces because "we are neutral observers."
Maybe I imagined that memory, but I've hated him since before high school, which traces to something.
Fellow D.R. loather here, Kamas. Though I was a participant (1970-1972) I paid no real attention to the Vietnam War or its naysayers until I was attending night school in Hawaii in search of a college degree in the late 70's. Lots of vets in those classes, lots of shared stories from sailors, riffed Army helo pilots, Army & Marine grunts...and a popular history professor, a medically retired Army Infantry Captain who'd been crippled by a VC gunshot wound. Great guy, that man. We talked a lot in those history classes. Jane Fonda I knew about, but up until then I'd never budgeted the time to despise people like Dan Rather & Walter Cronkite. It is not like any of us should burn with hatred that is self-destructive, but I think it is our duty to keep a candle lit to shed light on the cockroaches.
Stolen Valor is a great book. I recommend Wounding Warriors, How Bad Policy is Making Veterans Sicker and Poorer, by Daniel M. Gate, PhD, and Danial Huang, which picks up were Stolen Valor left off. The history of the revisions to DSM related to PTSD is particularly disturbing.
Too many veterans with real issues are waiting in line behind grifters.
Glad I do. Beset with Austin style "man trouble" (but didnt hide my absence from my boss), I was lucky to be treated by a world class (thats not hyperbole) Dr. at Northwestern.
If I had been stuck with the VA, I strongly suspect I would absent that piece of anatomy today.
The whole idea of the VA needs a major revision.
Pete Hegseth has some great ideas about doing that btw.
I had the honor of serving under Colonel Dabney at VMI. He was humble and relentlessly enthusiastic about everything he put his mind to.
This was before he was recognized with the Navy Cross, and he never talked about his heroism. Then, one year, at the Marine Birthday Ball, a visiting general called him to the stage, and said, "Let me tell you about Bill Dabney at Khe Sahn..."
The Colonel stood at attention and the General talked for ... I don't know how long. We were in rapt attention as he told us the stories you read in the citation, but with the details of one who had been there. We were amazed at the bravery, ingenuity and humor he had displayed in that long, dirty battle, and I'm proud to have shaken his hand.
Brings back memories. I spent some time on some of the same turf, Phu Bai, Dong Ha, Eagle and a few days at KS, though not during the KSCB days of 68, but rather the Lam Son 719 debacle of Jan 71.
Still pisses me off when the USAF speak about the importance of CAS and how the F-35 is a better CAS bird than the A-10, both with its airframe and dedicated aircrew.
Dual capable birds never give enough attention to CAS in peacetime and we pay when metal meets meat
I was in Vietnam, but in the USN on patrol boats. Only supported Marines a few times. But they were always better led and organized than the average army unit.
This is one more story the fits my argument that the officers that do well in combat, the kind an EM would follow w/o question, rarely get promoted above colonel. Apparently they are a threat the ones that can't.
Sempre Fi Colonel. Guard the streets of heaven for us. You're in good company.
I am a VN era vet, joined the Navy to avoid the draft in 1967. My Navy career was routine and I did three years active and 19 in reserve. I always just thought of it as a job, but as I get older, I realize it was more than that.
As I look back on it, what the Marines do is phenomenal. The sad part is the Media and others at the time were so blind to what was happening.
I was lucky, but I did lose High School, college and Navy friends. My first college roommate was drafted and opted for the USMC. He was selected for OCS, was commissioned and then sent to VN.. Died in 1969 in combat. One of my HS classmates did the same thing except in USA. He was KIA and received the Medal of Honor. Another college classmate went through NAVCAD program and during workups for tour to VN was killed in his A-7 during training on board ship.
Had the opportunity to know and work with Marines on staff duty, two ship's MarDet's, training commands, as night school classmates, as friends in internet forums at semi-annual "eat, shoot & chat" get-togethers, and as co-workers in civilian life. Stellar people, a cut above most folks IMO.
I was still a tender age in June 1967. The hit show The Monkees tv show was going into reruns on TV. There was the Six Day War, and the attack on the Liberty. Spencer Tracy died which raised the buzz of the movie, "Who's Coming to Dinner?". And the Marines were fighting at their most intense tempo of the Vietnam War...
Anyway, I managed to cut some toes off while mowing the yard for the last time in Middletown RI (74 Everett St. Our neighbor there was later responsible for getting the Lex to Corpus as a museum). This in turn screwed up Dad's imminent Change of Command, but he sorted all that out.
For that (literal) misstep, I got to spend the first part of that now ruined summer in the pediatric ward of the NS Newport Hospital. The surgical team that worked on my foot had just gotten back from deployment aboard the USS Repose (not sure if there is much if any documentation about this, but apparently doctors and nurses from the same hospital would deploy on the AH's as teams). Since I had eaten, they gave me a spinal block so I was awake (sorta) while they worked on my foot. They were having a good time I remember! Lots of banter and laughter going on. I was old enough to notice the nurses were pretty. Afterwards, they told Dad that my injury was similar to the mine injuries they saw on the Repose, and they would get me patched up (which they did well).
The pediatric ward I was in was usually empty, but the ward on the floor above was full of wounded Marines just back from Vietnam. There was a tv room that both wards shared, and the more ambulatory Marines would come down to watch something. Some of the wounds these guys had made mine look like a scratch. Some of them were gregarious; others were quiet and contemplative.
While they weren't much older than me, we were ages apart in experience...
It was men like these who were on that hill, and God Bless them.
As luck would have it, The Republic of Vietnam would fall about 45 days before reporting for my first summer increment of OCS as a PLC. The Marine Corps had barely survived Vietnam, we could speak endlessly about the how and why. But as greater luck would have it, I would serve on active duty with many many Marine officers and NCO’s who there and many had more than one tour. What I can say is that they were all hero’s. Brutally honest, unflinching when they saw BS to call it so. Master Gunnery Sargent Cliff Steadham and Gunny Roy Edwards (later killed in the Beirut bombing) were at Khe Shan for the siege, and am pretty sure “Gunny Ed” was on 881S and received a Navy Commendation medal with V. Gunny Mel Worley was at The Battle of Hue’ City whilst all Hell was breaking loose up at Khe Shan. They were great mentors, as were the captains and majors that trained us Infantry Officers at TBS and at IOC in the fall of 1978. As many here know, a lot of the members of Chowder Society II were lieutenant’s and captain’s in the RVN and came home saying “never again.” They helped lead us out of the dark and into the light and further brought on massive and important changes to the Corps.
What this writer can also say is that the baby boomers that stayed at home, bone spurs, heart murmurs, rickets whatever, were cowards. Don’t let any baby boomer that didn’t go tell you different. They scoffed at the Vietnam warfighters, called them vile names and shunned them. After storming the office of the President at XYZ university, they shaved off their beards and cut their hair and slipped into pinstripe suits to raid the industrial wealth of the USA. Hurting for yet another time, the very people that had fought a war that they would not fight. It makes me angry. It makes me more angry that the brave men and women that have fought the GWOT have come home to once again an indifferent America. As much as the high and mighty want to make us all invisible because we shame them with our service, they cannot make us invisible so they see a veteran and babble “thank you for your service” like we can’t see how hopelessly insincere they and they words are. To all the members of our armed services who served in the RVN, “welcome home.” You have no idea how important your service was to our nation and to our various branches of the services. Thusly to the GWOT veterans, what can we say? Well, welcome home! To everyone in between that didn’t get shot at it is simple as well. “we few, we happy few.”
Since we are heralding the service of Colonel Dabney and those brilliant Marines at Khe Shan, here is an image to take on, a photo, taken during the siege, of three Marines. One Marine with the M40 rifle with optics, one clearly older Marine with Field glasses and a younger Marine helping with spotting targets up against a wall of sand bags. The image is iconic. It is emblematic of the fight. They were taking the fight to the enemy as best possible. We can’t ask for more. Thanks to CDR Salamander for this very great post!
Well put.
Semper Fidelis FullBore. Full Stop
It wasn’t until I was a senior in high school (1990) that I started to understand just how bad the anti-war propaganda about Vietnam was. My social studies teacher was a marine over there for a year and spoke to us a little bit about his experiences, and how the Tet Offensive was a complete military disaster for the communists but was portrayed in all of our media of the day as being the exact opposite. Speaking to him outside of class I found another person who absolutely loathed Dan Rather. Actually, I can count on one hand the number of vets that don’t despise the man for his Vietnam reporting
I recall sometime in the early 80s a panel of some sort with Dan Rather and others talking about reporting in Vietnam. I can't find it online, but I remember him saying he either did, or hypothetically would if the situation came up, sit as an observer to a VC ambush of US forces because "we are neutral observers."
Maybe I imagined that memory, but I've hated him since before high school, which traces to something.
Remember too, Jane Fonda on her 1972 Hanoi Tour taking a bow after her "Dance of the Kalashnikov's". https://www.startpage.com/av/proxy-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.breitbart.com%2Fmedia%2F2018%2F07%2Fjane-fonda-vietnam-hanoi-jane-ap.jpg&sp=1734725166T63350737141f7acd824827ec98975481800f15cf67d1891b2a85f0ce9240591b
I just remember the newspaper photo of that traitorous commie sitting in an antiaircraft gun. I have loathed that female dog from that forward.
Fellow D.R. loather here, Kamas. Though I was a participant (1970-1972) I paid no real attention to the Vietnam War or its naysayers until I was attending night school in Hawaii in search of a college degree in the late 70's. Lots of vets in those classes, lots of shared stories from sailors, riffed Army helo pilots, Army & Marine grunts...and a popular history professor, a medically retired Army Infantry Captain who'd been crippled by a VC gunshot wound. Great guy, that man. We talked a lot in those history classes. Jane Fonda I knew about, but up until then I'd never budgeted the time to despise people like Dan Rather & Walter Cronkite. It is not like any of us should burn with hatred that is self-destructive, but I think it is our duty to keep a candle lit to shed light on the cockroaches.
Stolen Valor is a great book. I recommend Wounding Warriors, How Bad Policy is Making Veterans Sicker and Poorer, by Daniel M. Gate, PhD, and Danial Huang, which picks up were Stolen Valor left off. The history of the revisions to DSM related to PTSD is particularly disturbing.
Too many veterans with real issues are waiting in line behind grifters.
I still have company insurance...
Glad I do. Beset with Austin style "man trouble" (but didnt hide my absence from my boss), I was lucky to be treated by a world class (thats not hyperbole) Dr. at Northwestern.
If I had been stuck with the VA, I strongly suspect I would absent that piece of anatomy today.
The whole idea of the VA needs a major revision.
Pete Hegseth has some great ideas about doing that btw.
I had the honor of serving under Colonel Dabney at VMI. He was humble and relentlessly enthusiastic about everything he put his mind to.
This was before he was recognized with the Navy Cross, and he never talked about his heroism. Then, one year, at the Marine Birthday Ball, a visiting general called him to the stage, and said, "Let me tell you about Bill Dabney at Khe Sahn..."
The Colonel stood at attention and the General talked for ... I don't know how long. We were in rapt attention as he told us the stories you read in the citation, but with the details of one who had been there. We were amazed at the bravery, ingenuity and humor he had displayed in that long, dirty battle, and I'm proud to have shaken his hand.
Second the book recommendation - Stolen Valor is in the "must read" category
Semper Fi sir! That citation and the described circumstances sure sound MoH worthy to me.
Brings back memories. I spent some time on some of the same turf, Phu Bai, Dong Ha, Eagle and a few days at KS, though not during the KSCB days of 68, but rather the Lam Son 719 debacle of Jan 71.
Still pisses me off when the USAF speak about the importance of CAS and how the F-35 is a better CAS bird than the A-10, both with its airframe and dedicated aircrew.
Dual capable birds never give enough attention to CAS in peacetime and we pay when metal meets meat
I was in Vietnam, but in the USN on patrol boats. Only supported Marines a few times. But they were always better led and organized than the average army unit.
This is one more story the fits my argument that the officers that do well in combat, the kind an EM would follow w/o question, rarely get promoted above colonel. Apparently they are a threat the ones that can't.
Sempre Fi Colonel. Guard the streets of heaven for us. You're in good company.
CDR Sal,
Thanks for this post.
I am a VN era vet, joined the Navy to avoid the draft in 1967. My Navy career was routine and I did three years active and 19 in reserve. I always just thought of it as a job, but as I get older, I realize it was more than that.
As I look back on it, what the Marines do is phenomenal. The sad part is the Media and others at the time were so blind to what was happening.
I was lucky, but I did lose High School, college and Navy friends. My first college roommate was drafted and opted for the USMC. He was selected for OCS, was commissioned and then sent to VN.. Died in 1969 in combat. One of my HS classmates did the same thing except in USA. He was KIA and received the Medal of Honor. Another college classmate went through NAVCAD program and during workups for tour to VN was killed in his A-7 during training on board ship.
The Legacy Media is not our friend.
Merry Christmas,
Dave Peterson
Had the opportunity to know and work with Marines on staff duty, two ship's MarDet's, training commands, as night school classmates, as friends in internet forums at semi-annual "eat, shoot & chat" get-togethers, and as co-workers in civilian life. Stellar people, a cut above most folks IMO.
I was still a tender age in June 1967. The hit show The Monkees tv show was going into reruns on TV. There was the Six Day War, and the attack on the Liberty. Spencer Tracy died which raised the buzz of the movie, "Who's Coming to Dinner?". And the Marines were fighting at their most intense tempo of the Vietnam War...
https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/U.S.%20Marines%20in%20Vietnam%20Fighting%20the%20North%20Vietnamese%201967%20%20PCN%2019000309000_1.pdf
Anyway, I managed to cut some toes off while mowing the yard for the last time in Middletown RI (74 Everett St. Our neighbor there was later responsible for getting the Lex to Corpus as a museum). This in turn screwed up Dad's imminent Change of Command, but he sorted all that out.
For that (literal) misstep, I got to spend the first part of that now ruined summer in the pediatric ward of the NS Newport Hospital. The surgical team that worked on my foot had just gotten back from deployment aboard the USS Repose (not sure if there is much if any documentation about this, but apparently doctors and nurses from the same hospital would deploy on the AH's as teams). Since I had eaten, they gave me a spinal block so I was awake (sorta) while they worked on my foot. They were having a good time I remember! Lots of banter and laughter going on. I was old enough to notice the nurses were pretty. Afterwards, they told Dad that my injury was similar to the mine injuries they saw on the Repose, and they would get me patched up (which they did well).
The pediatric ward I was in was usually empty, but the ward on the floor above was full of wounded Marines just back from Vietnam. There was a tv room that both wards shared, and the more ambulatory Marines would come down to watch something. Some of the wounds these guys had made mine look like a scratch. Some of them were gregarious; others were quiet and contemplative.
While they weren't much older than me, we were ages apart in experience...
It was men like these who were on that hill, and God Bless them.
Right man, right time. Fullbore indeed.
FYI Cdr., the title is typo'd as 811 vice 881...
(ever one to find a youtube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiOl6in__CA
As luck would have it, The Republic of Vietnam would fall about 45 days before reporting for my first summer increment of OCS as a PLC. The Marine Corps had barely survived Vietnam, we could speak endlessly about the how and why. But as greater luck would have it, I would serve on active duty with many many Marine officers and NCO’s who there and many had more than one tour. What I can say is that they were all hero’s. Brutally honest, unflinching when they saw BS to call it so. Master Gunnery Sargent Cliff Steadham and Gunny Roy Edwards (later killed in the Beirut bombing) were at Khe Shan for the siege, and am pretty sure “Gunny Ed” was on 881S and received a Navy Commendation medal with V. Gunny Mel Worley was at The Battle of Hue’ City whilst all Hell was breaking loose up at Khe Shan. They were great mentors, as were the captains and majors that trained us Infantry Officers at TBS and at IOC in the fall of 1978. As many here know, a lot of the members of Chowder Society II were lieutenant’s and captain’s in the RVN and came home saying “never again.” They helped lead us out of the dark and into the light and further brought on massive and important changes to the Corps.
What this writer can also say is that the baby boomers that stayed at home, bone spurs, heart murmurs, rickets whatever, were cowards. Don’t let any baby boomer that didn’t go tell you different. They scoffed at the Vietnam warfighters, called them vile names and shunned them. After storming the office of the President at XYZ university, they shaved off their beards and cut their hair and slipped into pinstripe suits to raid the industrial wealth of the USA. Hurting for yet another time, the very people that had fought a war that they would not fight. It makes me angry. It makes me more angry that the brave men and women that have fought the GWOT have come home to once again an indifferent America. As much as the high and mighty want to make us all invisible because we shame them with our service, they cannot make us invisible so they see a veteran and babble “thank you for your service” like we can’t see how hopelessly insincere they and they words are. To all the members of our armed services who served in the RVN, “welcome home.” You have no idea how important your service was to our nation and to our various branches of the services. Thusly to the GWOT veterans, what can we say? Well, welcome home! To everyone in between that didn’t get shot at it is simple as well. “we few, we happy few.”
Since we are heralding the service of Colonel Dabney and those brilliant Marines at Khe Shan, here is an image to take on, a photo, taken during the siege, of three Marines. One Marine with the M40 rifle with optics, one clearly older Marine with Field glasses and a younger Marine helping with spotting targets up against a wall of sand bags. The image is iconic. It is emblematic of the fight. They were taking the fight to the enemy as best possible. We can’t ask for more. Thanks to CDR Salamander for this very great post!