In the first battles of the American Civil War, the War Between the States, many state regiments from the South showed up in blue uniforms carrying their regiment flags showing which state they hailed from, hoping that would be enough to distinguish them from the enemy. It wasn’t. The battles created a fog of war that had many on both sides, on the same side, shooting at each other.
Some of the Union Army of the North wore red bloomers while socialites from Washington DC sat on hills with a picnic lunch overlooking the battlefield.
The gross errors of those first battles were enough for the armies of the North and South to adopt the Blue and Grey as uniforms and for socialites to know better than to think war was a mere spectacle of entertainment.
The first battles were also a teaching lesson to the Southern Armies, to never drive your enemy from the field and think they’ve had enough and won’t be back. Had the Southern Armies chased the Union Army into Washington DC and captured Abraham Lincoln, that war would have been over in weeks.
Thank you for your service, thank you for sharing in a clear manner your experience. I served near the end of that conflict just when many were being brought back. I heard and felt their pain of that conflict. How I wish it had been carried out differently.
Veterans have cause to be proud of their Vietnam era service. It was the politicians who decided that the war was not worth winning. Within the big picture, this was just a part of the War Against Communism and the Cold War. We won. We are now facing the threat of communism in Europe and in the United States. We’ll win that one too.