"'Cause I know that's the *popular* version of what went on there"
Posted on 10/16/2025 1:53:10 PM PDT by DallasBiff
Twenty-one-year-old Steven A. Wowwk arrived as an infantryman in the Army’s First Cavalry Division in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam in early January 1969 to fight in an escalating and increasingly unwinnable war. By June, Wowwk had been wounded twice—the second time seriously—and was sent back to the United States for treatment at Boston’s Chelsea Naval Hospital.
It was after returning to the U.S. and while en route to the hospital that Wowwk first encountered hostility as a veteran.
(Excerpt) Read more at history.com ...
Exactly.
Good!
“wish we could round up all of the people still alive who protested that and, um, treat them to a party.”
Go to any blue City. It’s the same useless spoiled UGLAAAY Lefties out on the streets fighting ICE.. they just got old and uglier.
My husband was mugged and robbed in San Francisco after he got out of Nam.
I HATE THEM.
Years ago I thnked a VietNam vet for hsis ervice to the country and told him what I thought of those who treated the returning service members so horribly.
He had tears in his eyes when I left.
When I returned I proudly wore my uniform from McChord AFB to Ft Bragg, NC. and spent the next 28 years in the military.
I was of draft age during the Vietnam War. My name was in the hat but never called up.
I didn’t then nor now believe that we should have been involved. Especially since it was obvious even to a teenager that there was no will to actually “win”.
I held no grudges against anyone who went voluntarily or otherwise. I can’t say the same for the politicians and military suppliers who drove that policy.
So many lives wasted or ruined for nothing. Including many classmates and close friends.
DallasBiff, thank you for this post.
Anything we can do to recognize Vietnam Veterans and their sacrifices will help us inch closer to a true and complete healing.
The general summation is that Vietnam was a huge mistake and was exacerbated by a political class that refused to provide the support needed for a victory.
In my service, it seemed we rarely lost a battle. But, we lost the ‘war’ due to gutless politicians who wanted to micromanage the strategies of the battle field.
The fact was that, in prior military actions, the troops often traveled back to civilization with the very peers they’d served with and via modes of travel that took days and weeks. This provided a manner of decompression that was not accorded returning Vietnam veterans. Vietnam veterans often rotated into and out of theater alone or with one or two others, with whom they may have NO history. Vietnam veterans often found themselves in a firefight one day, with all the attendant stress and fog of war; and, then, the next day they could be back in a civilized setting. No decompression. No way to wind down from the battlefield.
Socially and Politically, there was no ‘welcome home’ because it was nationally accepted the ‘war’ was wrong; and, it worsened as the political winds blew worse and worse.
The Left we’re doing then as they do now. They at vicious, hateful and hypocritical from day one. You only had to watch and listen.
Because of the way the older people running the media, Hollywood, education, and the culture portrayed them, they were looked down on.
The Seattle airport had a large hidden room with bunks so that we GIs could get away from the public and relax.
That media hostility continued for many years, a Vietnam vet was always the psycho killer in TV dramas and movies, and the news show like 60 minutes would run fake stories about the supposed groups of broken vets living in the Hawaiian jungles, or the forests of the North West, along with the poignant photos of the camo wearing vets at the wall years later, some of which were again, fake, along with fake veteran street beggars still wearing their old uniforms that should have worn out 15 years before.
Read the book “Stolen Valor” to see many of the mentions above, revealed as fakes.
My favorite words for Congress critters of that VN era age;”Where were you in 67’, and what have you done for those boys?
Why would anyone think that cowards and draft dodgers would treat returning heroes differently? Hollywood and the media focused on Vn vets, depicting them as druggies and war criminals. Of course. Hollywood is entirely made up of draft dodgers. It made them feel better to degrade those who served. In my year on gunboats I saw not one atrocity. If any happened the perps kept it quiet because they would have ended up at Portsmouth Naval Prison.
Amen to that.
RIP Sam
The article mentions some of the nastiness we faced when we got back - but completely ignores where it came from. We had a massive Lefist pro-enemy political movement - supported by the media - that controlled the discussions at home about our war.
The Leftists started the completely false narrative that we were “baby killers” and that those young men who avoided service were the virtuous ones.
When we left to go to Vietnam, we were praised but by the time we got back, our country turned against us.
Thanks for your service.
When I deployed to GE in the summer of ‘91 the stewardesses moved me from economy up into first class. If it’s any consolation to you. I really appreciated the 1st class steam towel to freshen up before breakfast.
We were involved because the communists were killing South Vietnamese, particularly the Catholics. The Vietnamese communists killed more South Vietnamese after their ‘peace’ than during twenty years of war. Three million at a minimum.
BFL
in an escalating and increasingly unwinnable war.
—
Stop right there - the war, the shooting was was nearly won, and 2 years later the NV were on the verge of total surrender, according NV Commanding General Giap.
The war was lost by the leftist and communists at home shouting and screaming everyday, not to mention the defeatist attitude by NBC, ABC, CBS nightly news casts, cheering for the poor kids [ carrying grenades ].
Spit on, mocked, ridiculed, fingered, shunned, called baby killers we all were, regardless of where one served. Just the uniform was enough.
Meanwhile, buses full of school kids were being set on fire, but no one protested. Just horrifying picture spreads in Time and Newspeak, but no one protested.
Also, remember My Lai. Thanks to the propaganda campaign active at that time, much of the public viewed ALL returning military personnel as if they had been directly involved in that massacre.
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