You begin begin with,
" Somewhere in the late- 1960’s a totally false, entirely made-up narrative began to crop up in the United States. ,
and then go on to describe the factual truth of soldier shaming, that you say in the beginning was totally false.
After Nam, they were slashed to almost nothing : education benefit for EMs were $1500 - just enough for one trade school ; VA hosing loans were cut far below the down payment on the average home ; medical treatment in VA hospitals was a near death sentence. Basically, there were no usable benefits.
Public sentiment seemed to be : the only good vet is a dead one. Spit on, derided, ostracized, none of that helped us recover from the traumas we endured.
The Solitary World of a Vet by Ray Starmann
https://cherrieswriter.com/2017/11/21/the-solitary-world-of-a-vet-guest-post/
“We have a duty as the most powerful nation that the world has ever known.”
The only duty we have is to the United States of America and the lawful citizens thereof. We don’t owe the rest of the world a damned thing.
L
I arrived in Vietnam in January 1966 and after a brief and unsucessful stint as a truck driver for an artillery battery, I migrated from being a howitzer cannoneer to an artillery scout observer for a rifle company. The Marines I served with were good, solid young American men and we treated the Vietnamese as we had been taught to, as people who we were protecting from the terrorist communist forces, even when it risked our own lives.
In May 1967, I was shot and ended up going through multiple nodes on the long road to recovery. When I could finally be released from the hospital, I began to run into the hostility and meanness that our country exhibited towards us. I was refused service in a restaurant with my parents because I was in uniform, I was told to "get out" of a car on the freeway when my driver heard that I had served in Vietnam, I was spat upon and jeered.
The left had so saturated the narrative in the media, that those of us returning were forced into our own shell, staying with fellow veterans and isolating ourselves. Anybody remember the movies and TV programs we had at the time? Vietnam veterans were always the crazies who would suddenly go nuts and start spraying gunfire - or display superhuman combat skills and wreck whole communities (Billie Jack, Rambo, et al)
It was shameful - so when the Marine Corps sent me a form letter asking if I wanted to return to the Corps, I jumped on it, just to get back to the people I believed in and to get away from the crazies at home.
I’ve experienced it. I’ve been spit on when in uniform.
All I can say is that God’s hand was on my shoulder which kept me from beating the SNOT out of that punk kid. ;)
Sometimes liberals like to play dress-up as “patriotic” by telling veterans “thanks for your service.” But what they say and do among their own kind is something totally different. Liberals despise the military, veterans and all those associated with them.
Everyone seems to be overlooking the horrific McNamara’s 100,000 (or Project 100,000)
This program drafted sub-par men for combat.
A 1995 review of McNamara’s book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam in the Washington Monthly severely criticized the project, writing that:
“the program offered a one-way ticket to Vietnam, where these men fought and died in disproportionate numbers ... the men of the ‘Moron Corps’ provided the necessary cannon fodder to help evade the political horror of dropping student deferments or calling up the reserves, which were sanctuaries for the lily-white.”
This explains a lot about combat deaths in RVN as well.