“But after serving in combat in Vietnam ...”
I’d like to know what most soldiers that saw gruesome things think should be shown to the public. I hear that many soldiers don’t like to talk about what they did or saw.
Could grusome behavior be like sexual behavior in that they are personal experiences best kept personal?
I see. Living through the real rigors of combat are just fine for men like me and my friends - but civilians who ask us to risk our lives going to war are too soft and sheltered to see what we went through?
Something wrong with that picture, isn’t it? If they can’t stomach an accurate movie, they don’t have to buy a ticket, right?
My dad saw things in Europe he would never talk about. After the war he had a neighbor who constantly bragged about things he had seen. It made dad so mad because he knew that neighbor had never been out of the USA.
Interesting choice of words: “gruesome behavior”. What does that imply? That we were war criminals?
We were young American men, reasonably well trained and ethical. We fought a dangerous enemy, we protected nice, worthwhile people, 10,000 miles away from friends and family.
We saw gruesome events, including many of our buddies dead and wounded, plane crashes, even traffic accidents. We also saw day-to-day heroism from our fellow Marines.
Do you think that our experiences shouldn’t be memorialized? How are our experiences less worthy than the previous generations?
Comparing our memories to pornography?
Really?