My grandfather served in Vietnam. He was always very proud of being a Marine veteran, but rarely mentioned the era or war when asked. I remember when I was a teen and going through a Cold Warrior phase, I asked him about his feelings on the war. I remember, at the time, being shocked by his answer - that he didn’t have strong feelings on the war itself or on Communism, and that the Vietnamese he fought were fighting for their country, and he didn’t blame them for doing that in the least.
At the time, I attributed it (not entirely incorrectly) to my grandfather’s general disinterest in politics; as I grew older, I appreciated the position much more. He opened up to me about his experiences in the war later in life, and, while by then I had already turned against the “THEY WERE REDS IT WAS JUSTIFIED” line of thinking, his retellings of just how pointless it all was really hammered in that we sent a generation of young American men to kill a generation of Vietnamese folk for no good fucking reason.
My grandfather served in Vietnam. He was always very proud of being a Marine veteran, but rarely mentioned the era or war when asked. I remember when I was a teen and going through a Cold Warrior phase, I asked him about his feelings on the war. I remember, at the time, being shocked by his answer - that he didn’t have strong feelings on the war itself or on Communism, and that the Vietnamese he fought were fighting for their country, and he didn’t blame them for doing that in the least.
At the time, I attributed it (not entirely incorrectly) to my grandfather’s general disinterest in politics; as I grew older, I appreciated the position much more. He opened up to me about his experiences in the war later in life, and, while by then I had already turned against the “THEY WERE REDS IT WAS JUSTIFIED” line of thinking, his retellings of just how pointless it all was really hammered in that we sent a generation of young American men to kill a generation of Vietnamese folk for no good fucking reason.