More Than A Name On A Wall
- Thread starter Addy
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The Sage of Main Street
Governor
The epitaph on the wall should say PROUD TO DIE TAKING A RICH KID'S PLACE
Addy
Stand up for the people!
I agree, the wall is powerful and emotional. It brings a reality re loss of life like nothing else...
Addy
Stand up for the people!
In a perfect world we could hope/wish for everlasting peace, where no one's kid had to die or go to war.
Wahbooz
Governor
I met many serving that were from rich families, what was your MOS________
Why the need to Spit on Mothers that lost sons in War______________________
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but that hasn't happened since the beginning of time..........
A cousin of mine is a school teacher at San Marcos Academy in San Marcos, Texas. She told me of a boy named Danny Little who was a student there who grew up in my neighborhood but whom I never knew. He'd moved away sometime when we were in high school and subsequently had gone to Vietnam and was killed in combat. When she told me they had held a memorial for him at her school, I wrote a poem for the event:
Danny Little
I never knew him, we never met
tho’ we lived just miles apart
But his memory weighs heavily
on my mind and on my heart
Chance decreed our paths not cross
or he might have been my friend
I might have walked with him a while
I might have been there at the end
But I don’t know much about him
how he lived or what he thought
How the ones he loved endured the pain
that tragedy once wrought
Behind his school there stands a tree
just past the Senior Gate
A memorial to Danny’s name
and the cruelty of fate
They said he was a good guy
and that many held him dear
But I don’t know, I cannot say
That’s just the things I hear
I wish that I had known him
those many years ago
But Danny died in Vietnam
and that’s about all I know
Jack Dallas (1994)
Charcat
One of the Patsy's
Thank you, Jack. That was beautiful. The sad thing is that it could be written for so many.
Wahbooz
Governor
Are you aware, Jack, there were 648,500 draftees in country, out of the total that served anywhere in Vietnam, including those who spent their time in MACV. That is out of a total of 2,709,918 personnel who actually served in Vietnam. Draftees take up 17,725 of the casualties names, or 30.4%. And by the way, that's out of the total number of draftees from 1965-1973 of 1,728,344. Now that's a little under 33% of draftees served in Vietnam. What is the percentage of enlistees who served in Vietnam?
Out of that 2.7 million, you have to take out the names of lifers, since they obviously were not draftees. So you're reducing those numbers. And now you have to ask yourself if every tour SeaSoldier, for example,was counted as one, or was every tour counted as someone serving in Vietnam.
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Wahbooz
Governor
People can make numbers say a lot of things, and quite often they spend a lot of time doing it. They also spend a bit of time making up stories, and one story that comes to mind was the one about Mel Gibson. There was a claim his parents moved to Australia to avoid Mel getting drafted and having to fight in Vietnam. That seems rather silly, even though I've met people who believed it, because of two facts. Number one, they'd be better off moving to Canada, even though Ann Coulter seems to think Canada fought with us in Vietnam, and number two, the Aussies were in Vietnam. There was a fire base just up the river from us at Cat Lo, and they were getting routinely 'run over' by Charlie.
Yes, I am aware of that. But it's just a fallacy the premise pushed by the Left that kids from the ghetto made up the bulk of the heavy lifting and the casualties suffered in that war (they have advanced that lie for political purposes for decades now). The percentages of those who served and who became casualties were pretty much aligned with the percentages of the demographics of each race and/or ethnicity in American society.
Wahbooz
Governor
Actually the 'Caucasian' numbers included Hispanics, of which 170,000 were Hispanic. Isn't it interesting that 5.2% of the Hispanics who served in Vietnam, were suddenly considered Caucasian? It makes me wonder who was in that 1.2% 'other races'.
And I'm rather curious what other ethnic groups are buried in the Caucasian column. Perhaps Native Americans? North Africans, people from India, perhaps Somalians and even some Ethiopians? There's a difference between White and Caucasians.
It's really easy, Jack, to [Unwelcome language removed] numbers, especially since in the '60's and '70's there were fewer categories of 'peoples'.
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Regardless, the bottom line is they were not all black kids from the ghetto. Sadly there were plenty of those too but not in inordinate numbers to their demographics in the populace.
The Sage of Main Street
Governor
Also, every USMC active-duty lieutenant is called a "Reservist," and probably many others are designated so to pad the statistics. Second, when they give socio-economic data, they conveniently omit how many of the Fortunate Sons were killed. If somehow a preppy such as Al Gore wound up in Vietnam, I doubt if the ruling class would expose him to much danger. Let's see how many got killed there from the various prep school and Ivy League graduating classes. Bet nobody reveals those data.
