OK, help me out here. Who is responsible for the most part for any veteran feeling like he has no where to go and no one wants him or her around? Which group went around protesting Vietnam and the people that fought in that war then when they came home did everything to shame and embarrass them? Here's a helpfull hint for the DUmpmonkies. It wasn't Conservatives.
[/quote ]--------the people that fought in that war then when they came home did everything to shame and embarrass them?
Memory must be slipping here.
As I remember it, the people that yelled the most about returning Vets from that altercation were the same folks that sent their Sons to Canada or had friends to keep their Sons at home, in college, or working for a government job far from the war.
----------Looking back, at that time even instate tution was very expensive for that time, few kids unless they had parents that were professional could afford the education and ran about becoming hippies. These kids mostly came from influential family's that were conservative or liberal as it effected their kids.
Our war was fought by the poor of all races, ground troops that had no influence to get them a job as a State or Government worker.
Few could pass the written exams to get into the Navy, Air Force or Coast Guard, some had to be taught to read instructions on how to lace their boots.
The draft needed body's that were healthy enough to run and shoot the enemy and not frag their superior.
Some how the boys drafted who were knuckle heads when they went in, most of them came out alive as MEN.
Others just were not suited for the job, this I know as the Federal Prison on CV island had to open the top floors of the unite to hold the swelling inmate population.
Horrid time for them and the Marines that guarded them. ------Top floors had electricity that went back to the 1920's, Slop buckets that were used as toilets in some cases.
I have pictures of me as a kid water skiing past the Castle showing arms waving at me out the barred windows as I waved back. Today I wonder if there was some kind of window to be pulled down in the winter.
When it came time for release of the prisoners they were herded out a bus given their release papers that were pink and sent off. One visiting the base knew when a big release had come about as the parking lot out side the main gate was littered with the papers the prisoners that thrown out the window.
Please don't forget that the parents of these kids had seen horror beyond belief in WW2, Big problem for them when it came to their own children to serve and suffer as they did.
Interesting time for me as at one point I dated a Marine that was out of the service and worked in the Chaplain's Office at the Castle, his parents were professional and the closest he got to the war was SF on Holiday. All his enlistment was spent either as a Castle guard or later as a GS 3-4 .
