Top 5 Books On JFK & Vietnam

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, Fonda turned out to be a real businesswoman.

She made a lot of money with her workout books, workout tapes and cook books. Just the tapes sold 17 million copies.

As she has said, she was simply opposed to that ghastly, godawful  war.  (Although she herself admits she should not have gotten into that anti aircraft battery.)

I think I have said this before but she actually visited my hometown of Erie Pa on a nationwide tour with some VAVW. The line at the college to get in to see her was blocks long.  And I did not get in.  But I talked to some people who did and they said one of the main points she and the vets were making was the kind of ordnance that was being used in the field.  How much of it was composed of projectiles that would explode and then scatter into little bits, same thing we are arguing about in Ukraine.

The owner of the newspaper, a guy named Ed Meade, was really angry with her visit and all the attention it got..  He devoted a whole column to trashing her.  Me and, according to him, many others, wrote letters protesting how unfair this was.

I thought she did the right thing.  And she took a lot of heat for it.

Edited August 12, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, Fonda turned out to be a real businesswoman.

I think I have said this before but she actually visited my hometown of Erie Pa on a nationwide tour with some VAVW.

Jim,

I spent three years in Warren.

Steve Thomas

[James DiEugenio]

No comment.

[Steve Thomas]

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

No comment.

I escaped alive.

[James DiEugenio]

That is self evident.

You know Sharon Stone is from Meadville.

[Michael Griffith]

This next book recommendation deals with the liberal myth of massive drug use among our soldiers during the Vietnam War, a myth that has been repeated in this thread.

The book comes from an unlikely author and an unlikely publisher: Dr. Jerry Kuzmarov's book The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs, published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2009. No one can accuse Kuzmarov of being an ardent conservative. In fact, he has written material for The Progressive. And, needless to say, the UMass Press is not known for publishing conservative works. I could not describe Kuzmarov's book much better than how the UMass Press describes it:

          The image of the drug-addicted American soldier—disheveled, glassy-eyed, his uniform adorned with slogans of antiwar dissent—has long been associated with the Vietnam War. More specifically, it has persisted as an explanation for the U.S. defeat, the symbol of a demoralized army incapable of carrying out its military mission.

          Yet as Jeremy Kuzmarov documents in this deeply researched book, popular assumptions about drug use in Vietnam are based more on myth than fact. Not only was alcohol the intoxicant of choice for most GIs, but the prevalence of other drugs varied enormously. Although marijuana use among troops increased over the course of the war, for the most part it remained confined to rear areas, and the use of highly addictive drugs like heroin was never as widespread as many imagined.

          Like other cultural myths that emerged from the war, the concept of an addicted army was first advanced by war hawks seeking a scapegoat for the failure of U.S. policies in Vietnam, in this case one that could be linked to "permissive" liberal social policies and the excesses of the counterculture. But conservatives were not alone. Ironically, Kuzmarov shows, elements of the antiwar movement also promoted the myth, largely because of a presumed alliance between Asian drug traffickers and the Central Intelligence Agency. While this claim was not without foundation, as new archival evidence confirms, the left exaggerated the scope of addiction for its own political purposes. (https://www.umasspress.com/9781558497054/the-myth-of-the-addicted-army/)

Edited August 14, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Joe Bauer]

From my rather small West Coast high school ( 1200 students ) most ( but not all ) of the boys who went to Vietnam as Marine and Army combat soldiers ( drafted and joined ) were usually not high grade point students and even dropouts and from poorer families, etc.

Conversely it seemed those from more middle class families and those who were better students or at least stayed in school mostly joined the Navy for their draft service.

I don't think one kid that I knew of from well off families ever got drafted and didn't join as well. Even if they got a low draft number, it seemed somehow they all came up with something viable for a deferment.

I was poor. I got my draft notice the day I turned 18. My number was 51.

I didn't run or hide even though I did not want to go to Vietnam. Especially as a combat soldier. Several of our students were killed or seriously injured there. Our Junior High school principal Mr. Ed Plowman ( great guy ) lost his jet fighter pilot son over North Vietnam. His son was one the first jet fighter pilots shot down there.

I already had 4 older brothers in the service in 1969. Two others served as well but got out by 1965. All joined from 1960 to 1967.

They did so for basic economic reasons. It was the only economic opportunity they had going for them right after high school and coming from a single mom on welfare home situation. No money, no college.

4 joined the Navy. 2 joined the Air Force. All enlisted men.

3 were in the Pac theater scene. Troop transport ship and carriers. Radarman, aviation tech and jet mechanic Chief who stayed in for 20 years. Another brother ( Air Force ) was stationed in Japan and Thailand during the Viet Nam war.

I was ordered to arrive at the Salinas, Calif. bus station at 4:00am just days after my birthday on September 21st, 1969.

6 old black buses with darkened windows took a couple hundred of us straight to the induction center in downtown Oakland to be processed.

The second you stepped off the bus Marine uniformed men began yelling at you to march in this line or that. Shut up, no talking. First stop basic arithmetic and reading test. Junior high level. Amazingly many of my fellow draftees seemed to struggle with questions as basic as 20 X 35 divided by two. Many could barely read!

The Army took those guys right away. I think some were even told they could go home their scores were so low.

Next - remove your clothes down to your skivvees. Here's a basket. Carry it while you walk the colored lines we tell you to. No questions, MOVE IT, MOVE IT...you dumb SOB's!

One hot headed draftee took offense to the gruff orders and hit a uniformed guard right in the nose! Blood everywhere.

The punch throwing guy was instantly put upon by six other guards who knocked the holy crap out of him and roughly dragged him away.

The rest of us got real big-eyed fear obedient after that.

One checking station after another. Eyes, teeth, sexual orientation.

Finally one for your feet!

By chance I had very deformed feet. They looked like pig knuckles and my arches were so extremely high they never touched the ground. I had dozens of seriously turned ankles throughout my high school sports activities, especially basketball and even simple running.

My ankle tendons were so stretched, torn and damaged and I "truly" had many bone spurs unlike Trump.

Somehow I figured ahead of time it wouldn't hurt to see an Orthopedic doctor before I got drafted and he took X-rays of my feet and ankles. I took these with me to the induction center with a far-out hope that maybe my foot problems might get me a free pass out.

And they did!

At the foot station a gravelly voiced soldier guard yelled out..."anybody here got any problems with their feet?" I went full on Jerry Lewis goofy arm waving animated and squealed..."right here sir, right here!"

I was removed from the big line and escorted to another wing of the building. Still walking in just my underwear and holding my basket and a large manila envelope with my X-rays.

 I was seated on a junky old couch in a hallway and left alone for 4 hours. Finally a guard come to me and gave me two theater type tickets. He said get your sorry *** down to this really crappy looking hotel in the worst part of downtown Oakland and check in. I was ordered to return to the induction center 5 or 6 blocks away at 7:am sharp the next morning.

My hotel room was about 8 feet long. The old creaky spring bed looked like it had been in a skid row house of ill repute before this hotel got hold of it.

Shared bathroom down the hall. No TV. Never really slept. Old room phone rang without pauses at 6:AM and the clerk simply said..."time to go."

The other ticket was for a breakfast meal at a cheap dive called "Fosters Cafeteria" in between the hotel and the induction center.

See Oakland history Ad below.

It was still dark when I walked in. Lot of street people in there drinking coffee.

Eggs and pancakes were surprisingly tasty.

I soon walked to the induction center. Explained my situation and was ordered to some office exam type room.

Waited 6 hours, again on the same couch.

Finally a person who I assumed was an Orthopedic came and motioned me in. No pleasantries at all.

" Get down and squat." "Now duck walk." "Stand on your tip toes." Walk to the wall and back." etc. etc.

"Let me look at your X-rays."

A few minutes of silent study and note writing then "Here...take these papers down the long hall to the number ( X? ) window.

Clerk looked at them and soon enough stamped on new papers "1 Y"

Medical deferment! 

"Here is a Greyhound bus pass back to your home town. Now get your B*** out of here."

On the fairly long walk to the bus station I felt a weird cold breeze on my backside and noticed that at some point earlier ( doing squats in the exam room? ) I had split the back side of my cheap old pants "wide open." My white underwear was sticking out.

I didn't care. I didn't have to go to Viet Nam!

If my long personal Viet Nam draft story offends anyone here as time wasting irrelevant to the forum discussion focus let me know and I will delete all of it except the first few paragraphs.

Foster's Cafeteria (AKA Foster's Bakery) was a chain of restaurants, particularly noted for their English muffins. In 1967, they were at 1240 Broadway.

First Stop To Vietnam, The Induction Center

 

WebJan 3, 2019 · It was July 17, 1969, and on the following day I would be signing my name to a contract for the next four years. It would have been nice to take my induction physical in …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 17, 2023 by Joe Bauer

[W. Niederhut]

Interesting story, Joe.  Well told.

Unlike Donald Trump, you had a legitimate medical deferment.

My brother and I missed the Vietnam War draft by one and two years, respectively.

[James DiEugenio]

I missed it by even less.

 

I had a very low draft number, like number 5, but Nixon then called off the draft.  That is how I escaped Vietnam.

I have often wondered what I would have done if I had gone. I would have probably been infantry.

[Michael Griffith]

On 8/12/2023 at 5:40 PM, James DiEugenio said:

 

BTW, Fonda turned out to be a real businesswoman. She made a lot of money with her workout books, workout tapes and cook books. Just the tapes sold 17 million copies.

I'm sure that was comforting to all the American POWs who were being tortured by the North Vietnamese at the same time Jane Fonda was saying they were being treated exceptionally well. 

As she has said, she was simply opposed to that ghastly, godawful  war.  (Although she herself admits she should not have gotten into that anti aircraft battery.)

You mean the war that we fought to try to keep 18 million South Vietnamese from falling under Communist tyranny? That war?  

Yes, Fonda did eventually, finally apologize for posing with a North Vietnamese AA battery that was regularly firing at American pilots.

Did she express any regret when the Hanoi regime imposed what even a former Viet Cong leader called a "reign of terror" on the South Vietnamese?

Did she express any regret that after the war the side that she had cheered for, i.e., the Communists, executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese and sent at least another 800,000 to concentration camps, where the death rate was at least 5%?

Did she express any sorrow that 18 million people lost every basic right that we value, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of education, freedom from unjust imprisonment, the right of private property, etc.?

I think I have said this before but she actually visited my hometown of Erie Pa on a nationwide tour with some VAVW. The line at the college to get in to see her was blocks long.  And I did not get in.  But I talked to some people who did and they said one of the main points she and the vets were making was the kind of ordnance that was being used in the field.  How much of it was composed of projectiles that would explode and then scatter into little bits, same thing we are arguing about in Ukraine.

Oh my goodness. This borders on the obscene. First of all, fragmentation anti-personnel ordnance was used long before the Vietnam War, and by many nations. It was even used in a basic form in the Revolutionary War.

Second, did those cowardly vets and Jane Fonda complain about the North Vietnamese shelling of fleeing civilians, about the murder of thousands of school teachers and nurses and local officials by the Viet Cong, about the numerous Communist massacres, etc., starting in 1962? Did they happen to voice any complaints about those crimes?  

The owner of the newspaper, a guy named Ed Meade, was really angry with her visit and all the attention it got..  He devoted a whole column to trashing her.  Me and, according to him, many others, wrote letters protesting how unfair this was. I thought she did the right thing.  And she took a lot of heat for it.

Well, I guess if your version of "the right thing" is to be a cheerleader for the murderous Stalinist thugs who brutalized 18 million people after the war, after deliberately killing tens of thousands of civilians during the war, then, yeah, she "did the right thing." The tens millions of South Vietnamese who suffered for decades under the same Communist thugs that she cheered for did not think she "did the right thing."

Just imagine if she had been a cheerleader for the vicious North Korean regime during the Korean War. After all, every single argument that she made against the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War. 

[James DiEugenio]

I never thought of going to Canada.

But man, as many as 50,000 did, maybe a lot more.

I think that took guts to do.

That was by far the largest destination for draft dodgers and also deserters since Canada was not dumb enough to join that dumb war.

Mark Lane knew Donald Duncan and Jane Fonda and worked with them to defend  the rights of vets to speak out and criticize the war.  Lane even drove a South Vietnamese pilot who was in the USA to Canada to desert since he said he did not want to bomb his own country anymore. Lane even went to Boise, Idaho to counsel soldiers on how to gain C.O. status.

BTW, the whole Winter Soldier movement began with Lane and Fonda out of her studio rented apartment when she was filming Klute in NYC. That is is Lane's excellent book CItizen Lane which was made into a documentary film.

Here is a link to the film of CItizen Lane.  

 

 

Edited August 16, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Pete Mellor]

On 8/14/2023 at 3:35 PM, Joe Bauer said:

From my rather small West Coast high school ( 1200 students ) most ( but not all ) of the boys who went to Vietnam as Marine and Army combat soldiers ( drafted and joined ) were usually not good students and even dropouts and from poorer families, etc.

Conversely it seemed those from more middle class families and those who were better students or at least stayed in school mostly joined the Navy for their draft service.

I don't think one kid that I knew of from well off families ever got drafted and didn't join as well. Even if they got a low draft number, it seemed somehow they all came up with something viable for a deferment.

I was poor. I got my draft notice the day I turned 18. My number was 51.

I didn't run or hide even though I did not want to go to Vietnam. Especially as a combat soldier. Several of our students were killed or seriously injured there. Our Junior High school principal Mr. Ed Plowman ( great guy ) lost his jet fighter pilot son over North Vietnam. His son was one the first jet fighter pilots lost there.

I already had 4 older brothers in the service in 1969. Two others served as well but got out by 1965. All joined from 1960 to 1967.

They did so for basic economic reasons. It was the only economic opportunity they had going for them coming from a single mom on welfare home situation. No money, no college.

4 joined the Navy. 2 joined the Air Force. All enlisted men.

3 were in the Pac theater scene. Troop transport ship and carriers. Radarman, aviation tech and jet mechanic Chief who stayed in for 20 years. Another brother ( Air Force ) was stationed in Japan and Thailand during the Viet Nam war.

I was ordered to arrive at the Salinas, Calif. bus station at 4:00am just days after my birthday on September 21st, 1969.

6 old black buses with darkened windows took a couple hundred of us straight to the induction center in Oakland to be processed.

The second you stepped off the bus Marine uniformed men began yelling at you to march in this line or that. Shut up, no talking. First stop basic arithmetic and reading test. Junior high level. Amazingly many of my fellow draftees seemed to struggle with questions as basic as 20 X 35 divided by two. Many could barely read!

The Army took those guys right away.

Next - remove clothes down to your skivvees. Here's a basket. Carry it, walk the colored lines we tell you to. No questions, MOVE IT, MOVE IT...you dumb SOB's!

One hot headed draftee took offense to the gruff orders and hit a uniformed guard right in the nose! Blood everywhere.

The punch throwing guy was instantly put upon by six other guards who knocked the holy crap out of him and roughly dragged him away.

The rest of us got real big-eyed fear obedient after that.

One checking station after another. Eyes, teeth, sexual orientation.

Finally one for your feet!

By chance I had very deformed feet. They looked like pig knuckles and my arches were so extremely high they never touched the ground. I had dozens of seriously turned ankles throughout my high school sports activities, especially basketball and even simple running.

My ankle tendons were so stretched, torn and damaged and I truly had many bone spurs unlike Trump.

Somehow I figured ahead of time it wouldn't hurt to see an Orthopedic doctor before I got drafted and he took X-rays of my feet and ankles. I took these with me to the induction center with a far out hope that maybe my foot problems might get me a free pass out.

And they did!

At the foot station a gravelly voiced soldier guard yelled out..."anybody here got any problems with their feet?" I went full on Jerry Lewis goofy arm waving animated and squealed..."right here sir, right here!"

I was removed from the big line and escorted to another wing of the building. Still walking in just my underwear and holding my basket and a large manila envelope with my X-rays.

 I was seated on a junky old couch in a hallway and left alone for 4 hours. Finally a guard come to me and gave me two theater type tickets. He said get your sorry *** down to this really crappy looking hotel in the worst part of downtown Oakland and check in. I was ordered to return to the induction center 5 or 6 blocks away at 7:am sharp the next morning.

My hotel room was about 8 feet long. The old creaky spring bed looked like it had been in a skid row house of ill repute before this hotel got hold of it.

Shared bathroom down the hall. No TV. Never really slept. Old phone rang without pauses at 6:AM and the clerk simply said..."time to go."

The other ticket was for a breakfast meal at a dive buffet called "Fosters" in between the hotel and the induction center.

It was still dark when I walked in. Lot of street people in there drinking coffee.

Eggs and pancakes were surprisingly tasty.

I soon walked to the induction center. Explained my situation and was ordered to some office exam type room.

Waited 6 hours, again on the same couch.

Finally a person who I assumed was an Orthopedic came and motioned me in. No pleasantries at all.

" Get down and squat. "Now duck walk." "Stand on your tip toes." Walk to the wall and back."

"Let me look at your X-rays."

"Here...take these papers down the long hall to the number ( X? ) window.

Clerk looked at them and soon enough stamped on new papers "1 Y"

Medical deferment!

"Here is a Greyhound bus pass back to your home town. Now get your B** out of here."

On the fairly long walk to the bus station I felt a weird cold breeze on my backside and noticed that at some point earlier ( doing squats in the exam room? ) I had split the back side of my cheap old pants "wide open." My white underwear was sticking out.

I didn't care. I didn't have to go to Viet Nam!

If my long personal Viet Nam draft story offends anyone here as time wasting irrelevant to the forum discussion focus let me know and I will delete all of it except the first few paragraphs.

 

 

 

 

 

That's a brilliant piece Joe!  I know it's not a funny subject, but made me laugh.

I was hearing Arlo's 'Alice's Restaurant'.

[Tom Gram]

22 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Oh my goodness. This borders on the obscene. First of all, fragmentation anti-personnel ordnance was used long before the Vietnam War, and by many nations. It was even used in a basic form in the Revolutionary War.

Second, did those cowardly vets and Jane Fonda complain about the North Vietnamese shelling of fleeing civilians, about the murder of thousands of school teachers and nurses and local officials by the Viet Cong, about the numerous Communist massacres, etc., starting in 1962? Did they happen to voice any complaints about those crimes?  

Really? Now you are uncritically defending cluster munitions?  

I used to work for DoD, and was involved in the demilitarization of the entire US stockpile of 155mm DPICM rounds, M483/483A1s, after they were banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008. For those who don’t know, these were big artillery shells designed to explode in the air and release 88 miniature shaped charged grenades. The grenades have a wound-up cloth ribbon on top that is designed to unwind and spin as they fall through the air and detonate just off the ground with the shaped charge pointing down, killing anyone unlucky enough to be underneath. 

The problem is the ribbon fuze mechanism is total crap - it doesn’t always unwind - so for each round you get x amount of these innocuous looking mini death grenades scattered all over the ground with the ribbon held on by a glorified paper clip, or nothing at all. A kid comes by, thinks it’s a toy, unwinds the ribbon and gets blown in half, hence the CCM in 2008. 

DPICM rounds were first used in combat in Vietnam. Criticizing Fonda and Vietnam vets for being sharp enough to realize how f-ed up these things were over 30 years before the CCM is the only thing here that’s bordering on the obscene. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Munitions

Edited August 16, 2023 by Tom Gram

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Tom. 

From what I understand she and the Vets spent a lot of time on these fragmenting weapons, showing how far they could scatter and the wounds they could cause to someone not even near the point of impact.

[Tom Gram]

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks Tom. 

From what I understand she and the Vets spent a lot of time on these fragmenting weapons, showing how far they could scatter and the wounds they could cause to someone not even near the point of impact.

I only dealt with ICM artillery rounds, of which only about 800 were used in Vietnam, but the air-dropped cluster bombs were supposedly even worse. I’m going off Wikipedia here, but apparently, out of 260 million total submunitions from cluster bombs dropped on Laos from ‘64-‘73, 80 million failed to explode.