Friday, March 29, 2024

National Vietnam War Veterans Day 2024

Today, on National Vietnam War Veterans Day, I’m thinking of my late older brother Eddie Davis (seen in the below photo). He served in the U.S. Army at Chu Lai, South Vietnam in 1968-1969.

I served on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk on “Yankee Station” off the coast of North Vietnam in 1970-1971.

National Vietnam War Veterans Day is annually observed on March 29. It commemorates the hardships suffered and sacrifices made by nine million Americans during the Vietnam War. However, the holiday does not only honor the former soldiers but also their families who supported them before and after the war.

I salute all Vietnam Veterans.

Back in 2017, I wrote a piece on the Vietnam War for the Washington Times

You can read my Washington Times piece via the below link or the below text:

Vietnam War helped U.S. win the Cold War - Washington Times 

South Vietnam fell to the Communist North in 1975, but the war is in the news again due to Mark Bowden's book, Hue 1968" and the Ken Burns PBS series "The Vietnam War."

Mr. Bowden’s book is an outstanding work of reportage and storytelling, untainted by his personal anti-war views, which he only discloses in the book’s epilogue.

 

Alas, not so the TV series. We see John Kerry beginning his political career by telling Congress Vietnam atrocity stories. Mr. Kerry’s tales were later discredited by others who were present, but this was not covered in the series. Also absent from the series were gung-ho Vietnam veterans like Oliver North and James Webb, a Marine Vietnam veteran and author of perhaps the best novel on the war, “Fields of Fire.”

 

The series offered the views of former North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers and both American anti-war protesters and Vietnam veterans. But one later discovers in the series that the Vietnam veterans most prominently featured all went on to became members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and anti-war protesters.

 

As only a very small percentage of Vietnam veterans joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, this selected roster of talking heads appears to have been calculated to stack the deck in favor of the anti-war narrative.

 

If one is looking for another view of the Vietnam War, one should read Philip Jennings’ “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War.”  


A while back I spoke to Mr. Jennings, a Marine who flew helicopters in Vietnam.


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