My husband teases me that I was in diapers when he went to Vietnam. I smile, and keep my peace, though I do think that I was probably potty trained by the time I was 3... (OK, for those of you who are curious, YES, there *is* a bit of an age difference between us. Obviously.)
I soon realized, though, that I knew next to nothing about Vietnam. I could, as a matter of fact, list the facts that I knew about Vietnam and American involvement in it on my two hands:

1. My dad was in Vietnam, on a Navy aircraft carrier, sometime before I was born.
2. That's why he couldn't hear the brakes squeek when they were about dead, and we had to tell him.
3. It wasn't a "War", it was a "Police Action" or a "Conflict".
4. Lots of people protested it and didn't want to fight it or support the soldiers who did.
5. They threw stuff like rotten vegetables at the returning soldiers.
6. Vietnam was someplace over by China and Japan, only south a bit.
7. Vietnam is where the song "The Green Berets" came from.
8. The PTSD-ing Vietnam Vet was one of the bogeymen of my childhood. They did things like go into McDonald's and open fire and randomly shoot innocent people, or use their combat tracking skills to hunt down their ex-girlfriends and terrorize them.
9. One of my high school buds' dad was a Vietnam Vet who went to meetings about PTSD, and he didn't shoot people in McDonald's or track down ex-girlfriends to terrorize them. He did, however, teach half the neighborhood how to change spark plugs and oil filters.

Agent Orange Website
MS University History Archives
Starting Point For Vietnam War Internet Research
Stories Since the War
Hitchhiking Vietnam

LINKS TO SITES OF LINKS...
Vietnam War Literary Links
Vietnam Links

LINKS to stories by Vietnam veterans, about What It Was - and is - Really Like:

Bongo Bob's Bunker
A Tour in the Nam
Blind as a Bat's Page
Through the Eyes of an Infantryman
Stupid Vet Tricks

It was a couple of weeks before Veteran's day, a few years ago. My husband was still in grad school. The day had been cold and gloomy, and the weather was NOT being kind to his aches and pains. He had been in class, and the discussion had wandered to the fact that the school would be closed for Veteran's Day. "Why?" wondered one of my husband's classmates. "Why should we honor them?" She continued along the same lines with some anti-war rhetoric, she being a good Christian and pacifist and all...
My husband tells of trying to inturrupt her, explain to her. He pointed to the crutches he was using to walk, and the fact that they are a constant reminder to her of his service to HER country.
"Oh, but they PAY you for that, don't they?"
Sure. I would invite you to Stupid Vet Tricks to learn more about how they pay the vets for their service, so we don't really need to be concerned about it...

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