On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 04:15:59 GMT, (The Watcher) opined:

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 16:59:10 GMT, escapee wrote:

I agree with everything you said, but indeed the returning soldiers were spat
on, and protested against, called baby killers and a whole barrage of horrible
things on TOP of their PTSD. Maybe where you live the soldiers were welcomed
home, but not in my part of the country, which was New York, at the time.

There were no welcome home parades, no facilities, or treatments. They were
denied everything that a person returning from bad wars should have received.

There was indeed damage to the men and whatever women who served. When they got
home, they were never celebrated for being freedom fighters. That's real.

I got to see the Moving Vietnam Wall Memorial in 2000 here in Arkansas. I saw a
lot of Vietnam vets there, and talked to lots of them. Plenty of them said they
had never been told "Welcome Home" and it did feel good to finally hear it.
Several of them actually had tears in their eyes when they said that, too.
I still don't know why that couldn't have been done back in 1975 or so. :/

Yes, that is extremely sad. They were only doing their job. Most of them were
drafted, not volunteers. The soldiers now are all volunteers, and they should
know that if they join there is that possibility of going off to war. I am
fully aware of that, but this time the government is not doing the right thing,
either.

Many soldiers went months without a shower when the war started. We were
sending my neighbor's 18 year old son socks, baby wipe type things to clean
himself, clean underwear, and chipped in for body armor. Shouldn't that have
been supplied?

As for soldiers with tears in their eyes, that has been my experience, also.
Those poor guys were treated like shit. I was against that war, but I wasn't
against the soldiers and I never fully understood the anarchists who spat on
them and did what they could to knock them down when they came home.

V


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