I’m not offended!

[David Lockmiller]

I thought that some people might like to read from today’s New York Times this personal story of a former young Marine lieutenant who was drafted as the Viet Nam War was winding down. I quote immediately below a couple of paragraphs from the story. Be sure to read the last full paragraph in this personal story, as accessed by the hyperlink.

The Vietnam War Was Already Lost, but I Had to Go Anyway
by By William Broyles Jr.

In the summer of 1969, the first American troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. Their war was over, but mine was just beginning. The previous November, Richard M. Nixon had been elected president with a “secret plan” to end the war. Surely peace was near. That same month I received my draft notice. About 24,000 of the more than 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam were yet to die. I didn’t want to be one of them. No one did.

I had demonstrated against the war from the safety of my college deferment, so I thought of going to Canada. I also thought of getting a friendly doctor to say I had bone spurs or anxiety, but those choices would mean someone else from my refinery-town high school would have to go in my place.

Here’s what I wrote in a letter home back then: “I have 58 men. Only 20 have high school diplomas. Average age 19. Over and over I read: address of father: unknown; education: one or two years of high school; occupation: laborer, pecan sheller, gas station attendant, Job Corps. They had grown up in the ghetto or Appalachia or along the Rio Grande border or on a rez. Kids with no place to go. No place but here.” They were expendable, and they knew it. I was the clueless 24-year-old second lieutenant who had been put in charge of them. They couldn’t care less that I had a fancy degree from Oxford. They didn’t want to know if I would help them win the war. They knew it was already lost. They were wondering, would I get them killed, or not?