From: Michael Wise
Date: 6/13/2004 1:09 PM Central Daylight Time
Message-id:

In article ,
Ed Rasimus wrote:

One interesting thing I've noted is that Vietnam vets who fought
hand-to-hand combat seem to overwhelmingly be far less retroactively
gung-ho on the war than those who flew fixed wing far above. Why do you
suppose that is?


There could be a number of reasons. First, the number who today claim
"hand-to-hand combat" seems unfortunately to be drastically inflated
by thousands of poseurs claiming to be something they were not. See
Burkitt's "Stolen Valor" for some astonishing tales.

I doubt any of us who are or have been on active duty have much trouble
spotting a poseur. I'm speaking based on conversations I had with people
who most definitely fought hand-to-hand, like the people I served with
who flew CSAR, some of the people I worked with at the VA, and more than
a handful of disabled vets who I assisted in getting their benefits.

Why is it that most of those people are far less gung-ho about that
conflict than people such as yourself who flew high above the ground?
I'm not trying to denigrate any type of combat experience, but 24/7
dangers faced on the ground apparently fostered different impressions.

The primary differences between those of us on the ground and those in the air
was we had a shorter distance to fall and they had better quarters. We spent
98% of the time bored out of our minds, they had a lot less boredome time. Are
you under the impression all Ed had to do was hop into his 105 fly for 2 hours
then hop out and go to the club? I assure you between mission planning,
briefing, preflight, ops, debrief etc he had a longer period of activity in his
day than those on the ground. We could relax and watch the grass grow at least.




Of those who served on the ground, the proportion of career to draftee
and officer to lower-rank enlisted could change the perception of
events. Of ground vets from Vietnam, I have seldom encountered any
that went so far as John Kerry in their condemnation of their fellow
warriors.

Are you speak of encounters with them while the war was still going...or
years later?


As for those who flew "far above", you might want to consider the
sustained loss rates of the Rolling Thunder participants in comparison
to those "hand-to-hand" combats. Or, maybe check the proportion of
POWs between the ground and air combatants.


Nobody questions the dangers faced by aircrews who flew missions in
Vietnam. However, in a fast-mover your odds of getting back to base
outside the country for a cold beer and a hot meal are much better than
the grunt in the jungles with an M-16 even surviving.

That's funny. Did you happen to notice the vast majority of the grunts in the
field actually survived?

I don't see how
that can be denied. It's one of the reasons I wasn't a grunt...even
though I knew the chances of surviving any more than a handful of
potential CSAR missions was not good.

And you got this data where?


--Mike


Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired