My father was a college student

[cyclonefence]

when he saw Nazis marching on the newsreels at the movies, and he knew what he had to do. He didn't get a permit; he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and dropped bombs from his B-17 on those fuckers in Berlin, in Peenemunde, in Dresden. He saw and did things no 19-year-old should have to see or do, but he did them because he recognized the Nazis for what they were and knew they had to be stopped.

The college students (and college-age young people) who marched with their tiki torches, who beat defenseless people almost to death, who murdered a young woman for no reason other than she was there--when I compare them to what my father was at their age, I weep.

[shraby]

1. My Dad was indjured at the Battle of the Bulge and his brother was shot and injured parachuting into

Remagen.
I don't know much of what else happened to him in the war because he would never ever talk about it which tells me a lot.

[cyclonefence]

7. My dad wouldn't talk about it, either

I know he spent his "down" hours sleeping, so he wouldn't think about what he was doing. He sometimes cut off attempts to talk about his service with "I did not kill anyone," patently untrue.

[shraby]

10. I used to ask where he was in Germany and I got answers like "couldn't remember the names of the

towns, they were in German" and he drove a tank so he said the Germans would shoot at us during the day and run at night. Non-answers to my curiosity.

[MineralMan]

2. My father, who is still with us at 92, did the same.

He enlisted after graduating from high school. At 19 years of age, he was one of the youngest B-17 first pilots. He survived the war, but many of his fellow pilots and their crews did not. We have the same name, and when I was in the USAF in the mid to late 60's, I carried his B-4 bag as my luggage, in his honor. Stenciled on it was 1st. Lt., and our name. I was an enlisted airman, but I carried that bag proudly throughout my enlistment.

[tblue37]

3. My dad & his 3 brothers joined the military for the same

reasons, even though their parents came over from Sicily and we were at war with Italy, too. (Dad, whose name was extremely, obviously Italian, even Anglicized both his first and middle names to fit in when he joined the Air Force.)

And as a 19-year-old airman he was there at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed it.

[wasupaloopa]

4. We must not ever forget that not every German was a Nazi. And that toward the end of the war in

Europe our B-17's destroyed cities like Dresden because there were no more military targets to bomb.

I was in Vietnam and I'll tell you there is no honor in war. There is no totally good side and a totally evil side. If there is one lesson I learned in my 71 years on earth is that war is man in his most evil state. Life has no meaning other than to protect your own.

My dad fought in Europe for 4 years. We had long talks about war when I got back. We never talked like that about anything before. My wife's step dad and my dad were in Patton's 3rd army.

[Not Ruth]

5. Any German that did not fight the Nazis was no different than one that joined the Nazi party

[wasupaloopa]

6. That is easy to say. My one friend from Vietnam was born in Germany during the war. His dad was in

Hitler's army because he was forced in to it. He let himself get captured by the Russians and spent the rest of the war in Siberia.

Also many of the Germans killed were women and children who had no part in the war but were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

When there is war in a country like Germany or Vietnam innocent people get swept up in it and die or live through the hell not because of anything they did or didn't do. After Tet I had several older women and men come up to me and ask why they had to die in a war they wanted no part of. They wanted to farm or run their shops which we helped destroy and were left without any means of supporting them selves.

Our cavalier attitude about war to me is like taking sides in a sports game. We at home do not get our hands dirty and risk nothing yet we think we can judge those that do.

[cyclonefence]

8. In my father's opinion

there were no "innocent" Germans, whether they were officially Nazis or not. If we in the US saw what the Nazis were doing, it's hard to imagine that ordinary Germans didn't know.

There were a few Germans who performed truly heroic acts, but the vast majority were complicit if only by their silence.

[wasupaloopa]

9. So in 1966 I was drafted by my friends and neighbors to represent them in Vietnam. So my draft

notice said.

I was caught up in that war. All the while my friends and neighbors stayed home and took sides and judged me. So I had to survive for a year so I could come home and take what ever my friends and neighbors felt they had a right to give me.

I made no moral judgement on my self other than feel the war was not right. No matter what I felt about the war I was in it.

Still everyone has a right to think of me as they want based on the paradigm they see that war through. None of them can walk in my shoes.

The same goes for everyone in WWII

[cyclonefence]

11. I don't know if you're the same guy I had this exchange with earlier

but I want you to know that nobody I knew made a moral judgment about the men--boys, really--who were sent to Vietnam other than to want them to come home safe and soon. I was an anti-war protestor, not an anti-soldier protestor, and I protested against the unfairness of the draft (college kids were exempt; anybody with an influential or rich parent could get a (safe) place in the National Guard; there were many tricks those "in the know" could use to get out of going).

We supported the troops. We agitated for a expansion to the GI Bill of Rights (one thing we wanted was for the children of any Vietnam vets to have free tuition to state colleges); we wanted more benefits for spouses.

I know many of the men and women who served in Vietnam felt betrayed by those who stayed home, and in a way they were. They were sent to an unjust and unpopular war, so there were no celebrations or public displays when they came home. But I want you to know that you were in our hearts, and you were the main reason we demonstrated to end the war.