In all, the future secretary of defense and wartime vice president[, Dick Cheney,] would receive five deferments during the Vietnam War, protecting him from service during his draft-eligible years.
The POW camps of North Vietnam were packed with Air Force and Naval Academy graduates. The six midshipmen in my Naval Academy class of 1968 who served as liaisons between the Marine Corps and the Brigade of Midshipmen later suffered nine Purple Heart...
I've always been interested in Vietnam, feel it's a seminal event in our nation's history, and have explored it over the years - but I hadn't been interested in doing a documentary about it. I felt there had been a lot done about Vietnam, and didn't ...
In response to a a comprehensive VA survey taken in 1980, 91% of respondents who had seen combat in Vietnam reported that they were glad they had served their country. A healthy 80% disagreed with the statement that the US took advantage of me. Two o...
There is clear evidence from internal investigations in the past that some raters actually see themselves as adversaries to veterans. If a claim can be minimized, then the government has saved money, regardless of the need of the veteran. Just recent...
May the scribes record it.
There are no veterans, only survivors.
Melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy that our own character would hold steady under the most extreme pressure of dreadful events. [But we must face] the painful awareness that in all likelyhood one's own cha...
When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War ...
A place without meaning is no place to be.
As a combat veteran, I know the cost of war.
May it be written. May it be done.
I was a veteran, before I was a teenager.
There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.
Disabled veterans are not a bargaining chip.
Richard Nixon had made a fatal error in ignoring the politico-meteorological dimension when he announced the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia on April 30, 1970. The invasion of Laos, on the other hand, happened in February 1971, and the cam...
This is what happened when one left one's home - pieces of oneself scattered all over the world, no one place ever completely satisfied, always a nostalgia for the place left behind. Pieces of her in Vietnam, some in this place of bone. She brought t...
Otto: You know your problem? You don't like winners. Archie: Winners? Otto: Yeah. Winners. Archie: Winners, like North Vietnam? Otto: Shut up. We didn't lose Vietnam. It was a tie! Archie: [going into a cowboy-like drawl] I'm tellin' ya baby, they ki...
The voice of love calls to you, my son.
Fear sees, even when eyes are closed.
I want people to get involved and to connect with veterans.