I suspect my perspective on Viet Nam is a bit different that most people. When I was eight, my father was the Captain of the USS Montrail (APA 213), an attack transport that had spent the Korean War transporting invasion troops for Inchon. During WWII, he had two destroyers sunk from under him and met my Mom (who had lost her first husband as a Marine Lieutenant winning a Navy Cross at Guadalcanal) while on medical leave after recovering from a Kamikaze hit off Okinawa.

This was now 1954, and when the French lost at Dienbeinphu, he was ordered from Japan, together with the USS Montrose (APA 212) to steam into Haiphong to begin removing the refugees that the Partition Talks had allowed to leave. (Both sides were given one year to get north or south and then the DMZ would be sealed). I will not bore you with what the Viet Min did to the people who wanted to go south, but the medical officer onboard the Montrose wrote a book that is deliberately ignored by those people wishing to explain our actions as a mistake. It was a best seller at the time, "Deliver Us from Evil" by Dr. Tom Dooley, with a follow-up "Fire on the Mountain." My Dad spent 18 months slipping small landing craft into unwatched inlets in the north, and pulling refugees off the beaches to transport to the south. The pictures he brought back were horrifying, and matched some that illustrate Dooley's book.

Now lets fast forward, 1967, and I'm working a day job while taking 12 credit hours at night at a local college. McNamara has decided that the draft numbers are too low, and reduced the standards for being drafted across the board, (this program was called Project 100,000). Cassius Clay had previously taken a draft physical and was rejected for failing the GCT (IQ test) with a score of 78. Now he was eligible for the draft and after being contacted by Elijah Mohammad, decides he does want to fight (at least where his size means nothing but a bigger target). To my knowledge he never spent one day in jail, but was stripped of his boxing title. I am also unaware as to any statement he made about being a pacifist until after he was drafted, certainly not in the two years that preceded his rejection the first time.

I too was drafted (for not carrying 15 credit hours as a full time student), and upon reporting to Petersburg, was further picked up by the Marines. After tales too long to be told, I was commissioned from the ranks, with only two years of college, and as the youngest Second Lieutenant in the Corps at the time (21 by two days at commissioning, and sworn in by my father, a privilege extended to sons of officers) I soon left for Viet Nam, some fifteen years after my father.

I ended up as the 1st Platoon Commander in Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Third Marine Regiment, of the Third Division (known to the informed as K/3/3). And our AO was the area comprising Con Thien, Gio Lin, Qua Viet and Cam Lo, bordered on the north by the DMZ. The Platoon Commander of the 2nd Platoon, was an Naval Academy graduate by the name of Oliver North, though we never called him that; he was known to us as "Blue" since the brevity code for "north" was "Blue" (south being "Red" etc. Thereby hangs a tale for another occasion...

I will only make a couple of comments germane to this thread.

1. I hold no approbation for Sen. Kerrey in the deaths of the civilians, only in his acceptance of the Bronze Star for doing it. I knew several in my outfit, including myself, who were faced with the exact same choice and choose honor over a cheap acceptance. The killing of civilians was sometimes unavoidable (The NVA drove women and children before them on several attacks at Cam Lo and the first time we shot them down like flies, the second time I set Claymores out from the perimeter and let the villagers pass up to our wire while shooting over their heads. Then we set my Claymores off, disemboweling the following NVA. The next morning we set the surviving NVA on fire with AV-gas and called in no body count... only a brush cleaning operation outside the wire.)

2. For many of those who were in the service during the Viet Nam War, they never got anywhere near the fighting and yet they claim to be affected. It took ten men in service support roles to sustain one man on the front. I noted for years that blacks claimed to have died at a greater rate in the "White Mans War Against the Yellow". That lie is statistically destroyed when it is pointed out that, unlike earlier wars, we know every man that died or was wounded. Blacks made up 12 percent of the American population, 55% of the combat arms and only 11% of the actual casualties. These guys were not at the point of anybody's spear. Many of these guys were standing around a fire barrel when they got drafted, and when their service was done; they went back to standing around the fire barrel. Viet Nam did not prevent them from becoming brain surgeons or captains of industry.

3. I wonder why, whenever there's a story like this, there is a rush to hear what the vets have to say, yet when the Killing Fields were exposed, or Bosnian or Rwandan graves dug up, no one stops an old hippy, or a Better Red than Dead type for his comments. "What did you do in the War, Daddy? Well son, I was convenient…"

4. Finally, as a bizarre counterpoint to this thread, the history magazine American Heritage has this month's feature " How We WON the Vietnam War".