There are plenty of people my age who lost someone. A brother, a boyfriend, a husband, son, father, uncle. We just don’t hear enough about them and from them.

Volunteered to go with the Red Cross. Yesterday she emailed me and said, "I hope to god that draft dodging chickenshit stays there and never comes back."

threatening wound and spent many days in a day room after getting my dressing changed every day.

The Red Cross women were our age and they organized pool tournaments for cigarettes or just sat and talked to us.

I asked one what she got paid and how she got in the war. She said she got a new uniform and she volunteered because as a female that is what she could do.

I do believe I was in the presence of an angel.

I'll relay it to her. She's 78 now. She was there in 1969 I believe for over a year. I doubt she made much money at any of her jobs. She wasn't the same age as the GI's but I was. Before she went she worked with vets coming home from their time in Viet Nam at a naval hospital and that's where they came around and asked for volunteers to go. I visited her there for a week one time and spent my days with the GI's. I was their age, so they liked having someone their own age to talk with who didn't actually work there. Of course I was fairly "hot" back when I was 18, so there's that too.

She has rarely talked much about her experiences there but she just recently found a picture of her in a flak jacket and helmet and she made me a copy. I'd never seen it before. Not much was done for the women who served. They were in danger too, but there was never much recognition for their service, not that she's the type who would expect it anyway. I just recently watched the old China Beach episodes and it brought it all back to me. I was too young and self-involved at the time to really appreciate the courage she had to do that.

Women got very little recognition for being in the war. They have a monument now next to the Wall recognizing their contribution.

I graduated from High School in Fayetteville, NC which is where Fort Bragg is. I went to high school with the “army brats” of the soldiers who went to Vietnam.

Drinking and voting age was 21.

There’s a reason they target 19 year olds. It’s the psychological age of young men who suddenly stop being mentally teenagers and the year they suddenly want to prove the are adults. Their psychological need is to be taken as adults. I know because it is the very sudden transition my boys went through at that age. Overnight they wanted to be taken seriously as adults. The fact that the military knows this and takes advantage of this is criminal.

Plenty of us fought for the right to lower the voting age because we said, "Oh yeah they can fight your wars and get killed and maimed but can't even vote." Unthinkable to me back then.

My son was living in Baltimore at one time and he and I were going to go see a few of the newer things in DC (we'd been there before) including the Women's Memorial. Interestingly enough, when we got there, a massive protest was happening against Dubya and his Iraq warmongering. So of course my son and I decided the protest was more important, so we joined in!

I have no idea if there are names for the women or if it's just a memorial to all women with no specifics. I should do more research on it. I always envisioned that at the very least they'd have a book or database with the names, dates etc. where you could look someone up, similar to the Viet Nam vets memorial, which by the way was very, very touching to me. However, the vets memorial is to those who died and I believe the women's memorial is for all those who volunteered and served.

An even greater concern for me is the likelihood he sells out our country further. That would also affect our Korean War veterans.

He was saved by a fellow soldier who threw him over his shoulder and carried him to safety during an intense firefight. He was a good story teller. He remembered how great morphine feels and because his wounds were mostly on his backside he always joked that it was easy to see what direction he was heading in. He was my favorite uncle!

what a wrong thing that war was.

If you read anything about the history of Vietnam after WWII you will see that Ho Chi Minh was an American ally. He sought our help

in achieving independence from French colonial rule. Had we helped him out then we could have been where we are today back in the late 1940's.

Yet, even then there was no reason for our later involvement in Vietnam.

But yes. If we had stayed out of Vietnam from the beginning its colonization would have ended without such massive loss of life on both sides.

But after our first involvement with France, what the hell did the French do? Did they just leave while we supposedly “fought” against Communisim?

for service in Vietnam (my brother and his friends)...and then I think of rump using his fake bone spurs to escape his duty. What can I say? Pathetic and a slap in the face and a disservice to all (not just the service men and women who served in various capacities, but families, friends, etc.).

The fear and terror was probably the main reason for the counterculture movement of the hippies. It was more than “probably” a reason. By today’s standards the draft system is like the ancient feudal system of landed lords raising armies. Primitive.

Not making fun at those who went there to fight, but yet he(Trump) doesn't understand the meaning of patriotism.