Suppose Somebody Gave a War......................

........and NOBODY CAME?

Ever been lied to? Used? Taken advantage of and ridiculed all at the same time. Talk to a Veteran one time, because whatever you did, or THOUGHT you were doing for God & country, has somehow been wrong with our civilian force.

You were young and fresh out of school when you enlisted, maybe you'd seen the war movies and parades when you were growing up. Perhaps you'd listened intently to your dad, your uncles, your grandfather as they sat out on the porch and talked about their "G.I." days.

It was a far different country then, than it is today. From the toys we played with, to the Pledge of Allegience, to the things we bought, we were all proud to be Americans-----we didn't need to write SONGS to remind ourselves and everyone else that we were "Proud to be an American".......we all felt it deep down within. Everyone stood when the flag came by, and nobody ever burned one out of protest.....(and made it home in one piece!)

So.....to carry on the proud tradition, a lot of us didn't wait and "hide"...hoping not to be drafted, some of us just stepped right up to the plate for what we'd always been taught was "Mom's apple pie." In MY neighborhood, one had guts or one was a coward. There was no third way.

The "high school mind" of an "indestructable" teenager doesn't have the common sense nor the experience of life to sort out fact from fantasy, and we are ready to take on ANYTHING. Recruiters hit the high schools in desperate measures to fill their quotas, but even THEY don't realize that their "Uncle Sam" was no longer the same "Uncle" that THEIR fathers served.

The days of "Johnny Comes Marching Home" in the ticker-tape parades in Times Square were over. But those of us who joined up then had a "lot going for us"....especially all of these "benefits" if you survived 20 years or more of it.

You start out with nothing and it doesn't improve by too much as time goes on. First comes the image convesion, where you become a NUMBER along with your name. They shave you as bald as a cue ball and you pretty much stay that way.

Your "new threads" look just like everyone ELSE'S now, and your individuality is taken away.

In 1966, I made $88.00 a month as a Buck Private----$44.00 every two weeks. No civilian would work for that------especially at the daily pace WE were setting. No civilian's gonna risk his LIFE for that either, if at all.

Yes, food, lodging and medical care was free.......

Ever eat in a Mess Hall at Camp Pendleton?----it ain't the Waldorf.

Quanset Huts-----a far cry from the Best Western

"Sick Call" goes at 0800, and it isn't St. Luke's

You don't really think about it at the time, because you're initially single.......but you're also universally promised throughout all the branches, that if you serve long enough to retire (which isn't the 1-term offer a congressman gets),

your medical care AND dental, will be free until the day you die....and that ALSO includes your spouse...........sounds pretty good, but most people still get out after just one hitch of the lifestyle that ACCOMPANIES these "promises"

"Promises" are often just for the young & "naive" who TRUST Uncle Sam enough NOT to demand to see it "in WRITING." "Sam's" word is good enough.......it's a bond, just like eveytime we raise our hands to take the oath of re-enlistment. We will keep our word and "fight for Old Glory"....and he'll keep HIS word too!

Manwhile "back at the ranch"......those high school buddies of yours who DIDN'T join up, were getting in on the ground floor back home, and would be making better money than YOU were, and living life as they CHOSE to. They could grow beards, long hair, look like freaks if they so desired, and never risked dodging bullets unless they ran afoul of the law back home. They were FREE......and could live life as they pleased (thanks to YOU incidently, whose willingness to sacrifice, made that possible for them------and they'd thank you for that by spitting on you later).

But that was still "ok" with you. If you decided to make a career of the service, there'd be this little "pot of gold" at the end of the rainbow.

So....you lived a regimented life, and were meagerly paid once a month, all by pay-grade only......not by the hour, (they couldn't afford you if they did), 40----50-----60 hours a week, didn't matter....no such thing as "time & a half" with "Uncle,"

Weekend duties, sometimes you'd get jerked out of the sack in the middle of the night, 3 hours later you'd be in a cargo plane or helicopter going somewhere, and maybe you wouldn't be coming back.

No civilian would do that.

Then...sometimes...it gets really intense....when it's no longer a game, and the bullets are real. The stink and stench of burning cordite and the pungent smell of blood & death in the trenches....fill your nostrils & senses with odors you carry with you for the rest of your life. You wish you were back in San Jose, loading supplies in the back of your uncle's pickup truck.......than loading body bags onto a Huey chopper on some hot L.Z.

You survive your tour and come home to the "adoring crowds"........but they don't resemble the ones you saw in the final chapters of "Victory At Sea."

Some "shipped-over" (re-enlisted) so as to remain where things were at least familiar. Others finished their enlistments and went back out into an uncertain world. When job hunting, sometimes it was best to not even MENTION your service time....or if you HAD to....you did NOT mention that you served in combat, because so many people back here in "your country", despised you for it, that it might mean you wouldn't get the job.

If you continued with your service career, the time would come when the United States just pulled up stakes and LEFT, and so where it was once an endeavor of "Kill a Commie for Mommy"........the "commies" now took it over.........

.........and it was all for nothing. Just a lot of names on a great big wall back there.-----just like it is right now--------different faces in Washington today, but still being run the same way.

You go through a period of numbness and bewilderment, and as time passes, you realize that not only have you been used by a government that never had the will to WIN anything, as they did in FDR's time...........but there actually had NOT been a "justified" war since World War II. America had not lost a serviceman or woman, for OUR country since the Japanese surrender on the Battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Well..........by THIS time, you're just about half-way through your military "career", so you decide to just go ahead and do the other half & "retire." The U.S. continues to stick its nose into some MORE foreign "police actions"....and we lose some more troops in the defense of OTHER countries-----U.N. actions if you will....

You spend another tour or two overseas defending Europe, helping to boost THEIR economies at the same time.......where we "Yanks" are never as welcome there as our MONEY is.

You get back to the States and continue to train.........for what?......anything the government gets us INVOLVED in, they haven't the guts anymore to WIN IT.....or allow YOU to win it!

You start looking toward the "door" as the years, long hours and deployments roll on.......and then.....

and then...........here come these "new programs" and terms you never heard the first time you signed on that dotted line..........terms like, Tri-Care, Co-Pay, etc.........wasn't that supposed to be FREE, to get us to work long hours at slave wages and get shot at, whenever "THEY" felt the need to just ship us off someplace to the middle of nowhere?

Many started to protest about that.......................ah.......but we didn't read the fine print, did we!............because there WASN'T any......all the way back to the recruiters, it was always "implied promises", but never official.

We'd been had AGAIN! Now we're all approaching 40 & beyond, getting ready to get out and compete with 20-year-olds for jobs.....and their IS age-discrimination out here today...........and many have serious medical issues by now.

The V.A. does a really good job in their clinics, considering the cuts they have to keep taking............that Foreign Aid does NOT. If the government would spend the money on the V.A. hospitals that they give to care for the illegals, they WOULD be able to honor their end of our "contracts."

Ever been to the V.A.? There's a huge stone at the 5th Street entrance in Boise that reads, "The price of freedom is visible here."

Go on up sometime, it's open to the public, and you can see the handiwork of mortar rounds, handgrenades and booby-traps, not to mention bullet wounds and Agent Orange."

Men (and women) who were willing to do what the civilians would not, and the Federal government is even stealing from THEM now. That's correct. You can barely live on your military retirement as it is......yet even BEFORE this "debt ceiling" crisis.......they started taking chunks out of service retirements. Raiding Social Security wasn't ENOUGH......not they're taking from the Vets. Maybe they're hoping we'll all just die off soon enough and they won't feel "obligated" at all to honer THEIR END OF IT.

Makes me wonder what kind of lies & hype they're telling THIS generation of warriors, to try to enlist or RE-enlist them. What are THEY being promised to "hang it all out in the wind" for the bureaucrats back there.......all in the name of "patriotism" for "Mom's apple pie."

This "Commander-in-Chief" we have now (and I use that term VERY LOOSELY) is no different than the 3 goofballs who preceeded him, in that he too will pick up the phone when the U.N. wimpers and send our troops out to sacrifice for some other country. HE's never had to do it, and has never had to "eat those peas" either.

As far as I'm concerned-----and I've said this for YEARS now........the next time these corrupt, hypocritical carpetbaggers wanna get us involved in someone else's squabbles.....let THEM "suit up and go do it!"

My son owns a bowling alley in Texas. Several years ago.....and I don't remember how the conversation got around to this.....but he asked me point blank if I was disappointed that he never enlisted in the service.

"NOT ONE BIT" I replied. "One prostitute in this family is enugh!" I don't mind dying for MY country.

As long as it's MY country.

For me, this was all re-affirmed in 2005 when a "Khe Sanh" buddy & I went BACK to Vietnam for 2 weeks....back to Khe Sanh, and back up on 861. The Vietnamese people treated us very kindly the entire time we were there. 40+ years ago we were over there killing 'em by the bushel. What for? These people had done nothing to us.

But our government.......(yes...yes...yes......even before Obama), has this age-old habit of sticking it's nose into places it doesn't belong and it's always "G.I. Joe" (and "Josie" now I guess too, with the DADT policy), that has to travel someplace he doesn't wanna go, and spill blood for somebody he should HAVE to).

Yeah......isn't it odd, how we can so easily protect the 38th Parallel in Korea, but can't protect our OWN borders?------we just sue the state instead.

So................what if somebody gave a war, and nobody came?

What WOULD the "leaders" DO.........go to the local gym and put on the gloves? We'd sure save an awful lot of tax money, wouldn't we?......in addition to all the lost lives.

When the U.S. walked out of Vietnam in 1975, I was stationed in Italy with the Air Force in my 2nd "military career." I remember going to the NCO Club that night, had a beer or two....or ten.......and vowed to never level an M-14 on anybody else ever again unless it was in defense of MY country.

That time IS coming.

.....and "nobody came?".............I'll be coming to THIS one. I can JUSTIFY THIS ONE...........this time, it WILL be for "Mom's apple pie."

And those of you college-indoctinated libs out there who seem to think that compensation for veterans is some sort of "government handout"...............well then, just sign your name on that dotted line, and you TOO can get IN on this fabulous "secret party" we've all been having!

PS.........Roy in Caldwell wrote a little reply about the President being the "Commander-in-Chief" pretty much whether we like it or not.

How'd ya like to do a year or so of "swamp & jungle time" exchanging fire..........then 4 years after you finally retire, this country elects a DRAFT-DODGER to be the President. He was now IN CHARGE of the forces he was too yellow to serve! The guy had gone to Britain and other places and marched in protests. Bush SR was a Naval carrier pilot......and Jr flew for the Air Guard (not much, but at least SOMETHING!)

Clinton's out there burning draft cards, and the next thing you know, the guy who "never inhaled" is taking the oath of office, where he'll never have "sex with that woman."

Just kinda makes ya proud, don't it?