Don't Ask Rambi Message Board

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next

To: Ilaine who wrote (27085)	6/2/1999 11:48:00 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (2) of 71178

I used to listen to my dad and his fellow officers talk when I was growing up. These men had been all over the world, and their interests encompassed all that was going on in world politics. This isn't surprising, because if war broke out they were the first to go. My dad's good pal Major Lee S. was a small arms expert. He had just come back from a tour in SE Asia in 1961 as my dad got orders for Vietnam; this was 3 years before the Gulf of Tonkin, and most Americans had never heard of Indochina. Lee told my dad "they may not call it a war over there, but they're sure using ammunition like it's one." Lee was in charge of small arms ammunition and was in the position to see what was happening. You can imagine how galling it was for them to hear LBJ deny that there was a war in Vietnam when he ran for the Presidency three years later. Lee, incidentally, was a political liberal who would have been comfortable with Johnson's policies. I think all of these men despised Robert MacNamara. When I was very young we lived on an Army base. Ft Leavenworth. Staff and Command College is there. I was in kindergarten. I remember one of the fathers looking over a bunch of us little boys playing. He casually remarked to one of the other fathers that in a little over ten years half of us would be dead in the frozen wastes of Korea. That sent a cold chill up my spine, one of the few times that the prospect of getting killed really frightened me. This man wasn't joking and it came through in his matter-of-fact tone. A lot of those fathers had been in very hard combat in Korea only 3 years before and were pretty sure we would be the ones who would get stuck with round two of that inconclusive fight. My folks said my sister and I had a very pretty baby sitter when we lived at Ft Knox. She got married to a young lieutenant there before we left the post. He was killed fighting in Korea later that year. 47,000 American dead there, few remember it at all.

Report TOU Violation

Share This Post

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next