Hey dude, great piece. I think your focus is right, about the young guys who lost their lives and were good people. They didn't really know why they were there, but they went. It's funny, when I was in Hong Kong, I would sometimes imagine getting hit by a bus, and then while I was dying on the street thinking, what the hell am I doing here? It's weird, you don't really think about it until you're in another country, but you don't wanna die there. I'm glad you remembered these young guys. I really liked the Pogo champ. It's a good thing to be interested in war, then you're a witness to horror, to the young people dying alone, far from home.
As a kid I also enjoyed learning about war, especially WWII. I was especially enamored by aircraft (BTW -- just spend 6 hours in the USAF Museum in Dayton -- not enough time). In my adolescent years I had a lot of interest in becoming an AF pilot, I even started some research about how I could qualify for the Academy.
Then in my sophomore or junior year my HS teacher had us read Slaughterhouse Five, and I lost interest.
Great Post Will. It's important to remember that time and the humanity of the young folks that died for us.
My mom was a news junky. I remember every evening the 5 o'clock news would of course report that the Pirates beat the Reds 5 to 1. At the top of the hour we would hear the daily body count something like 85 Viet Cong dead, 10 US soldiers dead. That sounded like a winning to an 9 year old.
It's kind of crazy how we - or at least I - processed information about the war when we were kids. For a time, I was big on war as a population control device.
As a Catholic and neo-classical economist, I was taught that population growth would lead to more Peace, despite the empirical micro evidence among my 7 siblings and I.
Hey dude, great piece. I think your focus is right, about the young guys who lost their lives and were good people. They didn't really know why they were there, but they went. It's funny, when I was in Hong Kong, I would sometimes imagine getting hit by a bus, and then while I was dying on the street thinking, what the hell am I doing here? It's weird, you don't really think about it until you're in another country, but you don't wanna die there. I'm glad you remembered these young guys. I really liked the Pogo champ. It's a good thing to be interested in war, then you're a witness to horror, to the young people dying alone, far from home.
Cherry Bomb is a fantastic title.
I'm glad you survived Hong Kong, and I hope you survive India, too:)
It was a particularly senseless war.....no doubt about that.
As a kid I also enjoyed learning about war, especially WWII. I was especially enamored by aircraft (BTW -- just spend 6 hours in the USAF Museum in Dayton -- not enough time). In my adolescent years I had a lot of interest in becoming an AF pilot, I even started some research about how I could qualify for the Academy.
Then in my sophomore or junior year my HS teacher had us read Slaughterhouse Five, and I lost interest.
I never really wanted to be a pilot, but Catch-22 had a similar general effect on me.
I read Catch 22 later -- when, of all things, I as a Peace Corps volunteer. Many of the same principles applied there.
Great Post Will. It's important to remember that time and the humanity of the young folks that died for us.
My mom was a news junky. I remember every evening the 5 o'clock news would of course report that the Pirates beat the Reds 5 to 1. At the top of the hour we would hear the daily body count something like 85 Viet Cong dead, 10 US soldiers dead. That sounded like a winning to an 9 year old.
It's kind of crazy how we - or at least I - processed information about the war when we were kids. For a time, I was big on war as a population control device.
As a Catholic and neo-classical economist, I was taught that population growth would lead to more Peace, despite the empirical micro evidence among my 7 siblings and I.