Four hours of Vets

I had history class for four class periods today. We were in the library, we had some special guest speakers. They were war vets from WWII to Iraq. There was some really really interesting stuff.

It was almost cliche, the World War II/Korea vets came in uniform and the Vietnam and Iraq vets didn't. I dunno if that has any significance or what but thats usually the way you see it on T.V.

The two World War II vets who also fought in Korea told us a lot about the strategies of both sides and basically went through the Korean War step by step. ONE OF THEM PULLED A PRANK ON US WITH A GRENADE. He had a firecracker hidden on top of this dead grenade and pulled the safety pin out and it popped! That was so cool.

The other one was asked what he thought about us dropping the Bomb on Hiroshema and Nagasaki and he said he thought it was a good idea because if we hadn't done that we would have had to invade Japan and "that would have been a bloodbath". You have to remember, most people who have fought in war think like this "Better them dead than us", because the military designs people to follow orders without question and to hate your enemy.

The first Vietnam vet, a draftee, had some amazing looking pictures that he took while he was in the war. He, along with the other 'Nam vet and one of the Korea vets, has a Purple Heart. He had some pretty interesting stories, but I'd rather not go into too much detail. To make a long story short, this guy almost cried a few times; the first person he killed "couldn't have been more than fourteen". And he said he was in many firefights, "...like on 'Platoon'".

The second Vietnam vet was insane. He said pretty much all of the curse words except the F-bomb, which is a pretty modern one anyway. This guy was a volunteer, not a draftee, he actually WENT BACK to serve ANOTHER TOUR. But the weirdest thing was, he said, "...you should never go to war,", and when someone said that Vietnam has been called "unneccessary" he said "Well you could say that about any war,". I just could not figure this guy out.

The Iraq veteran didn't see very much combat, but he had a REALLY close encounter with a mortor and was in one small firefight. This really hot chick asked him what he thought about Bush! I couldn't believe that, but I could definately believe the guys answer. Of course, he thinks Bush has been doing "a pretty good job" and, "thats who we voted for", and when asked about the absence of the WMD's, he of course played the Liberation card, and didn't seem to think it was that big of a deal that the primary reason we went to war was false.

So, uh, it was pretty interesting. They didn't really cram hatred into our brains or try to explain why their wars were right. I enjoyed hearing them. If that was one final attempt by out teacher to Republicanize his students, he failed. Good riddance.