Alright, I am a new member but I have posed this question to many people, none with an answer that is truly substantial. So I beg your indulgence on this one…
The WWII and the Vietnam war were indeed two completely different warts. Why then were the men in WWII so much more closed mouthed about it that the Vets from Viet Nam?
I appreciate your opinion and feedback…
Sorry I can’t answer your question. I’ve wondered about that also. My father is a WWII veteran and until a few years ago didn’t talk about it much at all. His brother also served but never talked about any of his experiences at all.
Different generations. Different expectations of male behaviour. Different degrees of publicity and film of war events. Different social eras. Different civilian attitudes to the war. Greater manipulation of public opinion by dishonest governments. Different levels of morality or justice to the war cause. Different questions about national survival. And so on.
But I haven’t noticed much difference in veterans of any war who saw any real service as far as talking about their combat experiences goes. Most of them seem to take the understandable attitude that if you weren’t there you can’t understand so there’s no point talking about it. The ones who talk the most usually did the least.
One should assume it would be the other way around since WW2 was more of a popular war than Vietnam I guess.
I’d have rather thought it would be a pure individual matter. I remember one of my grandfathers talking about his WW2 experiences all the time - to me or when meeting other vets. My paternal grandad however never lost a single word about this issue.
Maybe there’s less of a need to talk about it when you know you were on the right side, as in WWII for the Allies. At least at the simplistic level that the Allies were (generally) less barbarous than the Nazis and Japanese and certainly not as barbarous on the same scale and over the same duration, even allowing for the bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan.
Whereas in Vietnam the whole thing was political corruption from start to finish in Vietnam and in the countries which fought there. The soldiers paid the price of that corruption and unlike WWII veterans were not only not honoured but often despised by civilians upon their return. This produced justifiable resentment in many veterans and added to the difficulties many veterans face when returning from any war. Ably assisted by local problems such as the Australian returned servicemen’s organisation being contemptuous towards Vietnam veterans in the sixties and seventies because, in the eyes of the WWII diggers, they hadn’t been involved in “a real war”.
One consequence was that here many Vietnam veterans buried their service and didn’t admit to having served, because of the potential adverse social and employment consequences. That didn’t change for some until the late 1980’s when there was a national reconciliation symbolised by a huge march of Vietnam veterans in Sydney in 1987 as a belated ‘welcome home’ which they never got at the time as they were spirited away from airports to avoid protests, while all our veterans of other wars were honoured at the time of their return and subsequently.
So a lot of blokes had a lot resentment and other things bottled up, while the nation was prepared to listen to them when it wasn’t at the time of their service and return.
Still, I haven’t noticed any difference in the willingness - or lack thereof - of WWII, Korean and Vietnam combat soldiers I’ve known to talk about the realities of combat. A few do, a bit, but most don’t.
Very good points, I would have thought of them too, I just had to go to work.:mrgreen:
I knew that, so I just said what I knew you would have said if you were unemployed. 
I think another notable contrast would be the differences in age of the combat vets at the time of their service. Most U.S. infantrymen were in their late teens or early twenties and were essentially the product of a peacetime draft whereas the WWII generation was more varied and mixed ages since that time period saw total mobilization from men in their early teens to forties. I recall hearing the age of the average GI in WWII would have been somewhere in the mid to late-twenties. I’ve read that some believe this affected the very psychology as those still growing and developing would be naturally more traumatized and those that were more settled and mature with more life experience…
A related aspect is that the ?Royal Navy? or some other authority became concerned with the death rates of Atlantic shipwreck survivors during WWII.
I can’t recall the exact details, but essentially men somewhere in their thirties had a much higher survival rate than than men in their teens to mid twenties.
The contrast is that the younger men were probably physically fitter, at least for short bursts of intense strength and activity, than the older men but perhaps less mentally and physically robust where endurance mattered more than speed and strength.
Mental toughness was often a determinant of survival, and illustrated no better than on the Burma Railway where there are endless personal accounts of men giving up mentally and dying soon after.
Bringing this back to WWII and later wars, perhaps the older men had more understanding of life and were less shocked by their experiences or better able to accommodate them than soldiers who were little more than boys, and in Vietnam the bulk of soldiers were late teens or early twenties.
Men at 20 are young men, many would say, but from my age 60 looking back to me and my mates at that age and time we were ignorant children in men’s bodies. As are young men now (like my nearly 20 year old son who wants to join the army and serve in Afghanistan, Iraq, or some other hot spot); have always been; and always will be. Which is why old men will always be able to manipulate them to sacrifice the young to supposedly noble causes which are just the sorry consquences of the selfishness, ambitions and avarice of grasping old men.
Ok, that was great, had a good laugh! Good points nonetheless.
Where do you get your statistics or evidence regarding your premise"
WW2 vets were our fathers.
Today they are 85 years old.
They don;t spend much time on the internet.
Most combat vets don’t speak of that experience-for many reasons. Some things are genuinely painful to revisit.
VN vets are now 63 years old. Many of us have retired and have time to lie about gassing.
It is a bit of a relief valve to type somethings to a group of generally interested people.
There are a lot of bullshatters as well. “The older I get, the better I was.”
I grew up surrounded by WW2 vets, my dad and my buddies dads were all vets.
I belong to several vets only boards and some good exchanges take place.
I will talk to a real vet about things I never would mention to anybody else.
I prefer the company and counsel of those who have manned up and got out into serious reality where genuine effort is required.
I was fortunate to have survived-some people I cared about did not.
I don’t tell their stories for anybody’s entertainment or mental masturbation.
After a 25 year Army career (1966-91 including Viet Nam)) it is my experience that the more a guy talks about Viet Nam - the more likely he wasn’t there (or at least not in combat). Studies have shown that as many as 1 in 3 who claim to be Viet Nam Vets were not there. As to WWII it is worth remembering the majority of Vets were not in combat - but human nature makes many embellish their involvement and after telling “War Stories” for year after year many come to believe the stories are true. There is a recent rash of claimants to Veteran status in recent conflicts which have proven to be false. There is even a current NY State Congressman who for years claimed to be a “Combat” Vet of Korea and after opponents reviewed his records admitted he was actually there in a support role and never in combat.
After recently speaking with a Retired Air Force Cornel I find I must amend my statement. He points out that while I may be correct about us normal soldiers not freely talking about combat this does not apply to pilots-especially fighter pilots. According to the Col. you just can’t shut them up.
I have to disagree with your second paragraph - I agree that terrible things happened in Vietnam but terrible things (on a much larger scale) happened in WWII also. In fact, if this was the case, Vietnam vets would be much less likely to talk about their experiences than WWII vets. I am not sure how it was in Australia but I think (it is late and I might be wrong) that here in the US, while everyone from all classes fought in WWII (it was really “America as a whole” versus the Germans and Japanese), it seemed like in the Vietnam War, more minorities and poorer Americans fought in that war. It is possible that Vietnam vets ended up being more outspoken because they needed to be, since in the US, that was a war that most people probably wanted to forget about (as opposed to WWII, which most people are still very proud of).
I do agree with the latter part of your post - I do agree that this is really more on an individual bases and some Vietnam vets, just like some WWII vets love talking about their experiences, while others never talk about it. My great uncle, who served with Patton in 1944-1945, refused to talk about any of his experiences up until 2006 or so (and when he finally told us the things that he saw and did, we understood why).
Agreed.
My points weren’t related to what happened in service but, first, that in WWII the Allies were on the ‘good’ side while in Vietnam we were supporting a, at best, rather shabby lot of political crooks trying to maintain their power and privilege in SVN and, second, that where in WWII the public in Allied nations knew that their troops had fought on the ‘good’ side this wasn’t clear in Vietnam even from the beginning and much less so as the war progressed. So Vietnam veterans didn’t get the universal public acceptance of and respect for their service that WWII veterans got, which had to affect their post-war civilian experience much more negatively than for WWII veterans.
I vaguely recall seeing some research ages ago which showed that the draft wasn’t as heavily skewed towards minorities and the poor as has often been said it was. That’s not denying that they were a disproportionately large proportion of the forces, but that there were plenty of others who came from the middle and, sometimes, upper classes.
Be that as it may, the poor in America and Australia were much less likely to get the exemptions or deferments that better off people got just by undertaking tertiary courses so that had to skew the figures a bit.
My understanding is that in America in the 60s the poor generally couldn’t afford to go on to college or university because they had to find fees unless they won a reasonably rare scholarship. In Australia we had a more liberal scheme of government scholarships at the time which allowed a good proportion of people to attend university who wouldn’t have been able to a decade earlier. So we might have had a proportion of people who would otherwise have been conscripted because of their economic circumstances who got deferments because the government funded their tertiary studies.
Probably.
They had to fight for recognition of their service in many respects that was just automatically given to WWII veterans.
Since the 1980s there has been a steady increase here in WWII veterans talking about and sometimes publishing their experiences, frequently as a result of family pressure to reveal and record them. They seem to be overcoming their reluctance to tell others about the unimaginable realities of what many men, and women, did, which is all to the good for future generations.
For your consideration:
Casualty rates (in Viet Nam) for minorities were less that their general population numbers, casualty rates for Caucasian were higher.
Draftees made up only 25% of total forces in country.
75% of US Forces in Viet Nam had a High School (or higher) Education
75% of Us Forces came from families with incomes above the poverty level.
“Knowing is half the battle” GI Joe
That might be along the lines of the reseach I mentioned in my last post. Do you have a source?
The draft proportion raises the question of whether the US sent people who really didn’t want to be there. In Australia, depending upon the unit you were in, it was often the case that people who didn’t want to be there didn’t go because nobody wanted uncommitted people there. In other units there was a parade where they were given a choice to stay home but in such a way that there was virtually no choice.
Did the US have a lot of National Guard units in Vietnam as well as regulars and conscripts?
I believe Rising Sun ask for my sources (re: Viet Nam Stats)- there are many web sites citing figures-most are about as I stated- some with obvious agendas are different.
The draft vs enlistment percentage issue is a highly skewed and unaddressed issue.
It gives a very unrealistic picture of the issues.
Prior to the lottery that began in 1968 or so, there were a number of specifiv exemptions.
They were somewhat unfair, but were legitimate at the time.
If one had none of these, or lost one, such as student grade point, you were reclassified to 1A, and were dead meat.
You were a ghost and nobody could see you. No jobs, no car loans, girls knew you’d be gone, etc.
Basically all you had to do was wait-it was coming.
A very large number of young men in that position, myself included, chose to enlist.
It got us out from under the black cloud and gave us a bit more choice of MOS.
Another significant source of enlistees was young men with minor legal issues who were given the military as a choice over prosecution.
These were significant numbers and we always get left out of the statistic.
Plainly a great many enlisted only to get ahead of the draft, not to support the war.
I was in from 1966-70, RVN 68-70.
I belong to lots of vet organizations and have attended many national, state, and local veterans events over 40 years.
To generally accuse VN vets who will talk about it as liars is a bunch of crap.
I have known WW2 vets who BS-there are always some.
Where to begin?
“Stolen Valor” is not new. My statement is not directed just to VN vets. I addressed WWII Vets and the example I gave was of a Korean War Vet. Recently the Attorney General of Connecticut has acknowledged falsely claiming to be a VN Vet.
I, too, was drafted. I fail to see how the draft bears on my stated opinion .
I, too, served in Viet Nam. I went on to serve for 25 years, much of it overseas and/or in special operations…
I, too, am a member of various Veterans organizations. I have been in these organizations facilities in CA., AZ, TX, AK, NC, FL, VA (and probably other States I don’t recall); as well as several located overseas. But I also read history and in every one of these places I have heard the most outlandish tales. Rarely are the tellers of these tales called on their stories, which is probably why they come to believe them.
I stand by my opinion, the more a Vet talks about his/her combat; the more likely he/she didn’t do it.
I was in the U.S. Army at the time when the last of the Vietnam vets were retiring (the early 1990s). My 1SGT shocked me by announcing he was drafted, and didn’t enlist, at some meeting we had regarding benefits. The overwhelming group think I got was that the more you talked about it, the less likely it was that you were there and that even macho, badass good-old-boys were still very upset that they had to kill people and further had the misfortune of actually looking into the eyes of one of their marks before machine-gunning him down…