After a Computer crash and the demise of civilization, it was learned
Bruce in Bangkok wrote on Wed, 31 Oct 2007
20:34:23 +0700 in rec.crafts.metalworking :
On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:25:48 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:

After a Computer crash and the demise of civilization, it was learned
Gunner Asch wrote on Tue, 30 Oct 2007
11:33:01 -0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :
On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:14:34 GMT, "Jerry Foster"
wrote:


So, when a veteran doesn't have much to say about his service, it is
for one of two reasons: either there is not much to tell or there is too
much to tell.

And it can be tough to know the difference.

Jerry
Viet-Nam Veteran


Indeed. Well said

Gunner
71-73, RVN

Rough rule of thumb: the more they talk about it, the less they saw.
Not a hard and fast rule, and there are exceptions. E.g., combat vets
talking to each other. The Passing of "Tribal Lore" to the next
generation. I've been told that any "sea/war story" told second or
third hand is done so because there is valuable survival information in
it.
It has taken me most of my fifty years to get more than the barest
outlines of what my Dad did to get his medals. But his response on
reading the citations after sixty years was "What a bunch of hooey! They
make it sound like I did something dangerous." Well, Dad, it was
dangerous, but you were 20 and "not stupid".

tschus
pyotr


I think that it is more a matter of the individual being trained for a
particular task and then performing that task. If, for example, you
have been through gunnery school and then air crew training when you
finally arrive over some hostile real estate it is just more of the
same.

I've been told that the flight surgeons wire up a bunch of Naval
Aviators flying from Yankee Station and found the launch only slightly
more stressful than flying over the target, but the landing was way more
stressful.
You do what you trained to do, but in a sensible manner. I think in
my Dad's case, something had to be done, so he did it. It was risky,
sure, but anything is risky in an artillery barrage. But if it had been
"dangerous", he probably would have stayed where he was. He was not a
reckless youth, but an experienced Combat Infantry Soldier. (Tongue
somewhat in cheek.)

I had a mate, Army Special forces, who spent three tours in Vietnam.
We had a few beers one evening and I asked him whether he was ever
scared in Vietnam. He replied that yes he had, once, when the ran into
an ambush and were pinned down on a trail in Cambodia. He said that
the other times he had been under fire he was too busy fighting back
to be scared, until it was all over.

Another friend, a C-123 pilot got about 5 air Medals for re-supplying
Special Forces camps under fire. When I asked him about it he said,
"somebody had to do it."

Yeah, that seems to be the way of it. "Somebody had to do it, and I
was the one there."
--
pyotr filipivich
"Quemadmoeum gladuis neminem occidit, occidentis telum est. "
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, circa 45 AD
(A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer's hands.)