The Army Diaries by Mike Marino (book recommendations based on other books .txt) 📖

the bid for Indian independence!) Also in 1945, the first American blood is shed, in Vietnam, when Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey, head of American OSS mission, was killed by Vietminh troops while driving a jeep to the airport.

Reports later indicated that his death was due to a case of mistaken identity. He had been mistaken for a Frenchman. Now France got a colonial hard-on to re-exert it's power and influence over the tiny nation, and opted to go for colonial rule, only now, the rules had changed and there was no room anymore for fancy pants France!

One year after the world war had ended, the French and Vietminh reach an accord. France recognizes Vietnam as a "free state" within the French Union.Negotiations Between France and the Vietminh breakdown like an old car on the open road, and the Indochina War begins. Following months of steadily deteriorating relations, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam launches its first attack against the French.

A force of 40,000 heavily armed Vietminh lay seige to the French garrison at Dienbienphu. Using Chinese artillery to shell the airstrip, the Vietminh make it impossible for French supplies to arrive by air. It soon becomes clear that the French have met their match.
It is also important to note that Ho Chi Minh had contacted Harry Truman in 1949 for recognition, as he also did to Dwight Eisenhower when he was president. Both declined to respond. Much as what happened in Cuba when Castro took over.

Both countries looked to the "free world" for support and were refused. This country has a habit of creating it's own "enemies" so it has someone to fight to take the American people's minds off of real problems here at home such as poverty, unemployment, unafforadable health care, etc. The American government is the grand Illusionist when it comes to hiding it's own dirt in plain sight.(This is also the same country that backed Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden!)

Meanwhile, the French, well they got phucked at Dien Bien Phu in 1953, and once more outside forces prevail as the Geneva accords determined that the country be partitioned into two separate entities,the north and the south. During the cold war the north of course supported by China and the USSR (after non response from the west!) while the south was supported by the United States. This eventually burst into flames and not only gave birth to a new nation, but later some really great films like Platoon and Apocalypse Now.."God, I love the smell of napalm in the morning." In 1960's there was a cornucopia of campus teach ins, Veterans stage anti-war rallies, including those from WWII and the Korean war stage a protest rally in New York City. Discharge and separation papers are burned in protest of US involvement in Vietnam.

The Civil Rights movement joined in the refrain as CORE cites "Burden On Minorities and Poor" in Vietnam, where The Congress of Racial Equality issues a report claiming that the US military draft places "a heavy discriminatory burden on minority groups and the poor." The group also calls for a withdrawal of all US troops from Vietnam. Martin Luther King speaks out against the war, calling the US "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world," Martin Luther King also encourages draft evasion and suggests a merger between antiwar and civil rights groups.

Secret negotiations and peace talks finally start to take place in Paris and stagger on for many agonizing years as the body count grows faster than a New York Taxi meter can add up the miles.

Then turn the clock to 1973..the reality check is complete. It's over. The last remaining American troops withdraw from Vietnam as President Nixon declares "the day we have all worked and prayed for has finally come." America's longest war, and its first defeat, thus concludes. During 15 years of military involvement, over 2 million Americans served in Vietnam with 500,000 seeing actual combat. 47,244 were killed in action, including 8000 airmen. There were 10,446 non-combat deaths. 153,329 were seriously wounded, including 10,000 amputees. Over 2400 American POWs/MIAs were unaccounted for as of 1973.

Today, Vietnam has become a tourist destination. French, Brits and yes, even Americans make the trip and trek post Tet. It's a land today still of rice paddies, ocean beaches and palm trees. The smells of foods and spices permeate the landscape and the open air markets, as the memories and the stench of Napalm and burning monks recedes from memory and fades into a distant past.

But remember in that shrouded past the final act as the curtain began to close...In 1975 South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh delivers an unconditional surrender to the Communists in the early hours of April 30. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin accepts the surrender and assures Minh that, "...Only the Americans have been beaten. If you are patriots, consider this a moment of joy." As the few remaining Americans evacuate Saigon, the last two US servicemen to die in Vietnam are killed when their helicopter crashes.

Mike didn't know all this at the time...all he did know is he didn't want to end up in a bodybag dying for a country that was no longer the beacon of freedom, but rather, the land of the Red, White and Screwed.

The Army Diaries - Chapter Five

The bugle blared, as the morning sun glared. Sleepy disoriented "new green troops" could only stare. Stare in disbelief .at one another, with each other amazed, in a foggy "your in the army now" kind of 5 a.m. haze. This haze however, not purple, contrary to the Gospel according to Hendrix, but a shabby grabby green, with jack boots and belt buckles of brass to hold up the pants that were yet to contain the balls of brass. "Maggots and faggots, that's what ya'll are...pussy fuckers and mother fuckers. Mommy's not here to jack you off assholes, you're in the army now, so get your ass out of bed and git yer ass outside in formation in five fucking minutes!" But Sarge, is that military time? Rushing into pants, thrusting into pants, mad dash race, pull on, lace up the storm trooper boots, ready for the Riechstag debutante ball and Goerings lipstick costume gala for brown shirts disguised as black shirts, not black panthers considered black shits by the boys in blue shirts.
A lineup of fresh groggy midwestern boy meat counting off in formation, at attention, then at ease, then you run a mile..Christ..a fucking mile at 5:15 a.m. are you nuts? Nope..not nuts, not joking..hit it pounding feet on the track, waking up with jarring motions and impacts on the ground, the wet angular morning sun in Kentucky begins to rise, a solar erection in the Kaintuck sky, as you feel the humidity already, a portent of things to come in the form of muggy and wet, enough so as to soak your uniform uniformly through and through, the soggy bedsheets of a heroin addicted hooker in New Orleans in peak August with sweat and cum mixing it up in an exotic umbrella drink for the offbeat and offcenter.
Back into formation, now, exhaling hard and breathing hard but alas...the cry of freedom..."Smoke 'em if you got 'em" ...hell yeah, Chesterfields and Kools, and Viceroys and Marlboro, you could almost tell where a cat was from by the smokes that emerged from his pocket. Midwesterners prefered filterless, while blacks prefered highly mentholated smokes that pave the passageway to the gates of hell or lungs in this case, the vernacular of the smoker. Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette. Mike wondered if there were a platoon of Viet Cong somewhere deep in the jungles of Vietnam lighting up and smoking cigarettes before they get their day started killing American boys, as the American boys wake up ready to kill Vietnamese boys in a never ending round robin of dodge ball with bullets made in America, however, unlike dodgeball, where everybody jumps into the shower at the end of the game to clean up and get ready for the next class, in Vietnam, class would be dismissed and death does not allow for makeup exams. No college...no family in your future...as for a passing grade? Death equates to an "F" stuffed into a bodybag..also made in America with a young lifeless form from Montana...born in America, but died in Vietnam.
After the quick smoke which followed the quick one mile Seabiscuit run around the cinder laden track, you jump back into the barracks, a human jack in the barracks box. Popping up on command, a khaki clown with a wind up crank. Time to shower and shave now, 5:40 a.m. as you pack ten or so into the shower, more naked than in gym class..what is it about group living that they want you naked in groups at all times? Watch that guy over there if he gets a hardon in the shower, don't drop the soap, get soap on a rope.
Chow..chew...chow. Sloppin' the hogs is what it is. Lot of the kids from Georgia and Alabama, cotton pickers all with hands worn deep with ruts from the plow leaving tell tale marks, but Gawd, them boys could shoot a squirrel out of a a tree at 300 yards and have it land skinned into the kettle, or kittle as they call it in the hollar, or hollow, sleepy or otherwise, in the moonshine forests of the backwoods of the woods out back with people named "Pappy" and such guard the brew, real hillbilly sorcerers apprenti' from a fantastic Disney "Fantasia" cartoon still. Alchemist of the Rosicrucian order, mixing Zoraster with Protestantism, and watching the vine of the wild rose wrap around the cross on a riverbank near St. Croix. Breakfast, like all the meals consisted of mystery gruel that could be anything, the military cranium could dream up. More liquid in form, than solid it barely filled you up, but no matter as youd be working it off anyway in formation marching, bivouac, PT tests, diarhea, vomiting, a hand drill opening your colon or a bullet opening up your chest from a sniper high in a tree with scope near Da Nang. So what the hell, what did it matter. It was a cruel reminder of your civilian days, cruising the drive-in with a promise of greasy burgers and greasier pussy in the backseat if you got lucky. Both had a distinct taste of their own, and magic. You were in Ft. Knox know, greasy burgers are all that are in your immediate future..as for pussy? Forgettabout it. That would be awhile so just whack off in your bunk like the bunk punk above you does every night to the memory of his girl back home.
The level of academic excretions expressed by the military was as atrophied as a sumo wrestlers balls, and at the very least, amateur at best. Misplaced pronouns, misuse and abuse of adjectives, verbs minus ad's and the constant use of the word and variations of the word "Fuck." I never knew the word was so diverse.
Fuck you...Fuck This....Fuck That..Fuckin' this and that, but the scariest was Fuck Me! Talk about an unwanted invitation..no, no, really I was just joking, put that thing back in your pants or go find someone else. Honest, I was only kidding..here, how about this, fuck you, yeah, thats it, yeah, fuck you....not me, ok, maybe him..yeah, go fuck him, or you, I don't care, just don't fuck me.
However, just ask one of these khaki hacks about bungle in the jungle survivaL in the bush...that's diffrent. These cats could save your life. Remember, kill or be killed is the military mantra. General Patton however summed it up succintly