A close family friend who had been very active supporting our local member of the House of Representatives asked him to appoint me to a military academy. The Navy in May or June of 1962 cultured some whitish skin on my fingers, proclaimed me fungus-vulnerable, and flunked me at my candidate physical. Six years later my brother passed his physical, for the Army.
(Side note: the Congressman told this friend “her chit had been canceled” or in other words all of her decades of service were now accounted for as a fully repaid debt. She was less than thrilled to be treated in such a capitalist manner by her beloved Democrat.)
My brother left at the two-year point, where the Army provides a built-in self selection for exit. The Army requires a given personality type, and he wasn’t ‘there’ for it. He finished school, by the way, on the GI bill because in those years we were bringing home thousands of boys in body bags from Viet Nam.
DURING HIS SECOND YEAR he was allowed to take his military haircut to off-campus social functions; if you think Kermit’s song “It isn’t easy being green” is a tear jerker, it holds no candle to “It isn’t easy being a cadet at a Wellesley social function.” ‘Nuf sed.
He didn’t get spit at after returning with PTSD and memories of friends’ fatal injuries, or with wounds of his own. But even men in training to become military officers “got the treatment.”
The Left’s dishonor went even farther – we got out in 1973, promised the South Viet Namese military goods, then *r*e*n*e*g*e*d* and thank you Teddy Kennedy et al. Even so it took two more years before Saigon fell. It was a time of deep moral squalor on every side. Today’s crop of historians who tell a balanced tale are to be revered.
If you can find any.
Oh, and Another Thing 