13 months of C-Rats in the 'Nam 67-68. Showers sometimes. Hot water rarely. Wanted to get there until I got there, but never wrote home how bad the suck actually sucked because it was our job, we volunteered (the Corps was still volunteer when I enlisted) and looking back it was what it was. War.
What with a father and a couple of uncles who had a real long vacation in Europe in the '40s, the return letters wouldn't have been pretty. I'm sure the greatest generation knew the suck sucked, and chose not to complain. Seems like another piece of evidence that some people will blame everyone else for the results of their own decisions.
my grandfathers spent years gone from home in the 1940s. My dad and uncles in the 1960s. Me in the 1980s-2000s … and yeah, it’s the suck and if you don’t embrace it you won’t get through it. MREs in the desert in 1990 … not sure if I would prefer the desert or the jungle.
Great perspective. I served only in the Taxpayer Division but I’ve always figured if servicemen weren’t complaining it was time to check pulses. I’ve been reading Plutarch. There is nothing new under the sun.
If you poke around the internet enough you see that a lot of these statements come with the qualifiers "longest deployment since the Vietnam war". Or post WW II. I believe the longest deployment was in WW II of the Hornet. There were "landfalls" but from the Continental US to the Continental US was close to 500 days. And no internet or cell phones in those days.
I got on a plane on August 18, 1990 at Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah to fly to Saudi Arabia … ironically the anniversary of getting on a plane for basic training. I got on a plane on April 15, 1991 in Saudi Arabia to come home … also an ironic anniversary LOL …. 240 days on the nose …. about half the length of Hornet’s combat cruise. Those dudes had it hard.
Have any of the Lincoln's sailors complained about leeches crawling up their pants legs to their groin? Or the gift-bearing female Anopheles mosquitos? Do they have scorpions on aircraft carriers? And that's not to mention the periodic AK-47 fire from, maybe .... 30-50 feet away. But despite these occasional irritants I guess we had it good in Vietnam. After all, when I led a reconaissance platoon, we were pampered: Every 3 weeks or so we would get to a firebase and some of them actually gave us canvas buckets with a shower head on the bottom, all suspended from a pole. And we were spoiled -- spoiled, I tell you -- with a gallon of our very own personal water to pour in the bucket and bask in as it attempted to clean our dirty, stinky bodies. But I never heard of those showers backing up or not working. Not once. And the shower heads were perfectly machined to allow a continuous flow of water -- for at least 50 seconds or so. AND, you may not believe this, but I can say with 100% certainty that we never lost e-mail connectivity a single time! Not once. So, I can feel theise poor swabbies' pain.
13 months of C-Rats in the 'Nam 67-68. Showers sometimes. Hot water rarely. Wanted to get there until I got there, but never wrote home how bad the suck actually sucked because it was our job, we volunteered (the Corps was still volunteer when I enlisted) and looking back it was what it was. War.
What with a father and a couple of uncles who had a real long vacation in Europe in the '40s, the return letters wouldn't have been pretty. I'm sure the greatest generation knew the suck sucked, and chose not to complain. Seems like another piece of evidence that some people will blame everyone else for the results of their own decisions.
my grandfathers spent years gone from home in the 1940s. My dad and uncles in the 1960s. Me in the 1980s-2000s … and yeah, it’s the suck and if you don’t embrace it you won’t get through it. MREs in the desert in 1990 … not sure if I would prefer the desert or the jungle.
Great perspective. I served only in the Taxpayer Division but I’ve always figured if servicemen weren’t complaining it was time to check pulses. I’ve been reading Plutarch. There is nothing new under the sun.
as I told junior NCOs as a senior one …. you can tell there’s a problem once a soldier stops bitching ;-)
If you poke around the internet enough you see that a lot of these statements come with the qualifiers "longest deployment since the Vietnam war". Or post WW II. I believe the longest deployment was in WW II of the Hornet. There were "landfalls" but from the Continental US to the Continental US was close to 500 days. And no internet or cell phones in those days.
I got on a plane on August 18, 1990 at Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah to fly to Saudi Arabia … ironically the anniversary of getting on a plane for basic training. I got on a plane on April 15, 1991 in Saudi Arabia to come home … also an ironic anniversary LOL …. 240 days on the nose …. about half the length of Hornet’s combat cruise. Those dudes had it hard.
Plus you didn't have to worry about getting seasick. So advantage there!
heh, you've never been on a tank moving across the desert I see!
No, you got me on that one.
we had a new lieutenant discover that he was susceptible to seasickness .... ended up taking a lot of dramamine.
Have any of the Lincoln's sailors complained about leeches crawling up their pants legs to their groin? Or the gift-bearing female Anopheles mosquitos? Do they have scorpions on aircraft carriers? And that's not to mention the periodic AK-47 fire from, maybe .... 30-50 feet away. But despite these occasional irritants I guess we had it good in Vietnam. After all, when I led a reconaissance platoon, we were pampered: Every 3 weeks or so we would get to a firebase and some of them actually gave us canvas buckets with a shower head on the bottom, all suspended from a pole. And we were spoiled -- spoiled, I tell you -- with a gallon of our very own personal water to pour in the bucket and bask in as it attempted to clean our dirty, stinky bodies. But I never heard of those showers backing up or not working. Not once. And the shower heads were perfectly machined to allow a continuous flow of water -- for at least 50 seconds or so. AND, you may not believe this, but I can say with 100% certainty that we never lost e-mail connectivity a single time! Not once. So, I can feel theise poor swabbies' pain.
next time I write one of these, I'm just turning it over to you!