I Choked On My Cherrios
I Choked On My Cherrios
I Choked On My Cherrios
As she rambled on with newsworthy tidbits, out of the blue, she quoted a
statistic about the Vietnam “War” that startled me, made me choke on my
Cheerios: “Of the 56,000 dead American soldiers and more than 100,000
wounded in Vietnam, the casualties of that aborted mission, 70% of them
were wounded or killed by mines. And 90% of the mines were defective
United States’ military ordnance.” Fake news? Fallacious news? Jane Fonda
propaganda? I was stunned.
Another problem for artillery rounds was still another complexity. The
weather. In the Central Highlands, one of the most infested mosquito areas
in the world—we had to take two salt tablets to keep from fainting in the
45°C heat—the muggy conditions, along with defective maps, threw off
target the projectiles making them land where they should not have without
exploding. At times 30-40% of the projectiles just did not detonate. More
booby traps for the enemy. More profit for Wall Street, no? Am I wrong?
* * *
Suppose you are a grunt assigned to the 11 th Infantry Brigade to search out
and destroy the enemy of the United States of America. You and your friend
from high school had decided to join the Army because you couldn’t find a
job near your own community. The Army recruiting sergeant told you your
chances of going to Vietnam were almost nil, and that you could be
stationed in Hawaii or Europe after your basic training. You call your friend,
your “buddy.” Your buddy and you are joined together such as Siamese
twins are. You are never separated from each other except for the five
meters soldiers in single file maneuvers are expected to do. You sleep
together in the same “hootch,” a tent made out of the two ponchos you
carry during the day.
All of a sudden, one of you steps on a mine. It blows at the leg of your
friend wounding him terribly. You scream for a medic. He comes, he injects
your buddy with morphine. He calls for a Medivac helicopter. ASAP! This is
an emergency! Over and out! There are not always Lieutenant Russell’s
available to beat the Medivac to the aid station.
Now what do your comrades and you think about this event that has already
taken place many times before? Do you, with your IQ in the low 80s
(Genetic Engineering), you who are basically amoral, think a My Lai reprisal
might convince the Vietnamese to stop planting mines forever? Vietnamese
people who are at the mercy of the Americans by day, and America’s enemy
by night?
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