Christian Appy's Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam

The Vietnam War that commenced on November 1, 1955, and ended on April 30, 1975, took the soldiers through a devastating experience. Many lost their lives while others maimed as the war unfolded into its full magnitude. The book Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam by Bernard Edelman presents a series of letters written by the soldiers to their loved ones and families narrating the ordeals and experiences in the Warfield. In the book, Edelman presents the narrations of over 200 letters reflecting the soldiers’ experiences on the battlefield. While the letters were written many decades ago, they hold great significance as they can mirror the periods and the contexts within which they were sent. This paper takes into account five letters from different timelines and analyzes them against the events that occurred in those periods vis a vis their significance. The conclusion will also have a personal opinion and observation regarding the book and its impacts.

In Kyle Longley’s, The Morenci Marines, nine young Morenci boys took the call to duty, not knowing that only three will return from the warzone of Vietnam. These boys, some Native American, Mexican American, and Caucasian, joined the fight in Vietnam despite their social, racial, and economic differences. Although the nine men are from a small mining town in Morenci, Arizona, the Vietnam War consisted of, in the words of Mike Cranford, “a lower middle class war,” fueled by small towns all around the United States (Longley, 246). Many of these men felt the call to battle and the will to fight, which had been engrained in their heritage and gave these men the right to be Americans. Aiding the war effort came from countless small American town

In Kyle Longley’s, The Morenci Marines, nine young Morenci boys took the call to duty, not knowing that only three will return from the warzone of Vietnam. These boys, some of who were Native American, Mexican American, and Caucasian, joined the fight in Vietnam despite their social, racial, and economic differences. Although the nine men are from a small mining town in Morenci, Arizona, the Vietnam War was, in the words of Mike Cranford, “a lower middle class war,” that was fueled by small towns all around the United States (Longley, 246). Many of these men felt the call to battle and the will to fight, which was engrained in their heritage and gave these men the right to be Americans. Small town America, mostly lower class, was looked upon to aid the war effort with countless men, where as the rest of the nation, the upper to middle class college educated students, were protesting the war and they believed that it was unjust.

For countless of people today, the Vietnam war is just something from the past, but for Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam War will endlessly be with him. This one year in Vietnam changes the lives of this platoon from emotional pain, physical pain, as well as muscle pain will commence to cloud their vision. The weight of the things that they carried takes great effect on them that they have to continue to endure on this one year trip in Vietnam and remember these memories for the rest of their lives..

This report aims to find and discuss about the problems that the Vietnamese war veterans face and at the end there will be ways that can help, how they were treated and viewed by their fellow countrymen when they returned back home. How did it impact Countries/governments and who protested against the Vietnam War. All these question will be answered on the main paragraphs bellow.

Imagine one day you receive a mail from the government that you been draft to go a war at a different country. How would you feel if you know that purpose of this war is unreasonable in any senses? Angry, anxious or even confused. Vietnam War was “a personal failure on a national scale” (Hochgesang). There are many videos, documents and movies about the Vietnam War that show different angles of the Vietnam veterans’ experience and how the war really changes their life. In “The Things They Carried” written by Tim O’Brien, he argues about how the Vietnam War affect the soldiers in many ways, not only physically, but more important is the psychological effects before, during and after the war.

Wars are a difficult place to be. “THE VIETNAM WAR transformed a generation” (Roberts 1). With all that happened during the war such as exposure to

From one perspective war has always been the same, technology may improve or philosophies may change, but wars are started by those in power and fought by the poor. The results now may be somewhat different from 1775, post-Revolutionary war time with rebellions like Shay’s Rebellion, but the various reasons for the poor to join the military have stayed relatively the same.

20) O’Brien tells how these young men were drafted which were constantly in fear, they wished to be there obliviously but war takes up all of one’s attention; it played a big role in their life, changing their tactics, personality and becoming a new person. O’Brien uses this to show the stressful moments in war where one has pressure to be alive and in this case to fit in with everyone else and feel part of something, in a lonely place such as the war.

Not every man who 's fought in a war planned on doing so. In fact, not all of them even want to. It 's rare to find enough people voluntarily willing to lay down their lives for their country, so more often than not militaries used what we would call “citizen soldiers.” Citizen soldiers are exactly what they sound like, regular citizens taken from society and turned into people capable of serving in the military. Although it may seem obvious when plainly written out, citizen soldiers had vastly different experiences compared to career soldiers, and Stephen Ambrose attempted to pin down that specific experience in his book Citizen Soldier. Ambrose uses oral interviews from World War II veterans and other materials to explain the experiences of the common American soldier who served in WWII between D-Day and the eventual surrender of the German forces. However, when examining his book, it 's important to ask how successful Ambrose was in painting an accurate picture of this kind of soldier 's life during his service. Is the information he uses specific to the men who served in Europe, or can it also be linked back to the soldiers in the Pacific? This paper will evaluate his work by comparing it to oral interviews from WWII veterans both from the same areas that Ambrose 's veterans serve in and in locations not included in his work.

A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo shows the hard work and difficult tasks the men had to go through to prove themselves and protect their country. The war will change the men’s attitudes and the way they do everything. Men made sacrifices in the Vietnam War most people would never make in a lifetime, they will not just sacrifice but push themselves physically harder than most any other men. The men will also emotionally change from constantly watching other men die, or killing other men. The mens first kill was always the hardest for them, mentally they had so many thoughts of the other mans close ones back home and what they would go through and how it would be all their fault. Men went through so many tasks during the Vietnam War physically and mentally.

The Vietnam War was a psychological and physical battle for all the young men who were drafted or volunteered. Caputo's own reasons for volunteering illustrate the mentality for some of the men entering into this journey. Those who are inducted into Vietnam face disturbing moral dilemmas that can be expected in an "ethical wilderness." The draft introduced a myriad of young men to the once forgotten moral ambiguity of war. Average American citizens must balance right from wrong in a world without morals or meaning. Caputo himself struggles with the idea that killing in combat is morally justified.

I have always been interested in the Vietnam War and the results of “the longest war in America.” Therefore, I have decided to examine the social attitudes toward Vietnam veterans. Since I feel so passionately about the way that Vietnam veterans are viewed, the purpose of my paper is to inform others about the way that the veterans have been criticized and misrepresented. Personally, I hope to gain a further understanding of the attitudes and views towards Vietnam veterans, especially since my father is a veteran. After reading my paper, I hope that my audience will walk away with more respect and reverence for those that fought in the Vietnam War and gave their lives for their country. My

Vietnam was an unforgettable time period for the United States. With the first true loss in combat for the seemingly invincible U.S. army, along with the massive unpopular support towards the war effort, the war itself was quite unique. Event such as Kent State will be a forever healing wound in the United States flesh, but furthermore the gruesome and treacherous experiences of the soldiers themselves in the war left a lasting impact on the psychological “baggage” carried by these soldiers during and even later on after the war when returning back home. Although the battle may have been left behind in Vietnam, the emotional and psychological damage that the soldiers endured sheds light on the the soldiers’ loss of purpose and a deep depression

We see three men lying under a blanket, each with a different set of characteristics. The old man with his graying hair and sunken eyes, the young boy just experiencing the first blush of manhood and finally the young man in his prime. The first layer of this scene exhibits the broad swath of age that the military required to fight the war. This wasn't today's army of twenty-year-old soldiers. This was an army whose enlisted ranks ranged from very old to very young.