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Thing is, brother Sarge, I didn't serve. I was a "draft-tweener" born in 1958. Still, I knew enough SE Asia heroes to understand their specific sacrifice. Folks like Kinzer look at flying to Hong Kong for 2 weeks as their sacrifice. Hillary sees her (faux) dodging of snipper fire as a sacrifice. They have NO CLUE what our soldiers ^sacrificed^. It was more than missed births, more than missed birthdays, more than unattended parent funerals (those are what the journalists appear to consider sacrifices!). Here's sacrifice no-one talks of but is real: Walking into a rice paddy and freezing after hearing what sounds like the click of a mine under your foot (older brother of my best friend in High School)...or was it just a twig? Clearing a collection of huts (AKA: Viet Village) and facing down a VC using his wife as a war-shield (another acquaintance). He convinced the opposing soldier to surrender, being lucky enough to have learned the proper phrases in French-Viet. There are, literally, thousands of anecdotes available for these so-called-journalists to access, yet they choose to remain ignorant.

Here’s an “anecdote” you can add to your collection:

The other day at the office, one of my co-workers asked me how it was that I served multiple tours in Vietnam as a combat infantryman and I didn’t get PTSD. My rather flippant answer was “I didn’t get PTSD in Vietnam, I gave it.”

However, this PTSD question made me wonder what PTSD is and what the symptoms are, so I did a little research on the subject and found that I did indeed possess symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) concerning a traumatic and very stressful incident that occurred during my last tour in Vietnam. I was a professional soldier when the traumatic incident occurred and had accumulated over six years in Vietnam engaged occasionally in close combat with a vicious and cunningly capable enemy, but the traumatic event wasn’t as a result of close combat with this enemy.

One day when I was totally focused on closing with and destroying the enemy, something caught my eye, I looked around and found a new enemy had unexpectedly appeared behind me; it was the American people. The same Democrat Party who had originally sent me to Vietnam promising that, “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty,” had now sided with the Communists I was fighting. They were parading in the streets of the United States under a Viet Cong flag, were quoting from Mao’s Red Book, and were spitting on and flinging insults at returning Vietnam Veterans. Then, a Democrat led Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War, American combat troops were withdrawn and we abandoned a valiant ally to their fate.

I was ordered out of the country in 1972, and when I arrived at Travis Air Force Base, purposely in the dark of the night, I was advised to change out of my uniform and put on civilian clothing to avoid being attacked by the American people when I entered San Francisco. I wasn’t at all surprised when a few decades later these same people elected a Marxist-Communist as President of what was once my country.

Yes, the deep, burning hatred I feel for the Democrat Party to this day could be diagnosed as a symptom of PTSD, and I assure you, every Vietnam Veteran I know feels the same way.