Ha!

Copy that, Bop-O. I guess by 1970 everybody over there was an FNG for a while. (fuckin' new guy, for you civilians).

"DEROS" was the term for returning to the states at the end of the tour.

No DEROS Delta, meant that Delta Company didn't think they were going home, upright at least.

"Stacked Deck Delta" may have been 1/8th "Jumping Mustangs'" humorous sobriquet. It referred to the common suspicion among the grunts that their battalion commanders were punishing them for some wrong-doing by continually stacking the deck against them and moving their Delta Company to the top of of the list for the next combat assault.

Thanks for correcting me, Bopper. But Don't Tase Me Bro! I wasn't doin' nuthin! What did I do? What did I do? zzzzzzzt!

Thanks for the midi file, it cleared up a 30 year question of mine. I have always wondered what the tune was that Custer's bagpipes were playing in the film Little Big Man during the massacre scene. There is this scene where you see them standing stock still playing with the snow falling and the flames in the foreground.

I guess from your comments about the 7th cavalry, the film was accurate in that respect.

Hey, you weren't by any chance that sweet-looking blonde hippie girl in gingham skirt and work boots who threw eggs and rotten fruit at me from outside of the fence at the Oakland Overseas Replacement Center in 1969, were you?

Because if you were, I just wanted you to know, I would have much rather been outside that fence with you. I got drafted.

It hurt when you called me pig. (if it was you, that is).

Doesn't change the criminality of the smear, but it does compound the felony.

I was politically active mostly in high school (class of 69) with The Resistance and SDS.

my boyfriend and I left the country right after high school to avoid the draft (for him) ... and by the time we got back a lot of the peace movement had been gutted by nixon's "peace process."

I sure remember being picked up hitchhiking by recently returned vets -- in their new Mustangs -- they were just driving, driving and driving ... unable to stop ...

they had lots of money and a new car and no place to go.

cali is Polite! i wanted you to be *real* - Of Course i expected it! you went through Hell - how could you not get singed? i don't know if "expressing yourself", venting, helps. all i know is that "sweet" never rang true. a bit of the "creeps" but not really, what REALLY gave me the creeps was that "lack of affect" stuff that so many of my friends came back with. the best of them, the most empathetic, were the worst off. only the psychopaths returned unscathed ("it was me or him". end of story.) you've all been wounded. i wasn't - because i wasn't there. why shouldn't you use me as an (electronic) punching bag. it doesn't hurt. i expect it. and hell, it's the least i can do. P.S. i see you're still here. why not? you're always welcome.

You're welcome.

I think all 1st Cav people down through the century following, have regretted that the tune Garryowen had been usurped and co-opted by that one vain and pompous poser, G.A. Custer. The Little Bighorn incident was not the first time he attempted genocide on old men, the women, and the children left behind in camps. He did it in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma too. But thankfully, he tried it with the wrong bunch up in Eastern Montana and he lost his genitalia to the women of the tribe, who mocked it for a while and then fed it to the dogs.

But the song Garryowen was around a long time before Custer and a long time after.

Hollywood has yet to make the definitive movie of the Little Bighorn. I hope some producer finds it worthy of another look. Custer was a bigot and a murderer and a stain on the reputation of the U.S. Army.

I sure remember being picked up hitchhiking by recently returned vets -- in their new Mustangs -- they were just driving, driving and driving ... unable to stop ...

they had lots of money and a new car and no place to go.

-- susan sunflower

The Mustang didn't give us back the time or the innocence we lost. The food we loved as kids, served up to us when we came home, didn't taste as good as we remembered it. The girls we loved and longed to see again were different when we came back.

It's like we got chipped out of a glacier and woke up in a parallel universe where everything was almost the same, but not quite. It was slightly out of kilter in a way we couldn't quite define.

We bought Mustangs. We chased women. We got married and divorced. We got drunk, did drugs, got in bar fights, went to jail. We found Jesus. We dropped Jesus and got cynical. We committed suicide. We went blank. We turned to mysticism. We turned away from mysticism. We kept, as you said, driving and driving and driving, but could never get back to the starting point, or to the end.

And then after decades, we started to figure it all out, if we stayed alive long enough to survive all those things: Everything just is what it is.

If you want to live, learn to let it be.

The difference?

The Petreaus ad ASKED A QUESTION -- DID (or WILL) the general betray us?

FOX news doesn't ask, it throws down in no uncertain terms (the way a bunch of neocon tough talking heads who somehow never managed to serve in the military can) that THOSE GENERALS WHO WOULD INTERFERE WITH OUR LINE SOLDIERS' RIGHT TO COMMIT WAR CRIMES are TRAITORS.

This is a more or less traditional kind of military crime.

In post-truce Korea, it was a way to break the monotony of guard duty -- Marines in the towers on the DMZ would wave cartons of cigarettes to N. Koreans on the other side, wave to them cheerily, in a friendly fashion to cross the Deadline, as if to say "Come on -- we know you're not a spy or a soldier, just some poor farmer."

And -- according to my fencing partner in college, the ex-Marine who told me about what he and the other guards used to do to relieve the boredom, would, of course, blow the peasant away as soon as he took one step into the free-fire zone of the DMZ. (I didn't go into combat when my turn came around, although we DID shoot across the estuary at the sailors when doing guard duty at MCRD San Diego. But they were armed and did the same to us.)

It was criminal behavior then and it's criminal behavior now. But in the age of cell-phones and other video cameras, we're seeing an evolutionary imperative in war crimes -- ONLY the more intelligent thoughtful criminal will be able to get away with it. (Hey, Nixon was a smart guy, but he didn't understand how tape recorders and Xerox machines changed the crook's universe.)

Fox news' problem? They don't go HIGH ENOUGH UP THE CHAIN OF COMMAND to point the finger and call it treason -- like all the way to the Commander-in-Chief. (Because he's one of THEIR boys.)