From: spike66 (spike66@ATTBI.com)
Date: Sun Apr 07 2002 - 11:21:06 MDT
>Damien Broderick wrote: Spike, ...I don't recall there being any
>Italian, German, British, Latvian, Greek, Belgian or even French soldiers
>fighting alongside the Yanks. That was left to the poor bloody duped
>Aussies (which, you'll recall, is a fact that you'd never heard until I
>chanced to mention it to you, which makes even more bitterly ironic the
>supposed rationale for Australian involvement: that we were *helping our
>friends across the Pacific*, who would *never forget our brotherly
>sacrifice*. Sigh.) Damien Broderick
>
Ja. My inexcusable ignorance of the Australians role in the
VietNam on my part is something for which I blame myself
and the fact that our own country was deeply divided. Ive
always thought of Australia as one of those countries
like Switzerland and Canada that never gets into it with
anyone.
During the entire conflict, my elementary school years, I
never recall the war or any aspect of it ever being mentioned
in school, even tho many of my fellow students had relatives
involved. At the peak of the conflict, 68-69 time frame,
we were being fed a pile of info about Samuel Gompers
and how great labor unions were. Never had we been
told about either of the world wars, who participated,
not a word about what happened in Korea, nothing about
why we were at war in Viet Nam or who participated.
We were eventually taught all about the American Civil
war. Grant and Lee were politically safe.
Unless a child took some special interest in war, which
I did not, that child was raised in complete ignorance of
twentieth century conflict. The inexcusable part is that
I had two uncles involved in that and one perished, not
on the battlefield but of cancer a few years later. spike
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