Devastating. Made me think of my father who drove a bulldozer across Europe in World War 2 and would not get his Canadian uniform out of the trunk to march on this day, or go down to the Legion to reminisce with the boys. Ever. Or my two grandfathers who both served in the World War 1 . One took a shotgun out into the orchard and blew his head off when I was a baby; the other died of a drinking-related illness when I was five. Both left their mental health on Flanders fields.
How can anyone not leave their mental health on a battlefield? I can't even imagine the horror.
And that had to be rough for you, too, because who can really leave a war, entirely? Do you ever wonder what your dad would have been like, if he hadn't had those experiences? I know that I have wondered that about my dad.
Well, I wonder what anyone would be like with different experiences but that is an alternate reality, not this one, which is composed of all the experiences we blundered into one way or another, by being born. My dad was a good, kind man but undoubtedly a little bit shell shocked by his entire life, not just the war. Like so many of us.
My dad was a very decent person as well. He had some quirks, to be sure. Patrolling the house in the pitch dark every night, never allowing us to have a curtain open in the house with a light on inside, and a general over-vigilance were not hard to live with for the family. He probably drank more than he would have otherwise.
Of course there's no knowing his inner experience of it all.
Back then, at 18 I could serve as cannon fodder for the bankers and the MIC, but I couldn't vote.
But I got lucky, twice. Then later, not so lucky. First, I was lucky enough to come of age after the draft lottery came into effect. Second, I was lucky enough to have lottery numbers that kept me from being drafted the three years I was eligible.
My next older brother enlisted in the marines and came back a different person. Could have been all the vaccines he was required to take.
I just took one during that time, a flu shot that was mandatory my freshman year in college ('71). I got a bad case of pneumonia from it that lasted for months and left me wondering if I might have been better off serving as cannon fodder in Viet Nam for the MIC and the bankers.
We must be about the same age. My birth date, July 9th was the first one drawn but I was 17 the first year of the lottery. I had a brother over there and one drafted but kept stateside. The brother there had enlisted and was in Germany working in a motor pool. There he had a split rim wheel fail and received a head injury. When he got out of the hospital he was sent to Vietnam still in a motor pool. He made it home but the injury was there festering and he had to have an emergency brain surgery but never recovered and died. While not on the memorial wall he probably wouldn't have died except for the war and the need for cannon fodder. I see all these "kids" coming back missing limbs and the country singer wanting us to donate to the wounded warrior project and I see the stories of Vietnam all over again. It is too bad they bought in to the "kick the world's ass" lies.
Our Vietnam Vets have never received the compassion they deserve. Every Veteran's Day it's them I pause to think about. There's no way I can even begin to know or understand what it's like for any soldier on the field of battle or in a war zone, but Mr. Hooper's experience, and that of millions like him, breaks my heart. This is a compelling and needed post. Thank you.
"We all fell off a Norman Rockwell calendar and into a bankers’ war. It never occurred to us that the government would lie to start a war." Most important line; all wars are bankers wars. That is the reality in which we have lived, almost forever.
Thank you for sharing this heart wrenching story. Born in 1943, I'm of the Vietnam generation. Fortunately, I volunteered for 6 months active duty in 1961, and served the balance of my reserve enlistment without being called back to active duty. Still, I bought the domino theory, which to this day seems credible to me. U.N. and (mostly) U.S. troops tried to stop a full communist takeover of all of Korea and succeeded. It seemed therefore logical to stop the communist advance in Vietnam. In 1968, I almost reupped as an Air Force pilot, but thankfully didn't. I don't believe every politician supporting the Vietnam war did so for cynical, self-interest. Likely they were genuinely concerned about the spread of communism, which in fact was a cruel ideology for the people that suffered under it. I don't believe anyone, other than the politically well-connected, would have chosen to live in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or Fidel's Cuba, given an alternative.
All these decades later, any idealism I once held for defending "democracy and freedom" abroad, has entirely vanished. I don't believe recent US involvement abroad has more than a shred of sincerity. Unfortunately, however, patriotism is still a hot seller, and too many innocents fall for the scam. From now on I suggest letting the vocal warmongers put their money where their mouths are. Let them fight it out amongst themselves and leave us alone.
First I hope this isn't taken the wrong way. I am not trying to minimize what anyone of that era endured at the hands of their fellow citizens. As a veteran of oif/oef/New Dawn I share a kinship with other veterans of all eras.
So here goes my run on sentence.
I see similarity's in your opening paragraph between nam vets being ostracized on their return from a war they didn't ask for and a government that hung them out to dry and myself and many others being a members of the unjabbed club being called murderers, & it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated etc...
There seems to be a pattern playing out in this regard. I just thought it was a curious coincidence.
Such a vital piece of writing, Margaret, to republish. It will haunt me, the low-tech war before the drones made it bloodless--on our side. I don't know what we're sliding into but it's taking all I've got spiritually to see it ending well. I so appreciate you keeping war real for all of the armchair Rambos.
My dad and his brother shipped off to Vietnam. He told me it took years to readjust to normal life - as if there is such a thing after that. Over the years he’s told me fleeting stories, awful, horrific scenarios that seem impossible, unimaginable, yet are very much real. I don’t ever ask him to divulge, just listen when he decides to share. Unlike Frank Hooper “Fleabaggs,” my father was able to acclimate to civilian life and family with no noticeable difficulties or struggles. But if one thing is certain, my father can bear the weight of the world on his shoulders and you’d never know. He was born in Queens and is as tough as nails. He’s softened over the years for sure, and in these tumultuous times he has become my one constant. Thank god we see eye to eye. MAA - thank you for this meaningful post on a most meaningful day. Frank Hooper mattered, his words and deeds matter. All Veterans matter. We are no longer in the dark, grasping for freedom with every fiber of our being. ♥️🇺🇸
I met a vet once who came to speak at a My Lai event I was running. He had the same haunted look as Frank did, these men of war who returned with their souls crushed, cursed to walk the earth trying to convince we should never lift arms against one another and falling on deaf ears, meeting apathetic eyes. He hated the “thank you for your service” line above all.
Thank you for sharing this moving article. And thank you for the boost. But most of all, thank you for playing your part in waking humanity. It’s not an easy job, but somebody’s gotta do it. 🙏
Re: TYFYS, I won't speak for the vet you encountered but as for me the phrase evokes a range of emotions. A mix between anger and jealousy. Coming from a vet, there's a knowing that we both laid it on the line. From a civilian contempt turns to pity then to jealousy. Pity for them they don't share the bond that comes from being under fire with someone and coming out the other side of it. Jealousy having learned how utterly corrupt, contemptible and evil my government is and realizing we were used as pawns to do their evil bidding. Killing people, destroying lives under the guise of national security. All the while my government is picking these fights all over the globe to further some money and power grab. I really thought we were the good guys yet all the while we were the bad guys. It makes me sick to my stomach. So when I hear "thank you for your service" all I'm capable of is a snide "your welcome" while choking back what I really want to say.
Heartbreaking, but beautiful writing. I was married to a Recon Marine who took his own life, leaving me and our 3 & 5 year old behind. He used to tell me "stories" about his deployments. I found them difficult to believe at the time. I now know they were all true. His suicide took me down the war rabbit hole. I'll never forgive the "bankers" and their allies who fund the MIC and destroy lives.
Thank you. Yes, it was devastating for the children at the time. My son and daughter are in their 20s now are doing well, but still have issues with their dad's death.
It's good to hear that you children have grown and survived the experience. You must be a very strong and loving mom. You must all have gone through hell.
God bless you for keeping them and yourself safe through all of it!
was very young but felt the foreboding darkness of the nightly horrific visuals narrated by Walter Cronkite on our B&W TV… followed by the chipper sing song ad jingles for Virginia Slims cigarettes ‘you’ve come a long way baby’, brokerage accounts ‘you look like you just heard from Dean Witter’… Jane Fonda’s theatrics and the subhuman treatment of our returning Veterans… Never Forget.
Moving. We had some insight of this with various motion pictures that were made to be novels but we know instinctively much if it is true. Even as a youngster, the leveling of Dresden and the dropping of the two bombs on Japan has bothered me. The birth of the woke moment is a nifty way to divert hatred against the country. It is easy to hate the country for slavery but difficult to accept the evil committed in the name of modern war. If the woke energy was fixed on the evil of government war, we would be better off. We know why the burn loot murder ecosystem never protests war. The Psyops knows what to do by manipulating the mind of the masses. But the machine lives on by giving billions of fiat money to Ukraine. Funny (not) how both parties have no problem fueling that war. We never see Antifa protesting wars. We know in the name of democracy (!) the machine has tinkered in many nations with regime change. It is bad.
Devastating. Made me think of my father who drove a bulldozer across Europe in World War 2 and would not get his Canadian uniform out of the trunk to march on this day, or go down to the Legion to reminisce with the boys. Ever. Or my two grandfathers who both served in the World War 1 . One took a shotgun out into the orchard and blew his head off when I was a baby; the other died of a drinking-related illness when I was five. Both left their mental health on Flanders fields.
I'm so sorry, Isha.
Three men out of millions and three of the lucky ones. At least when they came home they were treated like heroes, unlike the vietnam vets.
How can anyone not leave their mental health on a battlefield? I can't even imagine the horror.
And that had to be rough for you, too, because who can really leave a war, entirely? Do you ever wonder what your dad would have been like, if he hadn't had those experiences? I know that I have wondered that about my dad.
Well, I wonder what anyone would be like with different experiences but that is an alternate reality, not this one, which is composed of all the experiences we blundered into one way or another, by being born. My dad was a good, kind man but undoubtedly a little bit shell shocked by his entire life, not just the war. Like so many of us.
So very true.
My dad was a very decent person as well. He had some quirks, to be sure. Patrolling the house in the pitch dark every night, never allowing us to have a curtain open in the house with a light on inside, and a general over-vigilance were not hard to live with for the family. He probably drank more than he would have otherwise.
Of course there's no knowing his inner experience of it all.
My brother took it harder, I'm pretty sure.
If you're fighting a war in someone else's country, you're an aggressor.
I absolutely agree. But draft dodging wasn't a thing in the 1st World War!
Back then, at 18 I could serve as cannon fodder for the bankers and the MIC, but I couldn't vote.
But I got lucky, twice. Then later, not so lucky. First, I was lucky enough to come of age after the draft lottery came into effect. Second, I was lucky enough to have lottery numbers that kept me from being drafted the three years I was eligible.
My next older brother enlisted in the marines and came back a different person. Could have been all the vaccines he was required to take.
I just took one during that time, a flu shot that was mandatory my freshman year in college ('71). I got a bad case of pneumonia from it that lasted for months and left me wondering if I might have been better off serving as cannon fodder in Viet Nam for the MIC and the bankers.
And folks wonder why I'm antiwar and antivaxx.
We must be about the same age. My birth date, July 9th was the first one drawn but I was 17 the first year of the lottery. I had a brother over there and one drafted but kept stateside. The brother there had enlisted and was in Germany working in a motor pool. There he had a split rim wheel fail and received a head injury. When he got out of the hospital he was sent to Vietnam still in a motor pool. He made it home but the injury was there festering and he had to have an emergency brain surgery but never recovered and died. While not on the memorial wall he probably wouldn't have died except for the war and the need for cannon fodder. I see all these "kids" coming back missing limbs and the country singer wanting us to donate to the wounded warrior project and I see the stories of Vietnam all over again. It is too bad they bought in to the "kick the world's ass" lies.
There are far to many stories like yours.
The only site that makes no exceptions is antiwar.com.
Our Vietnam Vets have never received the compassion they deserve. Every Veteran's Day it's them I pause to think about. There's no way I can even begin to know or understand what it's like for any soldier on the field of battle or in a war zone, but Mr. Hooper's experience, and that of millions like him, breaks my heart. This is a compelling and needed post. Thank you.
"We all fell off a Norman Rockwell calendar and into a bankers’ war. It never occurred to us that the government would lie to start a war." Most important line; all wars are bankers wars. That is the reality in which we have lived, almost forever.
Such a great post Margaret, thank you for all you do!
💜
Thank you for sharing this heart wrenching story. Born in 1943, I'm of the Vietnam generation. Fortunately, I volunteered for 6 months active duty in 1961, and served the balance of my reserve enlistment without being called back to active duty. Still, I bought the domino theory, which to this day seems credible to me. U.N. and (mostly) U.S. troops tried to stop a full communist takeover of all of Korea and succeeded. It seemed therefore logical to stop the communist advance in Vietnam. In 1968, I almost reupped as an Air Force pilot, but thankfully didn't. I don't believe every politician supporting the Vietnam war did so for cynical, self-interest. Likely they were genuinely concerned about the spread of communism, which in fact was a cruel ideology for the people that suffered under it. I don't believe anyone, other than the politically well-connected, would have chosen to live in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or Fidel's Cuba, given an alternative.
All these decades later, any idealism I once held for defending "democracy and freedom" abroad, has entirely vanished. I don't believe recent US involvement abroad has more than a shred of sincerity. Unfortunately, however, patriotism is still a hot seller, and too many innocents fall for the scam. From now on I suggest letting the vocal warmongers put their money where their mouths are. Let them fight it out amongst themselves and leave us alone.
First I hope this isn't taken the wrong way. I am not trying to minimize what anyone of that era endured at the hands of their fellow citizens. As a veteran of oif/oef/New Dawn I share a kinship with other veterans of all eras.
So here goes my run on sentence.
I see similarity's in your opening paragraph between nam vets being ostracized on their return from a war they didn't ask for and a government that hung them out to dry and myself and many others being a members of the unjabbed club being called murderers, & it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated etc...
There seems to be a pattern playing out in this regard. I just thought it was a curious coincidence.
I’ve heard this parallel before.
Thank you.
I personally think that the CIA is the common link.
They've been out of control since Eisenhower.
I think you mean “in control” ;-)
Indeed!
Curious, both statements are true. 😉
Such a vital piece of writing, Margaret, to republish. It will haunt me, the low-tech war before the drones made it bloodless--on our side. I don't know what we're sliding into but it's taking all I've got spiritually to see it ending well. I so appreciate you keeping war real for all of the armchair Rambos.
My dad and his brother shipped off to Vietnam. He told me it took years to readjust to normal life - as if there is such a thing after that. Over the years he’s told me fleeting stories, awful, horrific scenarios that seem impossible, unimaginable, yet are very much real. I don’t ever ask him to divulge, just listen when he decides to share. Unlike Frank Hooper “Fleabaggs,” my father was able to acclimate to civilian life and family with no noticeable difficulties or struggles. But if one thing is certain, my father can bear the weight of the world on his shoulders and you’d never know. He was born in Queens and is as tough as nails. He’s softened over the years for sure, and in these tumultuous times he has become my one constant. Thank god we see eye to eye. MAA - thank you for this meaningful post on a most meaningful day. Frank Hooper mattered, his words and deeds matter. All Veterans matter. We are no longer in the dark, grasping for freedom with every fiber of our being. ♥️🇺🇸
I met a vet once who came to speak at a My Lai event I was running. He had the same haunted look as Frank did, these men of war who returned with their souls crushed, cursed to walk the earth trying to convince we should never lift arms against one another and falling on deaf ears, meeting apathetic eyes. He hated the “thank you for your service” line above all.
Thank you for sharing this moving article. And thank you for the boost. But most of all, thank you for playing your part in waking humanity. It’s not an easy job, but somebody’s gotta do it. 🙏
Re: TYFYS, I won't speak for the vet you encountered but as for me the phrase evokes a range of emotions. A mix between anger and jealousy. Coming from a vet, there's a knowing that we both laid it on the line. From a civilian contempt turns to pity then to jealousy. Pity for them they don't share the bond that comes from being under fire with someone and coming out the other side of it. Jealousy having learned how utterly corrupt, contemptible and evil my government is and realizing we were used as pawns to do their evil bidding. Killing people, destroying lives under the guise of national security. All the while my government is picking these fights all over the globe to further some money and power grab. I really thought we were the good guys yet all the while we were the bad guys. It makes me sick to my stomach. So when I hear "thank you for your service" all I'm capable of is a snide "your welcome" while choking back what I really want to say.
Thanks for touching that nerve Visceral.
Thanks for writing that.
This post moved me more than I can actually put in words...
Wish i could hug fleabag.
Heartbreaking, but beautiful writing. I was married to a Recon Marine who took his own life, leaving me and our 3 & 5 year old behind. He used to tell me "stories" about his deployments. I found them difficult to believe at the time. I now know they were all true. His suicide took me down the war rabbit hole. I'll never forgive the "bankers" and their allies who fund the MIC and destroy lives.
I am so very sorry for your loss, BlackThunder. It must have been devastating to your little ones as well.
Thank you. Yes, it was devastating for the children at the time. My son and daughter are in their 20s now are doing well, but still have issues with their dad's death.
It's good to hear that you children have grown and survived the experience. You must be a very strong and loving mom. You must all have gone through hell.
God bless you for keeping them and yourself safe through all of it!
was very young but felt the foreboding darkness of the nightly horrific visuals narrated by Walter Cronkite on our B&W TV… followed by the chipper sing song ad jingles for Virginia Slims cigarettes ‘you’ve come a long way baby’, brokerage accounts ‘you look like you just heard from Dean Witter’… Jane Fonda’s theatrics and the subhuman treatment of our returning Veterans… Never Forget.
Great post, MAA!
And I've been using 'philanthropath' in my writing too.
Frank's essay was, is I mean, good beyond words. The heart there, the heart and the truth of the human experience. Thank you for sharing it.
Moving. We had some insight of this with various motion pictures that were made to be novels but we know instinctively much if it is true. Even as a youngster, the leveling of Dresden and the dropping of the two bombs on Japan has bothered me. The birth of the woke moment is a nifty way to divert hatred against the country. It is easy to hate the country for slavery but difficult to accept the evil committed in the name of modern war. If the woke energy was fixed on the evil of government war, we would be better off. We know why the burn loot murder ecosystem never protests war. The Psyops knows what to do by manipulating the mind of the masses. But the machine lives on by giving billions of fiat money to Ukraine. Funny (not) how both parties have no problem fueling that war. We never see Antifa protesting wars. We know in the name of democracy (!) the machine has tinkered in many nations with regime change. It is bad.