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[Andy]

Vietnam remembered.

Our county is putting on a month plus of events to remember Vietnam. About half of the activities will take place in our town. Classes of high school kids (some may be required to attend) and of course the general public are invited to several events. Things get started on April 13th and end with the Memorial Day Parade.

On May 15th there will be a an exhibition of poems, short stories and art at a well know gallery. The exibition will last for 2 weeks. The works will be from artists and writers who are Vietnam War Veterans will be based on personal experiences. On the 19th there will be a reception so that the general public can meet the contributors.

On the 24th the organization will show a film to depict the war. The movie that was chosen was PLATOON. The showing will be preceded by a number of vets protesting the movie. I know Oliver Stone met with Vietnam Vets and admitted it was all fiction. Does anyone know where we can get specific information about Stone?s meeting with the Vets when he made those admissions?

May 26th could be interesting. There will be a panel discussion with a moderator (John Katzenback of the NY Times) and hopefully four Vietnam Vets. So far they have one guy who was the John Dean organizer for our area who attends all the anti war and anti Nuke rallies. A second man who helped build the Buddhist Peace Pagoda in Amherst Ma, who is also a died in the wool pacifist. This guy will be showing his art work, mostly a lot of dead civilians. We don't have a fourth, a person who will submit poems, stories or art and is willing to be on the panel, but yesterday I was asked and accepted the offer to share a few short stories for the gallery and be at the May 26th discussion.

Don?t worry, I will not say, ?Free bullets, $.10 a beer, and lots of available ladies.? This area of the country requires a lot more political tact than that. If anyone has any reasonably sane suggestions, mostly regarding the fact that we were not all addicts who raped women and gleefully removed the body parts of enemy and civilian men, I?d like to hear from you. My take will be we were a reflection of our time and the vast majority did what we were called upon to do. A post or PM would be fine.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[39mto39g]

A week after I got there I remarked to a friend of mine that went there with me.
ANY---- I repete ---ANY, 2 week peiod, if they would have let us, WE would have been sitting in Hanoi, We were good, we were ALL very good at what we did.
Stick that in there pipe and smoke it.

Ron

[Desdichado]

You want my suggestion? Find one of the boat people. It's not hard; they're everywhere. Give up your seat on this panel to him or her. Let him tell his story in his own words. Let him tell how his schoolteachers, mayors and post men were executed in the night. Let him talk about April '75 and what he went through. Let him tell what our presence there meant to HIM.

I used to work with a guy who was fifteen when Saigon fell. Before his sixteenth birthday he was drafted into the (unified) army and sent to Cambodia. He received no training, not even how to reload his rifle. He deserted, collected his family, and joined the exodus. Pirates took them in the South China Sea. His sister was raped and killed before his eyes. The elderly, including his mother, were shot or hacked to death with machetes. Others merely perished from the elements. He was near death himself when the US Navy picked him up.

He is not exceptional. All their stories are like that. Let one of them tell how it really was to actually live there, and then let the others try and put some negative spin on our presence.

That's what I'd do, anyway.

[sn-e3]

Andy you might ask our resident artist James and invite him to your get togeather his art is supurb and his storys are better . You could not ask for a better rep.

[1CAVCCO15MED]

Great idea, Des.

[Andy]

We do have boat people living in town and one was invited. Didn't wanted to take part. We also have lots of Cambodians who were in the killing fields, again no takers. They seem to all want to quietly blend into our society and put the past to bed.

I know James is into art work, I have a drawing from Beau, however they want work done by people from this area. Suppose I could call some of that art work my own but I'll let any lies rest on the other side of this discussion.

See, the idea of this is to show how Western Mass was changed by the Vietnam War.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[39mto39g]

PM me your address, I will send you some stuff.

Ron

[onesix]

Stone was with B 3/22 25th ID, the same unit mentioned at the start of the movie. There is also a book called PLATOON about that unit mentioned in the movie, by Robert Hemphill, the Company Commander of B 3/22. Are you familiar with it? It was written to contradict everything Stone put in the movie. Perhaps it would be nice to have a copy of the book as part of your exhibition.

[SuperScout]

Try as I might, I can't put my hands on a reprint of an article from the Readers' Digest, but it would provide a world of information. It was the precursor of the eventula book by B.G.Burkett of "Stolen Valor" fame. Would bet a check on the Readers's Digest file, you could find the article.

[MORTARDUDE]

Andy :

Try to get some fellow veterans to help you. Expose any fake vets or wannabes who wish to push their made up stories on the public as "truth". By all means keep trying to get Vietnamese or Cambodians to participate to balance the discussion. See if you can invide someone like Burkett ( "Stolen Valor " ) to speak in person or send a statement. Hackworth would possibly do this as well. It is all about the truth. If Stone has wanted to do a story about American atrocities in Vietnam, he could have done one about My Lai or several other less well known incidents. He DID NOT have to pretend all the crap he put on the movie screen was "truth", and make his fellow veterans forever "monsters" in the eyes of the public. The pages I cited in another post about Stone, also shows that his movie "Born On The Fourth Of July" was full of lies and distortions as well. If there is anything I can do please do not hesitate to ask.

Larry