My Vietnam War Experience-- Part 1: The War That Wouldn't End

This past May and June I wrote about different Vietnam War veterans giving their reminiscences of that war.

Well, for me, it wasn't an experience in South Vietnam.  The war ended before I graduated from college.  But, I was fairly sure the war would be going on even now with the way we were fighting it.  Had it continued past 1973, I was going to be there.

I really wasn't so much against the war in junior high and part of high school. The war started when I was in junior high at Winston Park in Palatine, Illinois, and went all the way through those two years.  Then it continued all the way through high school at Fremd and Palatine.  Surely it has to end at some point.  No war goes on forever, or so I thought.  But no, it didn't and was only showing signs of escalating instead of coming to an end.

I always felt that the war might have ended in the 1964 election had Barry Goldwater been elected.  I know the North Vietnamese must have been afraid of him when he said he would begin bombing Hanoi.  President Johnson in the election didn't say what he was going to do as far as bombing.  Johnson won in a landslide and soon began bombing Hanoi.

--RoadDog