Read about this movie in our local paper and will go see it next week. Based on the book of the same title. The trailer looks good: http://www.ridethethundermovie.com/. It’s about time, too.
I take my dad for a pedicure at a Vietnamese owned nail salon. Once, Judy asked if Dad is a veteran. He is but did not serve in Vietnam (although he once told me that he had been on a supply ship for the transports taking people to the south). They are very grateful for what we did, or at least some tried to do, for them.
Made a friend who introduced himself as “My name is [serious Vietnamese stuff here], but you can call me Charlie.”
Good line, but hard to follow-
Heh, heh! We Americans have trouble with most names exceeding 2 syllables. We constantly shorted names from the given.
And if you think Vietnamese is hard, try pronouncing a Thai name.
Chinese I think have managed to get names down to 1 syllable. Unfortunately, there are not that many syllables…
Back in the mid-1970s, our Catholic parish in NE OH sponsored a Vietnamese family [from Grandma to infant son of a young married couple – and their high school-to-college-aged sibs. What an eye-opening experience! (They eventually joined other relatives in a more hospitable climate; snow was not for them…).
Will have to check this film out when it’s digitally available…
Uncle-Colonel [Ret.] has shared Maj. Ripley’s story with me as well…Now, I really have to see this film. Will e-mail Dev to visit us here….
E-mail sent to Dev, requesting input, fyi.
Have heard from Dev, he will stop by after work.
Tanks! And good!
My church sponsored a family too. One day I’ll have to write it up. The dad had been with the RVN Army and if the North Vietnamese had caught him, they would have shot him.
He drove a truck.
My dad and I picked them up at Ohare. On the drive home, we asked him questions about what the family needed and such. It wasn’t until we asked a non “yes/no” question that we realized that his entire English vocabulary consisted of the word “yes.”
That makes for a very agreeable persona, but it presented short term problems at the time.
That family was a wonder.
The story looks quite impressive, but the production values do not look good enough in the trailer–there is something slightly wrong–it’s a strange feeling. I’m not sure how come, but I get the sense that it’s not professional acting, editing, &c. Does anyone else get that?
Of course you, the film buff, would notice that. I’m pretty sure that it’s a small $ production. I’ll let you know later this week.
Without commenting on any technicallities of film, etc, I have to say MLH, you have opened a subject that can take serious time and discussion.
I am pleased to see that numerous books have come out of late that have debunked the myth created by such liars as Cronkite. I can list several of them if any are interested.
But the short of it is that we actually won that war. RVN, contrary to popular belief, was capable of defending itself. We, OTOH, did nothing to fulfill OUR obligations toward RVN. As a result they fell. And we stood by and watched.
Such are democrats. What people today complain about in Iraq, they did to a far larger degree in Vietnam.
If any are interested, some to read include: Black April, Tet: This Time We Win.
Hello, Mr. Devereaux.
Yeah, if only Americans could be brought around to recognize the basic facts. If only they could be persuaded there is no destiny of defeat…
MLH–I’m sorry I don’t know what I could call you, I’m pretty new!–yes, it does look small–let me know how it strikes you. Maybe another post with your observations?
M or MLH is fine.
I’m not much of a film critic and my review may just be: liked it; liked a lot; meh; lame. But I’ll try to do better for this one: it is an important topic.
Prescott is interesting in that, the film will be shown here (okay, they filmed part of it here so that helps) but we also got to see The Good Lie (remember the Lost Boys? anyone?) and films such as Heaven is for Real and God’s Not Dead, show for longer.
I believe it took time. Time to separate from the times, time to get older, time to mature, time to be able to get to NORTH Vietnam’s records.
Black April was such a book, researched with lots of NV records of both the military and political debates and decisions. It demonstrates, in cold facts, just what all went on.
Some of RVN’s decisions were less than optimal. But much also depended upon their ability to fight, to go out and patrol and seek out the NVA prepositioning of units. But they couldn’t do that without ammo and gas – basics for war fighting.
Likewise, the TET book shows unequivocally that the media flat lied, that the North WAY overestimated not only the populace response but the will of the ARVN to fight. Giap, notably, was against it. The result of that attack was the rather total trashing of the VC forces, and the elimination of much of the NVA in the South.
Yeah. Remember Senor Castro’s joke, I got my job through the NYT? The North Vietnamese could say with as much truth, they got South Vietnam through CBS-
I also agree about the necessary evidence & the passage of time. It is a sad, but true comment on America. Sometimes, saying it’s better than other countries really is not enough…
Comment from Deveraux; “Still can’t sign in…I think I’d like to see it..”
Can we solve Dev’s sign in problem, pretty please?
Ha! It worked, MLH! Thanks!
I believe there are many success stories of Vietnamese who escaped from the final fall of South Viet Nam. Recently there was some ceremony in San Diego where a Vietnamese immigrant came up to a Marine who was attending as an observer and thanked him for what he and his fellow Marines had done. Some of the stories of these escapees, some “boat people” are quite compelling.
Is this when we first decided winning wasn’t worth our precious self-esteem and, simultaneously, started hating ourselves?…H*LL-O, we don’t even pick up our toys when we run home now…Disgusting!
One of the English poets, I think Auden, called the ’30s a low, dishonest decade. So were the ’70s. It ain’t much better now…
One can almost see a continuum from the early 60’s to today.
One of the English poets, I think Auden, called the ’30s a low, dishonest decade. So were the ’70s. It ain’t much better now.
Excellent question, Nanda.
Seems the overall sense that we shouldn’t be winning was a result of Leftist thinking going way back – when the communists ran the world socialist order. There may not be the same central control of that time, but the residual idiocy remains.
So having gone over these posts, and having thought a bit about this, I have a bad feeling that this whole thing is not going to work out well for that era of soldiers.
Today we seem to revere the WWII generation, despite the fact they were directly responsible for FDR and the associated damage to the nation. But they fought. And hard.
Trouble is, so did the Korean vets – almost TOTALLY disregarded – and the Vietnam vets. I have a small sticker on my license plate holder that shows the RVN campaign ribbon and the saying, “We Didn’t Lose – We Left.” It’s my little way of thumbing my nose at the country.
So today we see all the adulation of the armed services for their efforts in the sandbox. Still not much for the RVN era people.
Perhaps people are ashamed of how they acted back then. Still, when I go to the VA, I see a lot of broken men who only seem to find solace with other broken men like them.
I find the adulation* a bit phony. Like putting a yellow ribbon magnet on your car and not being able to tell Veterans’ Day from Memorial Day. (Really? Happy Memorial Day?) But it is better than a big snub or being ignored (or is it?).
* Merriam-Webster on-line definition: Definition of ADULATION: excessive or slavish admiration or flattery
Yeah, M, for some it’s a “me, too…look at me.” Appreciation and empathy are worth more than adulation and sympathy, for certain.
Strong at the broken places, Dev?…Hope so, pray so!
I admit to reading some “unusual” books. One such is by a Lt. Col Grossman, called On Killing. It is a treatise on why men do or don’t kill in war. It is based on research of things like casualty rates, battle descriptions, and works by men like SLA Marshall (sometimes called Slam Marshall because of the initials).
One of his premises is that when men go off to war, upon their return they must be accepted back into society. Thus you have the victory parades and the small town celebrations of the return of their “heroes”. It gives the soldiers the peace of mind that what they did is OK, that they are still a part of the social fabric.
Another of his premises is that a species does not naturally kill itself. There are some 5-15% of men who can kill; the rest have to be “taught”.
Long story short, the RVN era soldiers got none of the benefits of returning war heroes. They didn’t get a “cooling off” period, returning with comrades over a week or two, out of combat, able to just relax and talk. Instead they got put on airliners and shipped back the same day.
Once home they were not welcomed. Instead the drum beat of the Left was that they were “baby killers”, “rapists”, destroyers of the “poor Vietnamese – who only wanted their freedom”. That this was a patent lie was not exposed for a long time.
So today we get all the “greatest generationi” stuff. But as Gen. Zinni says in one of his talks, “Then we must have been the next greatest generation.” So we get constant speaking as if the war in Iraq/Afghanistan were some huge undertaking. For those who were killed or maimed it was. But as wars go, it was a lessor effort, not even requiring the mobilization of the nation to fight, as WWII did. Or even RVN did.
So one conclusion one might come to is that the Left has conned the country into thinking it can fight a war “on the cheap” – without going all in. Instead people can just continue to go about their “business’, occasionally paying homage to the soldiers. Note the difference in response to the initial Iraqi Freedom vs now.
The other conclusion may be that we don’t need to worry about the RVN group. They were not in that much “stuff” and fighting over there wasn’t “honourable” anyway. But note that that is JUST what keeps the RVN vets from incorporating back into society – and allows the Lefties who caused all the heartburn to escape proper attention for their culpability.
Where’s the “like” button or the up-vote icon? To early to attempt coherency let alone make a coherent reply.
Truth!
Wolves, sheep dogs and sheep. Yes?
Well, yes, sort of.
That analogy was created to give support to the shooters who are essentially law abiding – the sheep dogs, if you will.
But Grossman takes it a bit further. He gives numerous examples of how species don’t kill their kind – it doesn’t lead to expansion of the species. There is still confrontation, but it’s “posture” & “submission”. So he goes into past wars to show that the “average Joe” doesn’t take to killing well. There are exceptions.
RVN was the military’s first pass at teaching men to kill – Grossman says a kind of Pavlovian response. So what you got in that group was widespread killing AND no acceptance on return AND no decompressing time. Those lead to bad results for the involved guys.
To take it a bit further, and slightly off-center, there is much concern today about the “militarization” of the police. That, I believe, is a direct function of the police academies, where the cops are taught military-style response with shoot first. That may be OK for a military, but cops aren’t military. Still, now we see a spate of cops shooting civilians under often times questionable circumstances.
My numerous retired (mostly) cop friends ALL decry the current crop of cops that seem way too eager to push their badge and go into confrontation, maybe shooting. Old time cops controlled the situation with “presence”. Modern cops seem to do it with numbers and guns – making them seem way too much an occupying force rather than the peace keepers.
Note, however, that ALL my retired cops carry – always, and have, except for one, shot and killed BG’s. And have no remorse for the deed. It was needed. But I am confident, knowing them, that it really WAS needed. Sometimes you just have to shoot someone.
The military is different. Their job is to break things and kill people. I have jokingly said in the past that the US Military is the greatest WMD out there.
One last thought and then I’ll let you guys mull this over and tell me where I am wrong.
Today we have an “all-volunteer army”. But truth be told, we have ALWAYS had an all volunteer army. And every serious war we’ve fought we’ve mobilized the citizenry. It was true of the French & Indian War, the War for Independence, 1812, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, and RVN. Even Dessert Storm felt like a national mobilization – if nothing more that pretty much every neighborhood had men and women who were called up (even the Tony area I live in had me and one other guy!). Made the nation feel we were at war.
But we don’t like being at war. We like being at business. So we fight until we can come to some point where we can claim to stop fighting. Thus we didn’t finish off the Soviets after WWII when strategically and in the best interests of the country we should have. But the nation wanted “peace” – it got huge budgets in continuum instead.
So the first disconnect is that we want peace and only fight when pushed, while we keep hearing the drumbeat for going to war in the sandbox over ISIS. Regardless of whether you think it’s right or wrong, we simply can’t do that – without mobilizing the country. To do THAT, you had best have a serious argument about the interests of the nation. So far there have not been those made, despite McCain and Graham. For all the disdain heaped upon him, Paul keeps making the American argument that it isn’t our business if they want to kill each other. There are many other arguments that can be made here, but my point is that IF you end up wanting to “do something” about the Mideast, you will have to mobilize the nation and go to war. THAT is the ultimate argument that has to be made – at least to the American people. Because among other things, we are terribly against being an empire, no matter how much Teddy Roosevelt wanted us to be.
True, that…If we weren’t afraid to use it.
Wisdom, M!
Ooh-Rah! and “Can’t like this enough”, Dev! Just got the Tet book on Kindle; not sure I’m quite ready for “Black April” or “On Killing” yet, though…Give me a little time.