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Boomer Prophecies: The End

Today I see, and not for the first time, that my whole life’s history has been a rhyme from which I am struggling to awake. Just when I think I’m awake they pull me back in.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes again

Can you picture what will be?
So limitless and free
Desperately in need
Of some stranger’s hand
In a desperate land

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

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  • Dirk August 19, 2021, 6:51 PM

    Pure music magic. Morrison was God Like. The band tight to the end.

    Gooood stuff.

    VI

  • Freedom Isn't Free August 19, 2021, 8:49 PM

    This isn’t even the end of the beginning, get back in the ring and get ready to fight.
    Be like Ben Willard on a mission to destroy the heart of darkness.

  • Casey Klahn August 19, 2021, 11:31 PM

    I asked the Vietnam vets about Apocalypse Now, and Deer Hunter. Was it like Vietnam? They just stared at me. Stared through me.

    When a Huey comes in (not a Loach; a Huey) it causes a whump, whUMP, WhUMP, W H U MM P, in your chest and your head. You board it, and now you’re in it. The action. You haven’t got control, anymore. You just go…

    When a lot of soldiers got kilt at once, in a live fire exercise during peacetime, I looked into the eyes of the veterans. Pain. Not confusion, but something like it. I could not cross over into that pain.

    I give Coppola credit for trying.

    Look at your country. Look at the people falling from C-17s at Kabul. That’s your pain. Own it.

    At least we don’t have Trump in office anymore (say the fux in DC).

    • TrangBang68 August 20, 2021, 3:51 PM

      I was in the Iron Triangle post Tet 1968- 1969. The movies that I think got it closest were “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket”.
      Platoon was manipulative and full of leftist agit prop but Oliver Stone was in the 25th Division like myself and he really captured the ambiance, the racial tensions, the rural white boys and the urban blacks who walked like they didn’t have bones. I believe the final scene was modeled after the NVA nearly overrunning Fire Support Base Illingsworth on the Cambodian border.
      “Full Metal Jacket ” and particularly the battle of Hue City I think caught the dark humor of what you could call the first rock ‘n roll war. Michael Herr, if I’m not mistaken wrote the screen play. He wrote the book “Dispatches” which is the closest thing you’ll ever get to flying into a hot LZ in the A Shau valley or outside of Tay Ninh. The book is searing prose. Oddly, Herr never wrote much of anything afterwards.

      • Casey Klahn August 21, 2021, 6:46 AM

        TrangBang68.
        Bear with a non-combat vet for a minute. The movies that caught my era were The Lord’s of Discipline, and The Great Santini. Also, An Officer and a Gentleman. So, I get your movie appreciation, and I was surprised that you liked Platoon. Can’t argue with anything you said, though. It was well acted, and the fuck you lizard scene was on point.

        My compliments on your service.

        FMJ. I was watching the premier, in a midnight showing, of this movie. I laughed and laughed at the basic training scenes. It got darker, and darker, and I was still amused and laughing, and then I looked around the theater and I noticed the audience was white in the face and going into shock. JFC, I had a dark sense of humor.

        I have heard of Dispatches. I will add that to my reading list. Did you read Chickenhawk. You gotta.

        • TrangBang68 August 21, 2021, 1:06 PM

          I recommend the battle histories written by the late Keith William Nolan. He was a professor in St. Louis who got intrigued by the war and wrote these powerful battle histories from interviews. The two I like best are “Operation Buffalo” about the 1/9 Marines almost getting wiped out on the DMZ and “Ripcord” about the last American battle of significance where a unit of the 101st Airborne got hung out to dry in the A Shau Valley in 1971.
          I like “Platoon” because a lot of the supporting characters remind me of guys I served with. My war recollection might be a little skewed as I dropped acid before I served. My favorite Michael Herr quote is “Instead of happy childhoods, we had Vietnam.” I think it probably haunts all of us grunts a little bit.
          I see the same thing in some guys who served in the sandbox.

          • Casey Klahn August 22, 2021, 12:15 PM

            I will look at those. Were you a rifleman?

            I was mostly a mortar monkey, but did sample all of what the 11 series had to offer. All of my learning was under the tutorship of Vietnam vets, except for a huge dose of WW II from older vets.

        • Vanderleun August 22, 2021, 2:35 PM

          Micahel Herr, Dispatches. Far and away the best Vietnam book. A masterpiece and now a classic.

  • Kevin in PA August 20, 2021, 3:28 AM

    Freedom isn’t Free, thank you for approaching the problem with the correct frame of mind.
    What I find most disappointing is the multitude of whiners claiming that “we are doomed”!
    Never panic. Never give up. Never surrender.

    My attitude at 64 years is that I am here for the duration. However long that may be. I’m as ready as will ever be. Resist.
    Look forward to the day when the traitors have all been purged and the rebuilding begins.
    The end? This is the warm up.
    20 years in martial arts. We had a saying; 9 times down 10 times up. Meaning- every time you are taken down, thrown to floor, you are presented with a choice. You can get back up in the fight (in spite of the pain) or you can stay down. On the street the latter choice equals a severe beating. In some places it could result in the end of you.
    9 times down 10 times up.
    I’m not willing to concede a damn thing to the traitors that are stealing my country.

  • ghostsniper August 20, 2021, 4:47 AM

    I’ve been on Huey’s many times. Repelled out of them at 300′, at Ft Campbell.
    The first time on a Huey is scary, they vibrate bad. Real bad, seemingly dangerously so. Like it could fly apart at any second. Sitting there, belted in, in the doorway is pretty cool. The trees are right there. Hard banking, say 60 degrees or so, at slow speed will twist your knickers a bit. Look out the door and you see the ground.

  • Annie Rose August 20, 2021, 5:35 AM

    Having been 11 when my older brother was serving in that war, I had no clue as to what he was experiencing. When Apocolypse Now came out, I finally got a glimpse. He very seldom talked about any of it. But the pain and anger became permanently etched into his eyes and face. Being trained in computers, he was brought in during the final days to dismantle them. He was one of the last to get out of the compound in Saigon. The horrors he must have seen. He only briefly mentioned his work there once. He lost many high school friends and what was left of his soul there. He has passed on now these past ten plus years, having wrapped his motorcycle around a tree on a dark, rainy night. This week I’m haunted by scenes from Kabul and I think about my brother’s pain.

  • Casey Klahn August 20, 2021, 6:50 AM

    You’ll note, I hope, that so far we haven’t done to the Afghanistan veterans the shit we did to the Vietnam veterans. That was: unforgivable. And, yet, I know many of them have forgiven. They’ve done so because they know the hate will eat you alive, and so in order to survive, they choose forgiveness.

    Vietnam was an epic national experience. Except only a slim slice of American boys did experience it. Some were older – some were WW II and Korean War veterans. But, most were 18 and 19 year olds.

    I went in the NG in Sept. of 1975. When I say the war veterans in my armor and infantry units were fresh from Nam, I actually mean it. Their uniforms seemed to smell of cordite. Their faces…it’s hard to describe. They were a million years older than me.

    In the comedy that is the military, it was a small handful of years and I was leading guys who’d been in combat. One guy couldn’t hold down a job. One interviewer, upon hearing that he’d been in Vietnam, asked him if he’d been a baby killer. Actually, the answer was yes. A small boy had run across the road (Highway 1) and straight into the grill of his 10 ton truck. This vet only felt normal in uniform, and he was a complete alien out in civilian life. A ghost. He flew the freedom bird to the states from Vietnam, saw the crowds of civilians, went into the bathroom and tore off his uniform and threw it in the trash. You want to be proud of your service, and rightly so. Instead, you light that pride on fire and run. I remember feeling (and I’m not a combat vet) like I just wanted to run, and run, and run.

    Congratulations, Joe Biden. You’ve done your best to turn Afghanistan into another Vietnam. It’ll be your legacy. In my lifetime, where Carter was the worst president you could imagine, Joe Biden has made Carter look like a genius.

    • TrangBang68 August 21, 2021, 1:13 PM

      The weirdest thing for me about coming home was one day you’re in a combat zone and a few days later you’re back on the block. That was largely a product of the draft. They plugged you in a unit and unplugged you 365 days later. I came home a raging lunatic to my old factory town dying of neglect and addiction. The next ten years were a nihilistic walk on the wild side. Then God gave me my life back.

  • ghostsniper August 20, 2021, 7:26 AM

    I started RA 20JUN1974, combat engineer, mostly germany, and when I got out 4 years later it was like a 2 ton heavy thing was lifted off my back. It’ll never leave my soul.

  • Terry August 20, 2021, 8:36 AM

    Don’t let the fake fear destroy your life. The entire .gov, medical whack “profession” / pharma, is on a steroid fueled power trip. Goons all.

    Fear is your real enemy. The .gov can be overcome by millions of fearless patriots.

    Read this book: Beneath a Scarlet Sky, by Mark Sullivan. I know the son of the man this book is about quite well. Inspiring read of WW II resistance in Italy.

    We all die. I choose to resist the fear and live MY life. My younger brother Tim is a highly decorated Vietnam, Army combat vet. Two tours in a true Hell. He never talks about Nam. He wrote a manuscript that would make a normal person sick. No publisher would work with him after scanning the draft.

    Tim is still alive and does his own thing now. He and my youngest brother were in the well drilling business for years. Tim lives in a remote wilderness area by himself in the foothills of Cali.

    And, f**k B*d*n.

    That is all. Enjoy the day-

  • Skorpion August 20, 2021, 9:01 AM

    I’ve often said that if I get a 15-minute warning for my own demise, I’m going to play this song as a final meditation on my life, and passage into Eternity.
    Every End also contains a Beginning, folks.

  • Missy August 20, 2021, 9:33 AM

    Having buried two good men as a result of Vietnam, one a Huey pilot killed in a direct hit from a rocket in a hot LZ and the other from long term exposure to JP4, this video has been a comfort to me. Joe Galloway, the war correspondent and author who made this video, died not long ago. A great man.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqYOAqxlL_Y

    • Boat Guy August 21, 2021, 5:48 AM

      Thanks for that!
      I’ve got a year or two on ghost and casey, no combat time to speak of in 32 years. My Dad, a combat vet and pilot (though not together) talked me out of going into the Army flight program in 71. The first time I strapped into a Huey (in the door) I LOVED it. I thought “if I’da lived, this woulda been pretty cool”. Few regrets though.
      We may yet get combat time.
      Read Karl Marlantes for some excellent writing on Vietnam

      • TrangBang68 August 21, 2021, 1:08 PM

        Yes on Marlantes, “Matterhorn” is powerful.

        • Humdeedee August 21, 2021, 2:26 PM

          One of the best audio books I’ve listened to was Matterhorn, narrated by Bronson Pinchot.
          I highly recommend it.

      • Vanderleun August 22, 2021, 2:39 PM

        Yes. I’d forgotten about Marlantes…. his book came out about 10 years back after taking him 30 years to write. Interviewed him for Penthouse I think.

      • Casey Klahn August 23, 2021, 3:29 AM

        I’ll bet one of my best friends might know Mr. Marlantes. I’ll look into his writings

  • Vanderleun August 20, 2021, 9:35 AM

    Terry, Tim doesn’t need a publisher. Probably only needs a good editor and then a guide to publishing now in the 21st century. If it is worth keeping we still put it in a book.

  • Snakepit Kansas August 21, 2021, 11:27 AM

    “Never get off the boat. Absolutely guddam right.” – Capt. Willard

    Chickenhawk, great book. Still have a copy of it.