All that fascist homophobia and concern about "manly" jobs in the classified folder thread reminded me of how I won a ringside seat on the
war in Vietnam.

I have never made of secret of the fact that I'm a draft dodger. I
joined the Navy because I didn't want to go where I might be shot at. I
wasn't entirely successful, but hey, I made it out of there without any physical damage. If I had been even half smart I would have told my
draft board that I was a gay conscientious objector, with mental and
physical disabilities. LOL, I didn't want *that* on my record.

I didn't find out that there had been a competition at my "A'
school until I got to my first command. The admiral had been involved in setting up that school and it was a bit of an experiment. So he told
them he wanted the pick of the litter from the first class. I actually
finished with the second highest score. The guy with the highest score volunteered for Vietnam because he thought he had something to gain by
going there . He was being all tough and manly man--or something. Back
in those days if you volunteered for Vietnam you were probably going
there. So the admiral got the guy with the second highest score. #1
probably never heard what he gave up.

I have never heard of the admiral's staff and I was not thrilled.
I had wanted to go to a ship. LOL I got a much better deal. There were 2 identical staffs that rotated between the States and Westpac every 6
months. So we flew across the Pacific and met the flagship there. Mostly
we hung out in DaNang harbor during the day and went out and roamed
around in a 5 mile square patch of ocean at night so the Vietcong
couldn't float a mine down on us. But we did all sorts of fun stuff.

If I gone to a ship I would have gone straight to the galley for at
least 6 months. I reported on board at night and the ship was looking
for me the next morning. As it was I went straight to the admiral's bridge.

In the States we were in charge of what was the biggest war game
in the world at that time. We would go around threatening channel
islands and eventually land a whole bunch of Marines back on the beach
at Camp Pendelton. We never got pretend sunk less that 3 times.

In Vietnam we were in charge of landing Marines on the beach. I
don't think most of those boys considered how John Wayne got to the
beach until they were herded onto a ship. There weren't a lot of classic
beach landing in Vietnam, so we mostly hung out while the admiral hung
out at the CIA bar. During my last trip to Vietnam the amphibious ships
were mostly being used to haul heavy equipment out of Vietnam.

We were all over the coast of South Vietnam and even went up river
almost to Saigon one time. I also saw a lot of the western Pacific. We
went as far south as the equator and as far north a Korea. Among other
things we were also involved in what was a famous prisoner release, at
the time, way north of the DMZ.

We gave the prisoners a Navy whaleboat, but this article doesn't
mention why we did that. That had purchased a small Vietnamese motorboat
to send the prisoners home in. When the big day arrived they couldn't
get the motor on that boat to start.

https://www.vqronline.org/essay/vietnam-mirage-and-fitful-dream

During the war my motto was, "In a real war these assholes would
get me killed."

TB

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