Although I never had a dull moment there, I was more amazed by and interested in the war that seemed to be going on back in America. I served in Vietnam from March of 1968 through March of 1969 as the flight operations coordinator (specialist fifth class) for an Army helicopter company based near the coastal city of Vung Tau. While I knew we were fighting to keep Communists from taking over the government of South Vietnam, I had no sophisticated understanding of the real causes of the war or how things had gotten to the point they were at in late 1967. Army, knowing I would almost certainly go to Vietnam. I had dropped out of my first year of college in 1967 and enlisted in the U.S. I was especially interested in the subject because of my own personal history.
When you consider that the war was the most divisive event in the past hundred years of our history, it becomes obvious that it is something that desperately needs to be taught in our schools. Although Vietnam was our nation’s most recent war, America’s combat role in it had ended before most of our students were born.
Last year my principal and friend, Rick Elliott, told me that he wanted the Vietnam War to be covered more thoroughly than it had been in the social studies classes at our junior high school in Pryor, Oklahoma.
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