We saw this at the start of the Gulf War. Active duty folks who "suddenly"
realized that getting a paycheck from DoD meant you might have to "earn it".
I respect someone who truely believes that they can't take a life, or support
those that do. In some respects, I have to say "You're a better man than I,
Gunga Din!". My morality includes using force to the point of death against
an enemy.
But in the cases used to illustrate the article, I have to wave the BS
penalty flag, and say they are just using the CO route as a way to get out of
hard duty. They don't want to leave the girl they are dating, they don't want
to miss a concert they had a hard time getting, they don't want to leave
their apartment "on the beach" to go sleep in a quanset hut with the sand
fleas.
Well, hell, I wouldn't either when I was a young E-3 or E-4. But I did. That
was part of the job.
How in hell can any kid these days be "clueless" about what a soldier does
after all the action flicks on TV?
Perhaps (and here comes the HMV content) when we have our shows, maybe it's
time to play up the combat role our vehicles played. As a attempt to sheild
our hobby from the gun control lobby, we have seen more and more ralleys
asking us to "play down" the shoot-em-up aspect. You know, make your jeep an
MP or medic jeep instead of a recon with a .50.
True, some restrictions were at the request of the host site. But others
seemed to want to play up the non-combatant roles of our vehicles. If you
have a love of Engineering and you restore a Welding truck, it surely makes
sense to mark it up as REME's and not worry about a gun ring or an MG. No
problem with that at all.
However, show up with an armoured vehicle and you started to get the feeling
you were the black sheep of the family. "What?!? That thing can fire
blanks??? My God! Get it out of here!!" <LOL>
Well, if we include the combat part of our HMV's history, at least we can
honestly say we helped "clue in" todays teenagers.
Cheers,
Jim
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Dec 07 2001 - 00:36:26 PST