45 years ago today, June 22nd, 1968 I entered Marine Corps Boot Camp

 45 years ago today, June 22nd, 1968 I entered Marine Corps Boot Camp

I had been prepared and told what to expect, but nothing
can really prepare you. My biggest asset was the knowledge
that I could and would take what ever abuse and humiliation
the DIs (drill Instructors) could dish out.

My father and Catholic school (nuns) prepared me for that.
Marine Corps boot camp is all about S&M. The Drill Instructors
are sadist, and have a blank check to smack the hell out of
someone.

the worst thing that happened to me was the day I had eight
teeth pulled out by the dentist. When I got back to the barracks
one DI didn't know I had been to the dentist and smacked me
square in the mouth.

But, I survived the nine weeks, and went on to advanced infantry
training, Staging Battalion in California and then Vietnam. I was
there just over two months by days when medevaced to the states;
dysentary and I had a seizure.

I went back to Vietnam because as odd as it seems I felt more
at home in a combat zone, than back in the US.

Below are some photos of the war; they are not my photos.

http://tinyurl.com/p6ovw8w

Dirty, exhausted looking US Marine on patrol with his squad near the DMZ during the Vietnam War.









 

 Wounded and shocked civilian survivors of Dong Xoai crawl out of a fort bunker on June 6, 1965, where they survived murderous ground fighting and air bombardments of the previous two days. (Horst Faas/AP)


 http://tinyurl.com/nn9ca2f
 
 Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon, on January 1, 1966. Paratroopers, background, of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade escorted the South Vietnamese civilians through a series of firefights during the U.S. assault on a Viet Cong stronghold. (Horst Faas/AP)

 http://tinyurl.com/p8q95g5
































Shell shocked wounded Marine being bandaged in muddy jungle during OP Prairie US mil. sweep just s. of DMZ, S. Vietnam.





 http://tinyurl.com/p2hdrph
 

 A South Vietnamese Marine, severely wounded in a Viet Cong ambush, is comforted by a comrade in a sugar-cane field at Duc Hoa, about 12 miles from Saigon, ..



 http://tinyurl.com/qx9dzgc

 
 Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk torched himself on 11 June 1963
in Saigon to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government led by Ngô Đình Diệm. Diem was installed by the US government, and was notoriously corrupt and authoritarian. Wiki source

http://tinyurl.com/pfdz2c9

  
vietnam war rally girl with naphalm burns classic shot


 http://tinyurl.com/pelhdt7
 
 Military police, reinforced by Army troops, throw back anti-war demonstrators as they tried to storm a mall entrance doorway at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on October 21, 1967. (AP)


 http://tinyurl.com/pnxka2e
 
 Fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio screams over the body of 20-year-old Kent State student Jeffrey Miller after he was shot by the Ohio National Guard during a protest against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War on May 4, 1970. (John Paul Filo/Library of Congress)



 http://tinyurl.com/ou7xkgt



 
Don McCullin Shell Shocked US Marine, Vietnam, Hue 1968, printed 2013 © Don

The effects of combat…human emotions and caring for animals

The effects of combat…human emotions and caring for animals


I am writing this so friends and people may understand a bit about me
in relation to caring for animals, as I receive posts about animal cruelty.

I ignore watching almost all posts about animal cruelty; it's depressing,
and from what I survived in Vietnam I came home numb. Emotionally
numb. Therefore, I try to protect myself from watching animals being
brutalized.

I watch more videos about people being harmed by police, or in Palestine
I'll watch the brutality meted out to Palestinians and their supporters.
And, I limit that, but not as much. I limit the bad because I believe it's
not good to watch too much. I know what can happen.

I also believe that spending too much time watching such videos can
lead to a sense of powerlessness. But, mostly, what happens to humans
bothers me much, much more.

I wasn't in Vietnam a month when another platoon member took me to
see a show, as it were. There was a huge pit, conical shaped that went
down about 30 feet or so that was used to burn/blow up trash. But, this
day other marines were spread out around the rim of the hole (a guess is
about 20 feet across.

There was an air of excitement amongst those already there. A marine was
at the base of the pit with a monkey, and he was teaching the monkey how
to pull the pin of a hand grenade. Once he felt the monkey got the idea he
ran up the sides of the hill and over the top. A few men had rifles trained
on the monkey in case he tried running up the hill.

There would be just one outcome, and soon enough we saw the explosion,
and as the speed of sound is slower than the speed of light, we then heard
the explosion. I may have felt a tiny bit bad, but to survive combat, or just
being in a war zone as a grunt (rifleman) I had to 'not feel,' or not have
feelings about such things. It's self protectection.

In war there are times when the choice is to do right, or wrong in relation to
people, their animals, possessions, home etc. That is doing the right thing
ethically, although I never thought of it that way, and was never confronted
with an order to burn down a family home. Thank God.

But, at other times there is a choice, that to me, was not about ethics, but
a choice between living and dying. In February, 1969, on a jungle ridge in
the A Shau valley at Fire Support Base (FSB) Cunningham my team leader
and I had to put our combat knives to the throats of marines in panic on our
first night.

They began crying, and saying "We're all gonna die they (North Vietnamese
Army NVA sappers - suicide bombers) get in the wire every night."

The third night two men came running towards our bunker in the dark, and
they were screaming "There all around us; we're gonna die..." Once again we
put knives to their throats to shut them up, and sent them back to their bunker.
We then had to listen to them scream as a sapper got into their bunker, and
began knifing them until his six second charge wound down and exploded
killing all three.

In the morning I had to wipe the bunker clean of human remains so the new
guys coming in by chopter wouldn't know. The hardest part for me was not
crying because I didn't want another marine knowing I had cried, so I stuffed
it way down deep. But, it is always with me, and will be till I die.

When I got out of the marines I shot a cat one night, and regretted it
immediately. But, there is a part of me that has insulated myself from feelings
because there is enough pain in me. I survived seeing and carrying the dead, or
being with a friend when his hand blew open, and more. But, what was essential
to surviving was not to let feelings interfere with keeping my senses intact. I'm
not the only one.

There is a buffer within that keeps pain from overwhelming me and rendering
me useless in a sense.

So, if I have a bit of milk with coffee I don't feel bad, but I am moving away
from it. I can use rice milk if necessary.

I love good quality fish and chips, but it is less than once a month. I'm
moving away from fish, not out of ethical concerns, but because I don't
trust eating fish because the oceans are polluted with radioactivity, and more.

You see, war left me damaged, but also with the ability to survive, and
an ability to balance what's bad to others with far worse that I've seen, and
a way to size up which is worse. Eating a chicken, or an egg. To me, eating
a chicken is worse.  But, I don't eat meat, and I try to live and let live.

I lived in Vermont for ten years; a hunter's paradise, but I never hunted
animals because there is nothing heroic about shooting a deer, bear, moose,
or anything with a high powered rifle with a scope.