Is there a disconnect between the Korean & Vietnam Veterans & the Gulf/OIF/OEF Veterans?

First off my Brothers and Sisters the Vietnam War , Conflict, or whatever else anyone ever decides to call it, was a Political War and let me attest to you right now, it was War. It was the first time that the Media was allowed to get involved and report what was happening from the so called front lines. Shit, the whole Country was the Front Lines and that so called Media that was doing the reporting most of the time were really out of touch with what was really happening. They exaggerated and made false claims as to what was really going on. Even during TET of 1968 when Walter announced to the World that the VC and NVA had infiltrated, over-ran the Embassy in Saigon. They actually only breached the perimeter but the media exaggerated and made it sound like we got our asses kicked. It was a big mistake letting the media do and say what they did but no one contradicted them. As far as the World was concerned, we were a bunch of dope smoking misfits and thus the media portrayed us as the bad guys and thus the name calling started such as "Baby Killers" and so on. Shit, when I got back to the World, I went to join the VFW and the AL and I was treated as an outcast. No one wanted us around nor did they ever give us a chance to make things right. It really sucked coming back home to the World and it was all because of our Government and the media never making it right with us, the Vietnam Vet. Yes, now things are different and they should be and I for one respect every Veteran who has ever dawned a Military Uniform and Served our Great Country in any capacity! You know, some people say that we lost the Vietnam War. Well, contrary to popular believe, we didn't lose the War. Actually, we never lost a major battle in Vietnam. It was our Government that gave the Order that we withdrew from Vietnam, just like we withdrew from Iraq.

Korea came unfortunately too close to the end of the WWII. People were exhausted by the world conflict and not ready to support a "Police Action". Veterans of the Korean conflict might have settled for a back seat to WWII Vets, but Vietnam seemed to suck all the air out of the room. First its veterans were vilified as "baby killers" and then venerated by the children of hippies who seem genuinely ashamed of their parents' abuse of Vietnam Era Vets. I can well imagine Korean Vets wondering if they're "chopped liver" while all this attention is bestowed on them. Yes, everyone who serves our nation deserves to be honored equally. However, Korean Vets do seem to have been lost in the cracks between two turbulent eras.

I think if the VFW and other vet friendly groups like American Legion updated their recruiting tactics and learned to be more social media friendly and generation crossing we would see alot more networking in the veteran community. I rarely ever see vets my age in the VFW hall. And there didn't seem to be a huge outreach to us either. Maybe it's different in other places, but the VFW here is associated with old people. It doesn't have to be an old man's group though.

No veteran was treated like the Vietnam Veteran when he/she came home. The Korean Veteran was simply lost in the crowd and the other veterans received high praise for serving this country. I am thankful we treat veterans with respect now. I hope we never forget the past.

Yes, just as there is a disconnect between WWII Vets and Vietnam.

Different times, different circumstances, different results and different generations.

World War II was total war with a corresponding total, defined victory. Every war since, with the exception of Desert Storm not so much. Korean and Vietnam Veterans never got the closure and immediately recognition of their sacrifices the Veterans on other wars have received. As someone who's service spanded from Vietnam (1973) to the current conflicts (2014) witnessing the change of attitude has been interesting.

After the victory of Desert Storm the public's demeanor towards the combatants has changed 90 degrees to the good. So it's hard for today's generation of young heroes to relate to what the Korean and Vietnam Veterans went through coming home.

I think there is a definite generational disconnect that you see in American Legions and VFW posts all over the country.

Whenever Veterans get together I always try to emphasize that we all did our job to defend our country the best we could under the circumstances we were presented.

Given that there are less and less of us willing to make that sacrifice, less than 1% of our total population, and the number of our brothers and sisters that are passing on every day, we need to celebrate our service and common experiences that bind us together.

Ladies and Gentelmen;
I respectfully ask you to bear with me this is a topic near and dear to my heart and on I wrestle with daily. I am a member of two other organizations in my community here in Colorado Springs. One is a fraternal organization in the Catholic Church the other is a HAM radio organization. I have frequented VFWs and American Legions, mostly in the rural town my wife is from and can confidently say with all certainty that if you think this type of disconnect is only applicable to Veterans of the conflicts of the 20th sand 21st century you are sadly mistaken.
My first point is that much like our military service it is all determine by a bell curve. On one extreme end of the bell curve is the welcoming opened armed group of people that are interested in maintaining a balance between old and new. Those that may not know what changes to make but welcome change with opened arms. Mostly they are genuine people of any age. They understand that mostly bridging the gap is having manners, seeking to understand before being understood, living by the golden rule and just being a nice guy. He is the guy that knows how to adapt and overcome without moving from the intent of the organization.
The second extreme end of the bell curve I put into two distinct groups. One is the old curmudgeon. It is the guy that grew up on the Baltimore Catechism and thinks that the spirituality of the Church is all hippie crap; the HAM radio guy that thinks that anyone who didn’t learn Morse code for his license is not worth to operate a radio; the veteran behind the bar who no matter where you served, when you served, what you did you will still never have seen more, done more or suffered thr0ugh more than him as he chain smokes and self-medicates, think of the guy in the VFW hat pushing the young black lady out of the Trump rally. These are the people who would be perfectly content with letting these organizations to die with them. The other side of this coin is the “young punk” who thinks that the old folks in the Church are killing it, or worse yet feel that they need to go back fully to the Latin Mass and Vatican II ruined everything; the kid who thinks that radios are antiquated and that sitting in their Mom’s basement eating hot pockets and learning code and cracking Porn Hubs passwords is the only thing a humans needs to know; or the “operator” who feels that their war was the only war, they have nothing to learn from the older generation who never snorted pre-workout before doing 100,000 burpees and running around the battlefield with a douche looking beard.
Of these two groups, hopefully you will never change the latter and never want to be around the former.
Finally there are the vast majority of people on the bell curve. Those of all generations who want to reach out but have fear in some sense. It’s the younger veteran who is strapped with children, finding a job or in school, unsure of himself after being thrust back into civilian society and really would like to join an organization but doesn’t know where he can fit it in between kids potty training, homework, spending time with a wife and just figuring out life. He wants to share his story, talk to other people who understand his pain and triumphs, certainly not his wife, she doesn’t need to hear about the IEDs, the boredom, the hard times, he wants to talk to someone who has been in his shoes and made the mistakes and can give him sage advice on how he can come through it better. But how, when will he have the time the energy, the paltry funds to pay for that. Where can he get the most bang for his mental, physical emotional, spiritual and fiscal buck? The bad apples have turned him off propped up like vultures on a wire waiting to punch their ticket. An organization like Team Rubicon or Team RWB or the Mission Continues has likeminded people who know where that far off valley in the Hindu Kush is and not only do they drink beer, have a few pieces of eye candy to enjoy but also are doing somethings that are active and tangible for the community that reflect the spirit that he still has burning within him. That is what he needs, what he yearns for, what is reintroducing him into society.
It’s the older generation who has had technology and the shot gun blast of information hit him in the face like a sack of bricks. He can use email, maybe the wife has a Facebook account to keep up with the grandchildren, but he is in his twilight years. Most of what he sees on Fox News doesn’t give him hope for what he doesn’t understand to begin with. He sees our returning Veterans from our most recent conflicts, he is probably a Viet Nam Vet and he knows they will not be treated like he was. He smiles at them, thanks them for their service, maybe buys them a drink, but beyond that he doesn’t know what else to do; no one did it for him.
This is the vast majority of people and as you can see. As in any organization the bad apples always become somewhat of the face of the organization. As right or wrong as it is. Thank God there is not more of them. The good proactive people are always few in number, yet hold the keys to the kingdom in so many ways. Where we can build the bridge is between the vast majority and we can only do that through understanding and education. Honestly, those who have the time the older generation have to do the reaching. I am sorry to say it is not fair. Modern society has strapped today’s young man with a great amount of information access, but a limited amount of tangible time.
Even in the organizations I am a part of getting meeting minutes emailed is like asking for the Holy Grail. Getting a Facebook account up is met with fear and disdain. Fear of change is always the operative words.
We are seeking something fulfilling to ourselves and our families, our communities and healing. Our children and our wives are our world and take up our time and our energy. We desperately want help though and we want to make a difference. We want to have someone we can empathies with, someone to talk to. Our parents learned to bottle things up, we didn’t learn that lesson well. We want quiet place to go to for our homework, a place to help our wife find a job, a place to bitch about civilians a place that does more than bake sales, a place that can take us away for a day and we can say afterward, I built that! We want a place that doesn’t perpetuate a sense of ignorance, where we won’t hear about how bad Barrack Obama is or how great Donald Trump is. We also want it given to us in a medium we can understand. Not some WWII envelope, but an email, a Facebook invite or better yet a phone call or visit with a caring person who wants to help. We want someone to come to us with welcoming us home with open arms, not a parade, but a “Can I help you brother?”, “We aren’t those civilians, we get you and we can help, who is your wife, here is our wife let them talk, where were you down range?” We want a safe and somewhat exclusive place to take our toddlers, like a playground where we can get away from our wife and maybe meet a vet who can empathize with us and give us advice or network. We want to build and to help to make what we fought for better, not just ourselves but the big beautiful world we learned about so far from home. We want to be able to have a reliable person to watch our child and go on a date with our wife. To rekindle our relationship from deployment, after deployment, after deployment, after deployment after deployment…..
As always the most important part is communication. Those kind of bridges will never be forged if we don’t meet somewhere in the middle. Most Viet Nam vets I have met have not been abrasive in fact they have gone out of their way to welcome me home. We can build on that, help us, help us to be better members of our community to improve our fighting position in this great big world.

Let's put this bluntly. War is war. Bullies go both direction. Men and women die. That's the basics of all war. A difference, WWII, woodland ans some desert. Korea, woodland and mountainous. DSDS, desert. Somalia, urban warfare. OIF/ OEF, desert and urban warfare. Technology and equipment has changed, the heart of the fighter has not. The reason for the disconnect, we have a distorted view that no other was worse than ours. There has been no war where no one has died. Regardless of your war, we are on the same team.

COL Mikel J. Burroughs, I have always applauded the vets of today. The only disconnect I have seen is the Gulf vets at the VA. They will have to let their guard down if there is ever a connection. They want to be left alone. But, I understand. Even though they have received nice Welcome Home's, which is the way it should be, they are like me when I first started going to the VA. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I just wanted to be left alone. I see most of them have that 1000 yard stare. I have approached several and thank them, and they look at me like I'm crazy. After I returned from Vietnam I felt ashamed to let anyone know I had fought in the Vietnam war. I tried to put it out of my mind. I suspect some of these Gulf vets feel the same way. Hell, if the F'n government wouldn't have allowed news correspondents in the trenches, and not have sent home pictures of the dead and wounded, the firefights, etc. we would have accomplished our mission. Between Johnson and Westmorland, there was so much BS being fed to the public. Hell, Westmoreland sent Johnson false information about body count. He lied about less American KIA, and more enemy KIA than there really was. After the people back here found out the truth about American KIA. they went ballistic. The chicken shit hippies and the ones who ran away to Canada, and even some Vietnam vets, started the slogans about us being baby killers. You know where that came from? It came from the news reporting that an American plane dropped WP and Napalm on a village (PhaPhan Kim Phuc) where the burned kids were running down the road. It was the Vietnamese Air Force who dropped the WP and napalm. It was too late by then. Protesters thought it was a cover up.
I got off the main subject, but we were treated so badly there were more suicides than you could count. It wasn't right.
Now these guys are welcomed home, and there is a gap between us and them? It will take years to bridge that gap. As they get older, they will realize we did them a big favor. The reason they are treated like we should have been treated, is because all of us baby boomers made sure that would never happen again, and it hasn't.

I respect all veterans and like to talk to them. I do feel more comfortable around Vietnam Veterans because of shared experiences. When at events where there are veterans in attendance, I do try to connect with both younger and older veterans.

For clarification sake, I am a two tour Viet Nam vet, an officer, and served almost ten years, and saw a great deal of combat during my first tour. Thus said my participation seems to always pale when I read of the conditions encountered in Korea, WW ll, As I fast forward to all of the conflicts since Vietnam, I again shudder at what are our troops have been subjected to. Combat is hell. The first firefight, the first CA, The first DO, the first time an lz is overrun......well an nco told me " my cherry was broken". My point is this, I have no disconnect with any veteran of any conflict because we share a bond that few share. We survived and can stand tall another day. I did not choose my war but I am proud of participation and my status as a vet. I salute all vets that have served in any capacity but especially my fellow combat vets. Nope no disconnect here!!