Vietnam Veterans Quotes

“As modern neurobiologists point out, the repetition of the traumatic experience in the flashbacks can be itself re-traumatizing; if not life-threatening, it is at least threatening to the chemical structure of the brain and can ultimately lead to deterioration. And this would also seem to explain the high suicide rate of survivor, for example, survivors of Vietnam.”
― Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History

“Our lives are a story shaped by circumstance, twisted by Fate, and ultimately judged by how we reacted.”
― Mary Marchese, What Really Happened to Steve Nathan

“Deep down there is the feeling that what we participated in was morally wrong, and can never be looked upon as legitimate. We can make all kinds of excuses, but it can never justify the murder, the savagery and the barbarism that was inflicted on the Vietnamese people under the guise of saving the world from communism.”
― Terry Burstall, The Soldiers' Story: The Battle at Xa Long Tan Vietnam, 18 August 1966

“Vietnam was never a threat to America or Australia, but it was a threat to their perceived interests. For those selfish interests we fought and were maimed and died. It was not for patriotism, and not to save freedom or humanity: it was to save vested interests.”
― Terry Burstall, The Soldiers' Story: The Battle at Xa Long Tan Vietnam, 18 August 1966

“You have forgotten, though it is unlikely that you ever knew, why you were sent to Vietnam to fight. You have forgotten, if you ever even though about it, that Vietnam is the country of the Vietnamese , not the country of Americans.”
― Richard Hammer, One Morning in the War: The Tragedy at Son My

“Like walking into the darkness our soldiers went their lives like cash haphazardly spent. Vietnam was a conflict that was no more than an experiment aimed at humanity's scientific evolution.”
― A.K. Kuykendall, Imperium Heirs

“Kurt was crazy, who wouldn't have been?”
― Geoff Widders, Kurt Langer : Nemesis of Terror

“We are the ones you sent to fight a war
you did not know a thing about —
those of us that lived
have tried to tell you what went wrong.
Now you think you do not have to listen.

Just because we will not fit
into the uniforms of photographs
of you at twenty-one
does not mean you can disown us.

We are your sons, America,
and you cannot change that.
When you awake,
we will still be here.”
― W. D. Ehrhart