The Rough Road After The War: Mike Clarke on returning home from Vietnam Former President Richard M. Nixon once said “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.” This is a sentiment reflected by many Vietnam War veterans today. One such veteran, Mike Clarke, served as an infantry medic in the Vietnam war. When he joined straight out of high school, he was not sure how he wanted to serve. The coordinators chose to make him a medic.
Frank finds that it was hard for him to be an American even though he had served for the country as a soldier when others do not consider him as the citizen itself. He feels that his contribution and his friends ' death in Korea have no meaning to some people who always judge people based on their skin colour. This is what made him to feel disappointed. In 'Home ', Toni Morrison shows how the mentality of some people had made some other people to suffer and to be treated unequally. It is ironic since the people who had this mentality thought that they were superior than the others, but without them realised, they were the ones who put themselves as the lowest people in the hierarchy of humanity and justice.
He represented America in a way. On December 20, 1957 he was drafted into World War II (Torr 21). He was very proud to serve his country (Torr 21-22). This gave people more reason to love him more than they already did. When he arrived in Germany, over 1,500 fans were there to welcome him (Torr 197).
The harshness of the war made the soldiers look for any kind of escape from reality or way to make war easier, and they found drugs to be one of the only available outlets. They also experienced extreme PTSD after they got back home because the Vietcong military didn’t like soldier to soldier combat, they would ambush the young U.S. soldiers, or set bombs to go off and give them no way of retaliating. Soldiers using drugs during the war provided an easier way to make time pass, but upon returning home, it could lead to addiction or worsened PTSD. Upon being drafted, most soldiers were young and inexperienced in war, making it even harder on them, so they looked for ways to make it not so terrible, and typically find drugs as the only mental outlet. Many of the soldiers that were drafted came from poor or working class families, so they already didn’t have a good life, and
Before the battle, black soldiers were facing discrimination everywhere. Shaw’s friend, as one of the commanding officer, didn’t train them as soldiers, because he saw them as inferior and incapable of fighting wars. One of the white private defied the order given by the black sergeant to whom he showed disrespect. I honestly don’t think any soldier is dumb enough to disobey and insult his commanding officer unless he wants to see what a martial court looks like, which gives us a pretty good idea of how much the white soldiers despised the black ones. In the end, the 54th regiment volunteered to be the first wave of attack on Fort Wagner, which was basically a suicide mission.
As the speech was held when FDR was nearing the end of his fourth and final term as president, the popularity he gained from his difficult times as the president established a trustworthy character, thus giving him great ethos. Roosevelt’s immediate audience for this speech was the members of the United State Congress, as he asks them to make a formal declaration of war. The other audience for this speech was the United States public as a whole. The people of the United States was very receptive, and over 81 percent of American homes tuned in to hear the
Private Joker had the charisma to be a soldier, but it was his fellow soldier, private Pyle who was the portray of the broken soldier. In this movie, we saw the ordeal that the soldiers had to go through in boot camp which the other movies skipped over. It would make no point in private Taylor’s narrative and it could not have been shown in The Green Berets because Colonel Kirby had no reason to pass through boot camp to be ready for the war. During boot camp, private Joker unveiled his comical nature which helped him get through the ordeal. It allowed him to continue to fight on even after witnessing private Pyle’s murder-suicide.
The title and expression, “the Hollywood War Machine” refers to the glorification of wartime and heroism of American soldiers while embellishing the military experience itself, from the Revolutionary period to the present (Pollard 121). As part of reserving the American patriotic legacy, the motion picture industry has always been fascinated with historical combat situations. “A survey of the Hollywood tradition reveals that a surprisingly large proportion of Hollywood dramatize US wartime experiences, heroics, and engagements” (Pollard 122). In several cases, it is even over-dramatizing or just portraying a historically inaccurate or simply unrealistic picture. Hollywood movies do not only entertain they influence people all over the world.
During the Vietnam war soldiers took many sacrifices, including leaving their families and being outkast’s in society. But during the war they made really good friendships. The Vietnam war made people lose their lives, friends, and families. Many people didn 't support the war so they protested, and when the soldiers came back from war they were treated like outcasts. In the novel “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, the book shows the themes friendship and sacrifice through key details like when someone dies they still remain friends even though they had a sacrifice.
Returning home from war is never an easy transition for a soldier, no soldier embodied that truth more than Norman Bowker. Bowker is a Vietnam War veteran from the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien who struggles with his life and mental health after the Vietnam War. Bowker is troubled by his memories- most specifically one memory- that he cannot forget or forgive himself for. Bowker was a man who had to fight for his life every day he was in Vietnam, there was always a chance the Viet Cong would attack. Bowker lost friends and lost fellow soldiers every day in Vietnam, he even lost his best friend to the war.