Forty-five
years ago, in the wilds of New York, the Woodstock music festival took
place. While 400,000 people attended,
closing roads to the site, and creating national news, I and about 400,000 – 500,000
others were far more concerned about the war in VietNam. I was in the last month of my tour, sweating
out the days at Dau Tieng. I knew
nothing about the music festival until I saw a very small item in “Stars &
Stripes” just before boarding a plane out of Bien Hoa.
Compare and contrast, if you will, the two groups: festival
attendees and troops. The two
populations were roughly equivalent in numbers and mean ages.
Woodstock is recalled for the size of the crowd, for
recreational drug use, for unprepared attendees, for ferrying performers in and
out of the venue by helicopter, for on-site medical care, for torrential rain
and mud slides.
Vietnam was notable for recreational drug use, helicopter
transportation, on-site medical care, for torrential rains and mud.
In VietNam the preferred drugs were ethanol and pot. The military has a long history of tolerating
ethanol abuse. Pot use was likely to get
one a court martial and a trip to Long Binh Jail (LBJ) At Woodstock, LSD, pot, ethanol, and almost
anything else one can imagine was at least marginally available. T
Most of the 80 arrests at Woodstock
were made on drug charges involving LSD, amphetamines and heroin. Marijuana smokers, estimated to be the
majority of the audience, were not arrested at Woodstock.
Helicopters
ferried the performers to and from the stage and their off-site lodging.
Helicopters
were our lifeline in VietNam. Everything
moved by rotary wing aircraft. We were
picked up for insertions, provided close air support, resupplied with
ammunition, food, and water, medevac, and
sometimes extracted by those marvelous vehicles and their heroic crews.
Medical care
at Woodstock was mostly minor ER in nature.
There were three births, three documented deaths, and not a lot of other
documented injuries/illnesses. In VietNam,
the gamut of injuries and illnesses included malaria, dysentery (amoebic and
bacterial) intestinal worms and othe parasitic infestations. Battlefield injuries were immediately
infected, including burns, blast trauma, lacerations, gunshot and shrapnel
wounds that harvested parts of young men without concern for their lives. The use of helicopters as air ambulances was
responsible for saving many injured who would not have survived any slower
means of transport to surgical hospitals.
At Woodstock,
there was heavy rainfall catching many attendees with no rain protection or
insulation from the resulting water and mud.
Large mudslides were created and provided communal amusement. In VietNam the SW monsoon was still in
effect. Troops lived and worked in mud,
ankle-deep or deeper. Rain was always a
factor during the SW monsoon. The troops
in the field were always uncomfortable, hot,and wet or cold and wet until the
monsoon direction reversed and the conditions changed to hot and dusty. No one in the field would have enjoyed
mudslides.
The festival
ended after 3 days, leaving a mountain of trash behind for the promoters to
clean up.
. In VietNam the war
was ongoing. The process of “Vietnamization,”
shifting the burden to our unwilling and often incapable allies was beginning. The drawdown was initiated, making it even
more likely that some small action somewhere might interfere with our
departure..
I was treated to a
ten day drop, courtesy of Nixon and Kissinger. I prided myself on being resistant to
superstitions. However, after some
shrapnel injuries early in August, I stayed close to a bunker at nearly all
times. I avoided all crowds except a ETS
party held for a flight warrant officer on the roof of Michelin plantation
building where we consumed champagne and watched the fast movers work over Nui
ba Dinh. That, to the best of my memory,
took place during Woodstock. We had great
fireworks to watch.
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