Vietnam War - Blog Posts

Oh my god I'm listening to California Dreamin' with headphones and. Did you know it's one of those songs that are hardcore spliced up between headphones. Like the female and male voices are mostly coming from seperate headphones.

This makes no difference except for a cool listening experience unless. Unless you take one headphone out.

Ohhh, there's still the faintest echo of the female voices in the male voices' headphone, but half the instruments are missing. It's haunting. It's majestic. It's Denny in a old rehearsal room. It's not really a designated space, it's the backroom of their bar. They jokingly used to call it the backstage area. It's wooden panels that were never glossy. It's Michelle and Cass on old stools with cheap cider. It's Denny alone. It's Denny's guitar, with John's handwriting on its side. It's an empty room that's not used to being empty. You know when rooms sound the most loud when there's supposed to be a hundred sounds and you know every one of them? You think you can hear it out of pure fate.

He can only play as many instruments as his hands can hold. But he plays them as well as ever. There's no tremble in his fingers. He can definitely hear Cass. He can almost see John. When he closes his eyes, he can believe they're through the door, in the bar. Hearing him play. Singing back to him.

California dreaming. On such a winter's day

One of my other hobbies I figured I’d share is that I collect old military uniforms for the purpose of restoring/preserving them. While most unfortunately don’t have names in them, the one on the far right in this picture does. It’s named to a gentleman who flew fifty missions in a B-29 Superfortress bomber over Japan as a crewman. I also help other collectors I know locate the veterans or the families of veterans who once possessed the items they have.

(via Vietnam, 35 years later - The Big Picture - Boston.com)

Soldiers of the North Vietnamese army entering Independence palace in Saigon for the first time, The Liberation of Ho Chi Minh City, April, 1975.

Fifty Years. I wonder if things will ever change.

29 April 1975 – Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation on record, begins removing the last Americans from Saigon. The North Vietnamese had launched their final offensive in March 1975 and the South Vietnamese forces had fallen back before their rapid advance, losing Quang Tri, Hue, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang, and Xuan Loc in quick succession.

With the North Vietnamese attacking the outskirts of Saigon, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin ordered the commencement of Operation Frequent Wind, the term used for the final evacuation. The coded message went out over Armed Forces Radio to any US civilians or contractors working in Saigon who had been instructed to listen for : The temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising.” Then the wistful strains of White Christmas played on the radio. This was repeated regularly and was the evacuation warning.

In 19 hours, 81 helicopters carried more than 1,000 Americans and almost 6,000 Vietnamese to aircraft carriers offshore. At 7:53 a.m. on April 30, the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the US embassy and headed out to sea. Later that morning, North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over from Tran Van Huong (who only spent one day in power after President Nguyen Van Thieu fled).

The Vietnam War was over.

Willem Dafoe as Sergeant Elias Gorden (Platoon 1986)

🇺🇲 ⚓ Remembering the fire aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Forrestal (CVA-59) that occurred on July 29th, 1967 while operating in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War. 134 Sailors were killed and another 161 were wounded. Lest we forget.