From a British perspective (for now, at least, a 'foreigner') we don't have the complex issue of Vietnam added to this. But nowadays, when each and every serviceman or woman serving in a Middle Eastern warzone is automatically awarded the epithet of "hero" by the press, I do kind of feel for the people who were called up and thrown into past conflicts, having basically been civilians all their lives.
If you join the service voluntarily as a job, then you join knowing what might lay ahead; it still takes a lot of courage for sure, which I don't have, but don't the conscripted 'vets' of the past deserve a special kind of respect?
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