One of the few places you'd see mention of our involvement in Viet Nam before late 1964 was in comic books such as Dell's Jungle War Stories. This story is from issue #5, October 1963. Art is by Maurice Whitman and Vince Colletta. The cover is most likely by Vic Prezio
You'll note these are the days before the two most iconic pieces of machinery of the war--the UH-1 helicopter and the M-16 rifle.
It was Jack Kennedy's war then, so it was permissible, especially since we weren't opposing the march of Communism too hard.
ReplyDeleteBut, yeah, this was the era when "Ballad Of The Green Berets" went #1.
Ballad of the Green Berets was #1 in March 1966, 2.5 years after this comic.
DeleteI recently read "We were Soldiers and Young" by Hal Moore, and although it made me feel proud of our brave countrymen, it sickened me that even before the war got going good, the politicians had already doomed thousands of men to the meat grinder of a war they didn't want to win. Despicable is the only word I can use for the people in power then.
The anti-war movement didn't start until Dr Spock and Stokeley Carmichael walked arm-in-arm up Telegraph Hill in SF (where else?) to kick it off in the late spring of '66 and it took another year or so for the KGB to get it into full gear.
DeleteA lot of the blame belongs to LBJ who micromanaged the thing mercilessly so he could have guns, butter, and welfare and the New Frontier holdovers who really didn't know what they were doing, after all.