Each veteran has a very small piece of the picture. Few have a larger view.
My brother is a Vietnam vet. Joined in '66, volunteered. He was convinced he'd be drafted and if he joined first he'd have a say where he was assigned (his lottery number came and he would not have been drafted ... Oops ... He bet, he lost). His "war" was working on airplanes, far from the front lines, seeing no wounded, and having trips to Thailand and at times State side. Once they had to hurriedly pack up and relocate. Tet. Their base wasn't overrun and soon afterwards they moved back to their old digs. The horror! Otherwise ... He learned to be a machinist.
My father was a WWII vet. Worked on a minesweeper. The Fitch. A '44 grad, he was in the war for a bit more than a year--including basic training. Swept mines in various places, then in Tokyo harbor, and was in dress whites on deck for the signing of the peace treaty. Battle? Sorry, not a bit of it. He was traumatized, learned to hate eating rice from his Navy stint.
Please, tell me how my family's vets' stories capture the horror of Vietnam or the Pacific war. They are particular histories. They capture two men's narratives, but no more. Their stories are histories. But their stories are not "history."
Nonetheless, their histories are part of "the history."
To focus on particular particular histories because they're particularly bad is no better than focusing on particular histories like my brother's and father's, which aren't that bad.
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