I have visited prostitutes, and I don't apologize for it. It was 1971, in a place called Vung Tau.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

125. I have read enough about war...

...to know that I'll never understand what it's like. I'm reading a 700 page book on the events of World War 2 right now, and I'm findint out some details I'd never imagined. The descriptions of actual battle are harrowing. The survival rate of submariners, tank drivers, Russians in general...it's appalling. A common thread in this book, which spends lots of time focusing on the words and thoughts of front-line soldiers, is that the people back home couldn't possibly understand what war is really like. The author of this book does a wonderful job of trying to describe what the war was like. But he does such a good job that he argues for his own descriptive limitations. In other words, I could read a 5000 page book on war, and I might gain a greater appreciation for the events of that war. But I'll never know the visceral fear, the pissing in your pants when you hear the first artillery shell (yes, even the manly men), the privation, the conviction that you'd never see another sunset. This is not a part of my life experience, and as such, I'm not going to get down on someone who used the services of a prostitute while in Vietnam. By the way, I'm a veteran of the peacetime Navy, and just want to reiterate, I have no freaking idea what war is like, and I'm fortunate for that. To see some of the posts here that sneer at the experience just helps me realize that these people have no idea what they're talking about--they know even less than I do.

I'm not going to "thank you for your service". That's a BS line used by too many people. I'm going to thank you for your story, and let you know that I wish I did understand it better than I'm able to from the safety of my keyboard. Thank you.