Milsurp After Hours

Woodstock started 40 years ago today. Hard to believe that long ago, but the babies made by concert goers rolling in the mud are now on the edge of middle age and their parents probably haven't smoked a joint in a couple or more decades.

It was the premier anti war concert ever. It was the premier concert ever as far as numbers. As an event it was probably a giant step better than anything the college age generation had ever come up with before in America or anywhere else. Beat goldfish swallowing and dance marathons and phone booth stuffing and other quaint stuff from previous generations. All kinds of feelings about rebellion and peace, sexual adventure and rock and roll all blended together, fired up, and kept going, by one group or singer after another over several days and nights.

I was in the Army at the time and a few months away from Vietnam. It wasn't noticed by me while it was going on.

Something like that wouldn't happen today, on even a modest scale, protesting the current meaningless wars in Afganistan and Iraq that only chew up volunters a few at a time would interest few people now days. Most people, young as well as old, are now all of the "thank-you-for-your-service" mindset it seems.... just like saying "God-Bless-You" after somebody sneezes. Rock and Roll seems to have gone into oldies and left the new music to urbanized country and gettoized rap. Young people don't seem to see themselves as different from their parents or society any more. Probably the cycle is in motion though and in ten or twenty years there will be a new batch of young rebels to suddenly come to life again.

The one performance that stood out from Woodstock was played by a guy who had been in the 101st once. He played it with an upside down guitar. He never went to Nam. Think he was discharged for some medical reason... didn't look it up.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2bGUeDnqPY

Hendrix got into trouble with the law twice for riding in stolen cars. He was given a choice between spending two years in prison or joining the Army. Hendrix chose the latter and enlisted on May 31, 1961. After completing boot camp, he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. His commanding officers and fellow soldiers considered him to be a sub-par soldier: he slept while on duty, had little regard for regulations, required constant supervision, and showed no skill as a marksman. For these reasons, his commanding officers submitted a request that Hendrix be discharged from the military after he had served only one year. Hendrix did not object when the opportunity to leave arose. Hendrix would later tell reporters that he received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle during his 26th parachute jump.

I would have guessed as much.

I knew some guys that were given the choice between the Army and prison. I also knew a guy that couldn't join the Navy because he had been caught stealing watermelons. He didn't try the Army to see what they thought about it. Wonder what the present day standards are and if they are different from one service to the next?

Remember Arlo Guthrie... Alice's Restaurant Massacree? Arlo was turned down for the draft, forty years ago, because of being found guilty of littering... at least that was how the song went and how the movie went too.

That stupid song lasts 18 minutes and 34 seconds .... I would be asleep before he even finished it plus it is against my beliefs so I never hear the dang thing in the first place.
Patrick

It was only poking fun at the way things were then. I was drafted. I wouldn't have gone into the Army if I hadn't a been drafted. The song wasn't so much protest as irony and humor. Better to laugh than to cry. Takes some of the pressure off when the truth is said out loud.

That was then and this is now though.

Patrick, does it send a cold shiver down your spine when somebody you don't even know says to you, "Thank you for your service", in the normal well meaning but igorant way, and you know full well they have no idea about where you have been or what you have done or what you think about it?

When I came home from Vietnam a young woman I had never seen before walked up to me in the airport in Seattle and spit in my face and walked away. I didn't want to be thanked any more than I wanted to be spat upon. I just wanted to go home.

Yup, different times different people.
When someone usually hears I have been to Iraq, I get the " Thank You for Your Service" , it does not bother me at all that they really have no clue as to what I did over there, most people who have never been do not really understand it anyway. I tell that I did my job to keep the planes flying and that is all they really understand.
I am thankful that we do not get that treatment the Vietnam Vets did when they came home, no one cared, you come home now to a victory party be it at your home town or in Baltimore or Atlanta. We do live in different times.
As to music, what these YOUNG ones listen too ... GOOD GRIEF I can not stand it ... RAP or I call it C_AP !!, nowdays it is laptops, PDA's or BlackBerry's they use and TWITTERING, geeeeezzzz, what happened to old fashion mail, oh that is right it for OLD FOLKS like you or me.

Patrick

I was living about an hour away from Woodstock at the time. I had just finished a year of sleeping in the rain and mud and wasn't too interested in doing it for fun. I liked Alice's Restaurant. I knew it by heart, and would recite (I make no claim to being a singer) it walking the trails in RVN. It drove the lifers crazy.

Nobody messed with me when I got home. I landed at Ft. Lewis and processed out. I was a civilian when I left that night. I caught the first plane I could find going East. When I got home, no one even knew where I'd been.

Patrick, I'm glad we do live in different times. I'm glad the service men and women of today are appreciated. Just hope it isn't just lip service as the country contiues on in the same old save the world way.

AS for Hendrix - what a big blob of noisy no talent HE was, along with many others of that era, what a waste of oxygen

Actually, Hendrix was a very talented guitar player, one of the best. You didn't like the music he played, but that's OK, a lot of people like you just didn't get it.

Vern.