Discussion 2: Needs of Veterans

Changes in the Military

Changes in the Military Program Transcript

WILLIAM J. WILLIAMS: Things are different now. Everything's faster. It's so fast you can't keep up with it. I mean, travel and everything is done. And they come home like overnight almost, like a leave over there and the next day be home or be somewhere on the East coast. See, I wasn't involved in any cities, and when you have this land group where their fighting is out on the land as they go through towns and cities, they see something.

They see a house. They see everything. They see dogs, cats. They see all kinds of moving things on the ground. Out in the Pacific where what we did with our work, we didn't see anything like it. All we saw was the Pacific Ocean, and we didn't get to see cities or towns. The only time I think we saw any city was when we pulled into Honolulu one time.

DESMOND W. FLANIGAN: How is the military today different from the military when I was in? One of the things is the constant short-term deployments. You deploy, you see death and destruction, you come back. Then you go back and come home again. There are people who have five, six, even I've heard of nine deployments, so the constant spiking of the intensity of what you go through, and all of a sudden you're back in a mall.

Vietnam, eventually, the American public were against the war. They were against the military. I had an incident where I was bringing back my special forces team, one of my soldiers was spit on. Now, you come back, they say, oh, we support the troops. But the thing is they don't really understand the war, and the saying is that the military went to war, America went to the mall.

Changes in the Military Additional Content Attribution

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SPECIAL THANKS: The Wilkinson and Flannigan Family

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Changes in the Military

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