Carbines in Vietnam

[TNT1943]

You guys are making me glad they didn't want me! I never understood why people gave the troops coming back from VN the cold shoulder-they went because we asked/told them to! And they did.

Anybody got any experience or knowledge of "advisor guns"? This was supposed to be a short-barreled M-2 carbine mounted in the M1A1 folding stock.
I am considering a M-2 for a NFA purchase and wondering if it might be a feasable/fun gun to re-create. Don't panic-I wont use a C&R gun!

[JimF4M1s (Deceased)]

What bothered me most the first time was the timing. Wednesday you were in combat, Thursday you caught a plane out of Da Nang. Arrive at Oakland airport in 12 or 13 hours to Hare Krishna and protesters yelling and throwing crap at you. First instinct is to reach for your K Bar which of course you are not wearing. As Dave said alone, no one to talk to about it. WW2 and Korea guys came home on ships. Large groups and maybe a month or more to get home. More time to get your mind right and calm down. No matter how bad we wanted to be here, in my opinion 24 hours, we just got back to the world too quick.

and came back alone. No units in/out for most people, You just showed up one day and one day you left. There was a tremendous sense of guilt when you got to go home and your buddies stayed. My big mindscrew was that I was drafted, selected for SF and OCS and refused both, I was sent to a signal battalion because I worked for the phone company when I was drafted. So not only did I get out of the Infantry, but some other poor guy took my slot at OCS and got himself shot up. It has bothered me for 40 years. It was the smart thing to do, but that doesn't help. I was in the 5th Inf Div when the OCS thing came up and sat next to a Captain who had just come back from the Ia Drang fight. He said "I'm going to give you the best piece of advice you will ever hear, Don't do this, if you do, you are going to be an Infantry platoon leader and you are going to get killed" I took his advice.

[Harlan (Deceased)]

and came back alone. No units in/out for most people, You just showed up one day and one day you left. There was a tremendous sense of guilt when you got to go home and your buddies stayed. My big mindscrew was that I was drafted, selected for SF and OCS and refused both, I was sent to a signal battalion because I worked for the phone company when I was drafted. So not only did I get out of the Infantry, but some other poor guy took my slot at OCS and got himself shot up. It has bothered me for 40 years. It was the smart thing to do, but that doesn't help. I was in the 5th Inf Div when the OCS thing came up and sat next to a Captain who had just come back from the Ia Drang fight. He said "I'm going to give you the best piece of advice you will ever hear, Don't do this, if you do, you are going to be an Infantry platoon leader and you are going to get killed" I took his advice.

Dave, you have NOTHING to feel bad about in any way. You were utilized where you did the most good, and there's no telling the lives that may have been saved because you knew your trade and performed it much better than if someone else with no skills was placed there.

As Jim also said, the return alone and just a few hours after being in all of what Vietnam was would have been one of the most surreal experiences anyone, anywhere could have experienced. Having to see the ignorant sheep protesters just added to the terrible experience. Protesters are some of the most ignorant of any groups of people I've ever seen. They are driven by the media. When this latest thing where protesters have been sleeping in tents to protest wall street, it showed bigger than ever. I've watched interviews of the current protesters and they are very telling - they are there as something to do to make themselves feel like they are a part of something. Most of them don't have jobs. Just ignorant sheep, and I didn't here one of them make a valid point as to why they were there. They just came along to feel like they were part of something. The protesters in the late 60's were no different - just a bunch of bums who had nothing better to do than to try to belong to a group. Most were there because they didn't have jobs, and many were there because they were draft dodging cowards who ran from service and wanted to try to feel better by acting like they were part of a group of people who were opposed to the war.