Quote Originally Posted by aroliver59 View Post
... I've started some threads on vintage photos and the response was less than hoped.
I'm an "anything old" kind of person... history, geology, archaeology. The same for photographs. These Shorpy.com pictures especially, due to their unbelievable resolution, draw me in. What is that man reading? What is the man behind him looking at?

For others who aren't as "backwards" as myself, and possibly you AROliver, they're just interesting instead of fascinating? (Maybe, the difference between someone who would or would not spend a week at Smithsonian.)

Here's what this picture says to me, summarizing what I've learned about battle stress... (no battle experience, guys) ...

In WW II, they found that after a set number of hours of battle conditions, soldiers started to break down. It was almost a magic number. There didn't have to be bullets flying around. Just the possibility at any moment that a bullet might take your life. The British especially started tracking these hours and rotating troops, etc, to not push their troops over the maximum (if possible.)

Fast forward to Viet Nam. As a gross overgeneralization, with the helicopter it became much easier to insert a soldier into combat. So, guess what? This "magic number" of combat condition hours was reached much more quickly than in World War II. (Speaking generally.)

"They only have a 12 month assignment; my uncle fought for 3 years in WW II."

The statistics speak clearly to the damage caused to our soldiers by Viet Nam. And, when you think about the conditions in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, are they better?

When I look at this photograph, I think about the fact that we have asked these young men to die. And, if not die, then with few exceptions to return forever changed.

I work for the Veterans Administration by the way. And, I feel that our country is starting to take seriously these "soldiers on the street."