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South Dakota Marine Vietnam Vet John Tsitrian.
Episode 2912 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature the story about Marine Vietnam Vet John Tsitrian and what he had to say about the Vietnam War on Veterans Day. His opinion piece appeared on the South Dakota Standard .
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Republish with permission.
John said this pretty well summed up his time in country. I had just come back to the relatively secure airstrip at Dong Ha, slightly south of the Demilitarized Zone, after spending a few weeks at some — pick an adjective, they all fit — desolate, remote, bleak, lonely, dark, depressing, forlorn, gloomy, wretched and neglected outpost along the nearby Cua Viet river, where rocket and artillery attacks were part of the daily routine and potshots into our perimeter were an occasional part of the nightly routine.
It sucked, and it wasn’t just about me. Describing life for the Marines along the DMZ, Dispatches author Michael Herr titled his piece about us “Hell Sucks.”
To me, it’s little wonder that so many Vietnam vets have had post-war mental health issues. The confused situation of our war was indeed surreal, if not altogether schizophrenic. A 2022 Veterans Administration study on the subject concluded that “veterans who served in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos during the Vietnam War have a higher prevalence of mental health issues, particularly PTSD, compared with both other Vietnam-era Veterans and non-Veterans.”
The whole mangled mess of it was an exercise in muddled objectives and wasted resources, so much so that when people died we didn’t say that they were killed. We said that they “got wasted.”
Thanks to that war, John couldn’t be more skeptical about the utterances of our political leadership.
Listen to Episode 2912 and discover more about Marine Vietnam Vet John Tsitrian and what he had to say about the Vietnam War on Veterans Day.
