\nThinking about how when I was a kid in the 80s-90s the Vietnam War was understood in terms of draftee line infantry or maybe flight crews and now as we grow more distant and deeper into the SOCOM-first all-volunteer professional military era I increasingly see it presented as the MACV-SOG Birth of Modern Special Forces
when I was in college I got into “Everything2”, a user-written web encyclopedia that was a Slashdot-affiliated rival to Wikipedia and the Hitchhiker’s Guide-branded H2G2
One of the best and most prolific writers there was this guy “riverrun” who was telling the story of his service in ‘Nam as part of a morale-raising Army rock band called The Joint Chiefs of Staff, where their audience was expected to recognize “Joint” as a marijuana pun
he called the series “REMFS”, “Rear Echelon Motherfuckers”, though once they flew to some Christmas event at a forward base that then came under assault
(he felt weird that on the helicopter supply flight they came in on, something that probably would have reduced casualties had been deleted to make room for Christmas turkeys)
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