Woodstock - Forty Year Anniversary - The Real American Heroes Were Not in New York, But in Vietnam

During those famous four days in 1968, while 400,00 spoiled young people were getting high, fornicating, and running around naked, 109 American patriots serving in Vietnam made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

The New York Post tells the story:

NEWSWEEK described them as "a youthful, long-haired army, almost as large as the US force in Vietnam." One promoter saw what happened near Bethel (nearly 40 miles from Woodstock), NY, as an opportunity to "showcase" the drug culture as a "beautiful phenomenon."

The newsmagazine wrote of "wounded hippies" sent to impromptu hospital tents. Some 400,000 of the "nation's affluent white young" attended the "electric pot dream." One sympathetic chronicler recently described them as "a veritable army of hippies and freaks."

Time gushed with admiration for the tribal gathering, declaring: "It may well rank as one of the significant political and sociological events of the age." It deplored the three deaths there -- "one from an overdose of drugs [heroin] and hundreds of youths freaked out on bad trips caused by low-grade LSD." Yet attendees exhibited a "mystical feeling for themselves as a special group," according to the magazine's glowing essay.

The same tribute mentioned the "meaningless war in the jungles of Southeast Asia" and quoted a commentator who said the young needed "more opportunities for authentic service."

Meanwhile, 8,429 miles around the other side of the world, 514,000 mostly young Americans were authentically serving the country that had raised them to place society over self. The casualties they sustained over those four days were genuine, yet none of the elite media outlets were praising their selflessness.

So, 40 years later, let's finally look at those 109 Americans who sacrificed their lives in Vietnam on Aug. 15, 16, 17 and 18, 1969...Continued