Tiger Stripes
My Dad was SF and told me that there not allowed to wear tiger stripe fatigues. I wonder why they insisted on showing them over and over...guess they looked "cool"
shareMaybe your dad wasn't allowed to wear them, but there are endless pics from the Vietnam war of guys wearing them. So, guys really did wear them. And that's why they showed them in the movie.
When I was in the Army in the '80s, I was in units authorized to wear slant-pocket Vietnam-era green jungle fatigues, or the pre-BDU "Vietnam leaf" small-pattern camo (with slant pocket or gusset pocket) when many soldiers had never seen those, or had no idea that those were still around. Those soldiers might be analogous to your dad. But them not having that stuff didn't change the fact that I was wearing it.
I wasn't allowed to wear Colonel's eagles when I was in the Army, but I don't consider it some moviemaker fantasy that John Wayne's character wore them in this movie.
I was there in 69-70. 11b mechanized. I cannot recall ever seeing tiger stripes. And I can also assure you that you never saw starched and clean fatigues after your first day in the bush! And all the equipment was covered in mud, red mud, all the time. And we all took on a color similar to a nice tan that took over a week to wash off after we got home. This movie is nothing more than a rah rah propaganda film. Nothing more.
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My father was a Marine that served three tours in Vietnam. And he said when he and the Marines in his unit saw this movie. They all laughed at it. To them it was a comedy. And to this day. He likes watching this movie. And he still laughs at it. Because it is a propaganda movie.
There's so much to laugh about it. John Wayne's chopper gets hit, they crash and he walks right on out with out a scratch. How about that jungle? I've never seen a jungle like that before.
Everyone that has served in the military (I served like my father did) can watch this and have fun with it.
Propaganda is not the same thing as not being true. If you mean by propaganda that it presents one point of view in the best possible light and ignores other possible points of view, that it distorts actual events in order to portray the events from a point of view that is narrowly focused and disregards all information that detracts from that point of view, I agree.
If Hollywood made one fifth as much pro-Vietnam War propaganda as they did anti-American support for the Republic of Vietnam, we might have won this thing. All we needed to do was kill enough North Vietnamese to make them accept that they could not win. Curtis Lemay did it in 1945 versus the Japanese. I don't see why we could not do it in 1970 against the Xa Hoi Chua Nghia Cua Nhan Zan Viet Nam. All we had to do was choose to dispose our selves of a few million gallons of napalm and a few thousand tons of phosphorous. No more Ha Noi, no more Hai Phong, no more war.
Wasn't this the only Vietnam film made during the war?
shareThere's so much to laugh about it.Agreed!
John Wayne's chopper gets hit, they crash and he walks right on out with out a scratch.Well it is the Duke we're talking about here. Pity the poor helicopter pilot, who did the usual walk of flame towards incineration, whilst stumbling away from the downed chopper.
How about that jungle? I've never seen a jungle like that before.Suffice to say Cimino and Coppola had the right idea in filming their stuff in Thailand and The Philippines respectively.🐭 share
I think it is about timing, a matter of months, weeks, or even days. Where were you when and what was the status of U. S. Forces.
I was not there. I was kind of, sort of close many years later. (Flying recce in the SCS after 1976.) However, I understand that "Tiger Stripes" were de regeur around 1963 to 1966 for SOG and other special operations people including Special Forces. I think that from the arrival of the Marines at Da Nang in 1966 on there was increasing pressure for uniform regulation.
No one has mentioned that before tiger stripes were issued, OD uniforms were pained with flat black spray paint in random patterns for special ops. And before Kennedy authorized them, green beenies weren't official either.
share5th Group wore them and they were phased into the 82nd, then the 101st. Marines had a slightly different uniform. Some in the "leg" units never saw them. It was encouraged to have them starched on Bragg during garrison; they wrinkled really fast in the humidity if they were just ironed and some *beep* would yell at you. It was common to take them into the cleaners in Fayetteville where they would be heavy starched - you could get 3 days out of a uniform sometimes doing that.
This was the downfall of the "cammy" uniform. All these uniforms that had been heavy starched and pressed only lasted days when we went to jungle conditions in Grenada. I was one used for an experiment with basic load. We were told take as much ammo as we wanted and when we were done told to take more. They had us empty all uniform stuff out of our rucks and into our duffle bags to make room for ammo. (We never saw our duffles until our return to Bragg, so only had one uniform for the duration.) Everyone's pants were ripped to shreds, 100mph tape ran out quick and we used t-shirts as loin cloth, lol. We speculated this might have been the reason the press wasn't allowed in country until the fighting was well over with, we looked like a bunch of savages. The night before the press showed up new uniforms magically appeared and we were spiffy the next day. The guys that hadn't changed yet were rounded up just before the plane landed.
The military went into high gear with uniforms because of this and BDU's were issued. They sucked; were too light for cold weather, too heavy for hot - they sold us on them by saying they were "anti-radar" and starch would mess up secret sauce, lol. We starched them anyway. The light cammy ripstop was just great to wear and nobody liked the new BDU's. The sleeves were hard to roll up in a way that looked good and the pants were hard to stuff in your jump boots.
Thank you for the cool info, ficoce.
I've never been in the field. By the time I started wearing BDU's (I had been in the last AF Officer Training School class to be issued fatigues and bought them after graduation) I was a brown bar. I liked them as a garrison uniform.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.
Indoor environment and BDU's weren't bad at all. I remember long marches and the sweat salt building up on them, missed the rip stop. I spent 6 months in the Sinai with MFO just prior to Grenada and got an early introduction to the desert BDU's. Again, they issued these things to us and we all scratched our heads on the heavy fabric instead of the light rip stop when it was low humidity 120 degrees outside. When it hit 130+ degrees they had us dress down to t-shirts and then people started running into dehydration problems. The locals warned us about this, you have to layer with thin fabric to hold the moisture or it just evaporates away. During a 12 hour patrol in a jeep two guys would empty a 5 gallon container of water, while the guys on camels wearing 3 or 4 layers of white in direct sun would just have their little canteen. The Army and the UN didn't seem to understand desert conditions too well. They issued orange berets which only covered the top of your head. My burned skin would peal every few days - I wanted a boonie cap so bad.
Hey ficoce--
it seems that you and I were in some of the same territory. I was in 1/508th Inf of 82d Airborne in '84-'85. I did my 6 months in Sinai in January-July '85. I didn't go to Grenada, but my battalion had gone there wearing the 50%-nylon BDU, and I heard the same stories that you tell about the BDU being totally unsuited for that climate (or any climate, really) and guys cutting out the crotch of their BDU pants for ventilation.
The thing that really stuck in my mind about how useless the BDU was for hot-humid climates was my basic training at Ft. Benning in Summer '83. I specifically remember one day when we marched many miles back to our ancient barracks at Harmony Church from some training by a lake that might have been in "The Green Berets" and went directly to the chow hall for the mid-day meal. I noticed that guys' sweat was pooling in those contoured plastic chairs, as it soaked down to their butts after staying in that heavy ny-co BDU cloth and never evaporating as we marched. I was pleasantly amused when in '86 the Army "re-discovered" rip-stop cotton and began using that for the BDU-- after God knows how many heat casualties attributable to the ny-co cloth.
Before that, in early '85, the 82d Airborne re-authorized the wear of the olive-green, slant-pocket, cotton rip-stop fatigues (similar but not identical to those in the movie) which were drawn from Vietnam War-era stocks and sold at the Military Clothing Sales Store for about $9 per suit (yes, $9 for shirt and pants together). That was another, earlier official concession to the fact that the 50%-nylon BDU just wasn't suitable for training at Ft. Bragg and the various places that the 82d went.
What you referred to as "cammies" were, I guess, the earlier Vietnam-era rip-stop "Vietnam Leaf pattern" camo fatigues. By the time I was in, just a little after you, ficoce, the only way you could get that stuff was in pawn shops or by mail-order. But, still, as Infantry in 82d or in Korea, you could get away with wearing it if you had a "cool" chain of command. As you might know, there were 3 variations of the Vietnam Leaf camo pattern: 1 very green-dominant, 1 sort of tan-dominant, and 1 in between with the green tones approaching a blue tint. If you have been watching the current US Army troops, you will notice that their newest field uniform looks a lot like the tan-dominant VN Leaf coloration/pattern --after undoubtedly billions of dollars of R&D, to get back to a camo pattern that the Army had 45 years ago.
Yep, I was leaving just as you were coming in. I don't know who thought up those BDU's. There was nothing wrong with the rip stop, other than most had old uniforms to start with when we went to Grenada, so it didn't take much to fall to pieces. It's hard to have a one-size-fits-all uniform, but the BDU was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. I'm glad they lightened up a little. On a side note - I think I still have my orange UN beret someplace. Another brilliant move - make us wear a hat with absolutely no ventilation or shade value in one of the sunniest places in the world.
shareficoce
I know what you mean about orange berets in Sinai, but I took the experience as a chance to get a good brown tan on my Caucasian carcass!
I presume that you were posted out on an "OP" in the mountains... there was no chain of command, so you could sunbathe all you wanted!
If you remember the posts: my post was OP 3-7, overlooking the south end of Wadi Shellal, the flat valley that stretched endlessly to the north.
And I still have my orange beret, with metal MFO crest.
I actually spent most of my time at south camp, was an MP that tour, attached to the 508th. I have my crest and everything. I had my coin in my wallet for years, until some *beep* stole it. Had my ID stolen, but that coin was the only thing I wanted back.
I miss the sunrises that went up over your head, the food - oh man, the food, and 4x4ing all the time. I don't miss waking up dehydrated and downing a quart of water every day, or the sunburn peeling every three days. Don't know if you heard of the incident when the natives tried to rush the gate one time at shift change and the order was given to lock and load - that was little old E-4 me. I was in the hot seat, with Europe in an uproar. I thought my life was over when they called Reagan at 2am. He said I made the right choice - snap, non-issue. Today, I would have got another medal, Lol, maybe after next month anyway.
Have you looked at the area on Google earth? The place is a flippin resort. I met up with a young vet a couple years ago camping at Lake Mead. The guy that owned the camp and hung out the gym, Herb?, just died a few years ago. Worked there this whole time - he was old back then. I found out he owned the property and had been taking lease payments all those years - he was loaded. I've thought about taking another tour there as a civvy, not sure who's running it now - used to be E-Systems, but Perot is out of the picture.
Hey brother ficoce--
we are way out of line for this movie's chat, but-- what the hell~
I was E-3 at the start of my MFO tour, I made E-4 during the tour. In Sinai is also where I got my Expert Infantryman Badge (that's a big deal to Infantry). Regarding natives rushing the gate-- never heard that, and, when I was at South Camp, the "main gate" was like a mile away from the coast road, over hard foot-crossable terrain, but I'll take your word for it. I did a few days of guard duty on the South Camp perimeter, and, when I was in the sandbag post at the main gate, armed with an M-203, the other guards on the radio net called me "Caretaker."
Yes, I remember the "fitness guy," "Herb." South Camp was plastered with posters saying "Herb says ..."
He supposedly swam every day out to Tiran Island and back.
I never met the guy.
//edited from 11 January
about "Herb," the fitness guy... I never met him, but I SAW him a few times around South Camp. That guy looked 400 years old, and-- he seemed to have 0% body fat, but 95% wrinkles.
I think that he was actually 40 years old and a recent Army retiree, but the Sinai sun just took a quick toll on him!
Yeah, I had the chance to take the EIB - I kick myself not doing it. It was toward the end of the tour, after 5 months of a killer shift of 12hr shifts, 3 days on, day and a half off, 3 nights on, repeat. Working all night and doing the EIB during the day didn't sound like much fun at the time.
Herb might have been ex-military. I thought he just worked at the gym at the time, but I never saw him working. The story I heard later was he owned the property where they built south camp. He used to lay on his back and have people stand on his stomach, he never busted a gut. The E-System tours were 18 months - tax free money if they stayed out of the US for the tax year. One of the managers was attempting 10 years straight, and then retiring. He would fly the wife and kids to Europe every year or two to say hello, lol. The movie projection guy made $35k/yr, the commissary girls made $40k. I think we were making like $10k at the time. One of the E-systems guys drove a truck to Sharm drunk and plowed into a house - got sent back to the states early to pay tax.
The local workers tried to rush the gate at shift change. The bus had to be searched, they didn't want to wait and rushed. I made the call.
Made it up to north camp a few times. Those guys had it pretty good, paved streets and lots of bars; every nation had a small club, but it was too much like garrison duty.
I got my E4 in the Sinai, too! We didn't even have a ceremony. They just handed it to me and this other guy - the two of us walked around the perimeter to celebrate, not much else to do. Did they still put on diving lessons when you were there? Oh, just hit me - you must have missed Grenada.
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dannieboy20906
WOW -- you admit that you have never been in the field! Folks, THIS IS SO PROFOUND!!
After all your "expert" commentary in so many war-movie pages on this site, --and with such a "tough-guy" affect-- I figured that at least you were somehow RELATED TO real combat duty, maybe as one of those AF guys who are parachute-qualified and jump in to extract downed fliers or direct air ops. But no, just a Linguist.
😂
Typical REMF.
"Just a linguist,"
What an a**hole, ignorant, self-righteous, puke. I guess we know what you did in the war, you "shoveled s*** in Louisiana." You certainly weren't a linguist; you would not qualify.
The army's Special Forces (what you would call Green Beret) proudly brag that only 3 percent of the people who try for the Special Forces make it. Every body who goes in enlisted in screened. Fewer than one percent are invited and most of those don't make the cut. By the time I started full time college, as a military student, I had already accrued more than 130 semester hours of education. Today I have over 300. I don't need to make things up because what I have done goes far beyond what any civilian has done and beyond what ninety percent of the military gets an opportunity to do. I've never been in the field because I was too valuable and carried too much in my head to risk.
Tell us what you've done. Why not? Because you already have, you did nothing.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.
dannieboy,
Those panicked attacks from you are music to my eyes. 😁
Before I go on, let me apologize to all readers and even to you dannieboy, for my drunk posting last time, and it was definitely drunk posting. "Off-the-cuff boisterousness" is not a mode that serves anyone well.
As for your canard, dannieboy, I never said I did anything in a war, although --maybe you missed my post just above mine to you-- I was in the up-front of the up-front of the Army in the mid '80s. I also never said that I served in the Special Forces, nor did I expect you to have met those standards.
I was just a little chafed about your obvious campaign to be named IMDB's resident God Of War Movies, --and your so-obviously hoping that that claim would be buttressed by your relentless referencing of your military career-- when that "military career" was absolutely non-martial. You were an office worker, and/or computer jockey. (Pardon me: you COMMANDED office workers and computer jockeys.) And that's fine. Every person in the military has a role. I just get a little chafed when the "sh*t shovelers" want to pretend that they are Patton. You, dannieboy, just can't resist acting like you are a combat-trained tough guy, when you aren't. Just calm down, dude.
I wasn't a military Linguist (nor crypto-analyst) simply because I chose to enlist for a combat-arms job. My scores were such that I could have enlisted for anything. I have done a lot with language-learning from scratch -- a/k/a crypto-analysis-- just on my own from my teen years. My university Minor was Linguistics.
I'm not sure how many university credit hours I have, total --and I'm not sure why you think that is relevant to advancing your claim to War-Movie primacy-- but I did all the course work toward a Doctorate, including essentially re-doing the Master's, so it's in the hundreds. Whatever ~
This site and forum is for everyone to express opinions, and you, dannieboy, don't need to relentlessly flog your (barely)-military career for extra credibility. I have rarely seen a real combat-arms guy need or want to flog his experience online.
You poked a touchy point with me and I went off on a bit of rant myself, so I will also apologize.
Nearly 300 crypto-logic linguists died during the Cold War because they were hunted down and murdered in the unarmed surveillance aircraft by communist fighter jets. That's the reality. We "non-combatant" "not quite" military people did a hell of a lot more dying on the job than a lot of people who spent their careers training for combat. Today, the air force considers airborne qualified (in the air force 'airborne' means we fly in the airplanes, we don't jump out of them on a routine basis) a front line operational job. Back in the fifties they considered our flying duties to be ancillary. I get miffed when people who go into combat with several hundred well armed friendlies surrounding them look down their noses at those of us who routinely flew alone, unarmed, and scared s***less.
After ten years as a crypto-linguist, I earned a nuclear engineering degree at tax payer expense and became a nuclear research officer. That's in the science officer career field and follows an acquisition officer career path. On paper I was supposed to be a contract manager. But, I had a TS/SBI clearance and experience in the field. I became hot property for certain people who don't advertise what they do. I ended up with a lot of letters indicating my compartment accesses after that TS/SBI.
I eventually when through the tech school to be an intelligence officer, because the AFIC (now a numbered wing under the 9th Air Force) realized that most of their intel officers had degrees in political science or history. I studied U.S. Army TraDoc, U.S. Navy TraDoc, and Marine Corps TraDoc, in addition to the same courses on the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. Even though the Cold War was over by this point, they were still using the same doctrine that failed so badly for them in the Persian Gulf. In the meantime, I continued my private reading on political science and history.
If you have read a lot of my posts, then you already know that I don't need to defend my position. You also know that I don't spend much time "flogging (my) military career." Even though I have stood up, and then stood down a SCIF, drilled and exercised with joint ground forces, sat on review boards, and so on. More recently I commanded a ground unit. If you are embarrassed because your depth and breadth of military experience is grossly overshadowed by mine, suck it up and soldier. Don't blame me.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.