My 14 year old nephew called the other night because he had a project due on the Vietnam War and wondered if I had any cool stories. (wtf) Allow me to explain. He had already quizzed his father, my OLDER brother, for interesting stories about hippies and protests and in-your-face photojournalism and had come up empty, as my OLDER brother was a small child in the ’70s.
(Ok, apparently, my nephew needs some tutoring in math.)
The best I could offer was a list of CDs with rocking Vietnam-era music, most of which he knew about already from … (wait for it, wait for it) … the Battlefield Vietnam soundtrack. Go figure. Fourteen year old kid knows all this crap about Vietnam from a game.
He knew about the Viet Cong, the popular weapons of the time, the terrain (jungle warfare — it sucks, man!), the fall of Saigon, even the Tet Offensive, which he googled on his own because he was curious. (Here’s a wiki link, noob, because I know you know almost nothing about it. heh, ok, I knew almost nothing about it.)