I served three tours in Vietnam as a rifleman, squad leader and platoon sergeant, plus six months as a Huey door gunner. That makes me more important than the guys back in the base camps, right? Wrong! A friend of mine was an Air Force photo analyst who spent his entire tour at Bien Hoa Air Base. He never got shot at, never got his hair mussed, and his most traumatic experience was the day the PX ran out of Marlboros. This guy's job was to pore over reconnaissance photos with a magnifier, locating enemy positions, bunkers, truck parks, POL sites, etc., then putting together target lists based on his interpretation. Missions were then assigned to those targets. That scrawny airman with the horn rimmed glasses was responsible for bringing death and destruction down on Charlie, with thousands killed and tons of ammunition and supplies destroyed. He hurt the enemy more than my entire brigade did. His body count may not be boot on the chest, spit in the face confirmed, but the BDA reports show how effective he was.
The guy cannot be called a combat veteran, but he was obviously more important to the war effort than my gang of boonie rats was, and I definitely consider him a Vietnam veteran.