Passed on by that maven of the latest articles, Mohamed Ibn Guadi.

Vietnam vets in Iraq see 'entirely different war'

By Steven Komarow, USA TODAY Tue Jun 21, 7:19 AM ET

For the full article, see usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-06-20-iraq-vietnam-vets_x.htm

Before dawn, the pilots digest their intelligence briefing with coffee. The sun rises as they start preflight checks. Just after 7:30, they start rotors turning on their UH-60A Black Hawk, and ease it smoothly into the desert sky.

Chief Warrant Officers DeWayne Browning and Randy Weatherhead will take off and land a dozen times this hot day, ferrying infantry troops battling Iraq's insurgents in the Sunni Muslim heartland that Saddam Hussein calls home.

Only if those young troops look closely, past the jumble of struts and wires and into the obstructive flight helmets, will they notice something odd: Browning's gray, nearly white moustache and telltale furrows on Weatherhead's face.

Browning, 56, of Paradise, Calif., and Weatherhead, 57, of Elk Grove, Calif., are grandfathers. They first flew combat missions in Vietnam, before most of the soldiers in the current Army were born. They and others their age are here with the National Guard's 42nd Infantry Division, which includes some of the oldest soldiers to serve in combat for the modern U.S. Army. Few soldiers or officers in the military, other than the service's top generals, are as old.

If there are parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, these graying soldiers and the other Vietnam veterans serving here offer a unique perspective. They say they are more optimistic this time: They see a clearer mission than in Vietnam, a more supportive public back home and an Iraqi population that seems to be growing friendlier toward Americans.

"In Vietnam, I don't think the local population ever understood that we were just there to help them," says Chief Warrant Officer James Miles, 57, of Sioux Falls, S.D., who flew UH-1H Hueys in Vietnam from February 1969 to February 1970. And the Vietcong and North Vietnamese were a tougher, more tenacious enemy, he says. Instead of setting off bombs outside the base, they'd be inside.

"I knew we were going to lose Vietnam the day I walked off the plane," says Miles, who returned home this month after nearly a year in Iraq. Not this time. "There's no doubt in my mind that this was the right thing to do," he says . . .

My thanks to Mohamed Ibn Guadi in France.