Thinking About Our Vietnam Veterans

A thirteen-year commemorative period honoring those who served in the Vietnam War winds-down this year. It will end November 11, Veterans Day. The Commemoration was authorized by Congress, given over to the Secretary of Defense, and signed by President Obama in 2012. It led to an extended timeline of events around the country, all of which I am finding out about today. Right now, for instance, at the State House in Concord, there is an exhibit honoring a prior visit to New Hampshire of a touring version of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, D.C., one of our nation’s most stirring monuments in a collection of stirring monuments.

For thirteen years the commemoration has been going on. I am just finding out about it now. There is something wrong with that, I confess.

The Vietnam War ended before I was ever eligible for the draft. For us, it ended on March 29, 1973, when the last U.S. combat troops left the country. For the Vietnamese, it ended two years later, when the North Vietnamese overran the South, a moment that was framed in our collective consciousness by a photograph (courtesy of Dutch photographer, Hubert Van Es), of frantic South Vietnamese trying to escape aboard a helicopter on top of the Pittman building, headquarters for our CIA. You can dig around for the history as I have done. The picture caught one moment in what was, at the time, the largest helicopter evacuation in history. In a day, over one thousand Americans, and 5,500 people of other nationalities were airlifted out. I retreated to that image in my mind during the debacle in Afghanistan (over 124,000 were evacuated from Afghanistan over seventeen days, but there was an airport to work with). My takeaway was simple—bad wars end badly. Forget about who is in charge.

As with other large-scale conflicts, I think everyone in this country was touched by Vietnam. To begin with, military conscription—the draft—focuses the mind. Younger generations are used to limited conflicts in far-a-way places that do not really change the beat of life here every day. The draft was a steady drumbeat in the lives of all of us, even the ineligible. And there was the size of the engagement. At its peak, in August 1969, there were 543,000 military personnel in Vietnam, including my cousin (did not return) and my brother-in-law (did return).

For most of the time Vietnam raged, we lived on a nice, dead-end lane in suburban Connecticut. I was a boy, not even a young man. I threw myself into harm’s way by racing downhill on my bicycle, hands free. (We did not wear helmets in those days. Or spandex.) There were, I recall, twelve houses on the lane, most of them filled with kids like me, except one. One house had an older brother—just, you know, an older brother. A phantom. No longer rode bikes. Drove a car. Came and went places without needing anyone’s permission. Had his own money. Got drafted. Sometime later, an army green car came slowly down the lane—maybe we had to pull over on our bikes—maybe we watched it drive by—I do not know or remember—and pulled in at the house of my friend and his brother. The grown-ups who saw it all knew what it meant. The story sticks with me.

Vietnam changed our country. It was toxic. But I believe, fifty years later, we have it to thank for the parts of us that are better than we were. For one thing, we have learned to show respect to our service men and women who, in too many instances, were reviled when they got home from ‘Nam. Can you imagine? After what they had been through? We yelled and threw stuff at them. They bore the brunt of our self-loathing at the time, when we were divided over foreign conflict and race, mostly. The experience taught us it was wrong to do that. Ever. For any reason. Not when people have fought and died.

I am glad to have the chance to squeak that in before the thirteen years are over. Thank you, Vietnam veterans, and all veterans. Happy Memorial Day.

Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, May 20, 2025