In honor of Viet Nam veterans

The legislature has proclaimed today Viet Nam Veterans Appreciation Day. While at the rate we get into wars may soon give us more occasions for veterans’ appreciation than we have days on the calendar, this gesture seems to make sense and was overdue. So let’s give today proper attention.

I have been around for a while. Some of the people I have known were killed in Viet Nam. I have been to the funerals of both war victims and veterans and have shared sympathy with survivors.

Every generation seems doomed to have its war. Some wars seem to unify the country; others divide it; yet others seem to bring about a sense of ennui.

People of my parents’ generation fought World War Two. Records show that the soldiers and sailors returning from there were greeted by a grateful nation. I remember seeing my cousin off to and back from Korea when I was a young boy and know that the whole extended family was glad to see him. I was too young to appreciate anything like national sentiment, but have suspected that, likely because the war never really ended and the survival of our republic had never been seen as so directly challenged, their reception was somewhat less enthusiastic than that received by the World War Two vets, but that individual veterans were relatively well received.

We seem to have done a better job of welcoming those retuning from Desert Storm and even those coming back from our present adventures/misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia.

But somewhere the Viet Nam vet never quite got the appreciation those before or since have received. You would sometimes read about a vet being spit upon at the airport when he returned or having his family called by strangers suggesting that he was some kind of war criminal.

American participation in the Viet Nam war was unjustified from the beginning, but that doesn’t mean that those who had to go there thought it was a good idea. They were mainly people who had been conscripted or enlisted to avoid conscription, disproportionately working class and minority people. They did what they were told to do and generally did it quite well. But it wasn’t their idea.

I have my own personal story of one man’s return from Viet Nam which still gives me pause.

It had to be about 1971, give or take a year. I was driving cab and picked up a young man at the airport. He was carrying an Army duffel bag [or whatever they call one of those in the Army – I am not good on military vernacular] and gave me a destination off Highway 55 in Mendota Heights or Eagan.

While I was driving him there, I learned that he had just returned from Viet Nam. We did a little small talk about how he must be glad to be back and what a nice, sunny day he had for his return. It seemed me to be a sign of something wrong that nobody had come to greet him, but I don’t remember saying anything about it to him. And for all I know he had been wishing to surprise his kith and kin so had not told them the details of his arrival.

When we go to his house, I went to the trunk to retrieve his bag and noticed that there was a shirtless man who looked like he was probably the younger man’s father who was mowing the lawn.

The young man said something to the effect of “hello” and the older man stopped his mowing long enough to address him by name and say something like, “Oh, you’re back.”

The younger man took his bag on past the older guy who had resumed mowing and went toward the house.

I don’t know whether the man was indeed the young man’s father or not. He could have been a neighbor, relative, or family friend, but he obviously knew the guy and must have known where he had been.

But he couldn’t even stop mowing that lawn long enough to help him in or offer anything more than perfunctory greetings. That lawn didn't look that high.