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Vietnam Veterans
(I wrote this story at least 30 years ago. It tells about an incident our family witnessed, and today, according to the Inter-Webs, it is Vietnam Veterans Day. This is entitled “The Honor Guard.”)
It was a time when the unpredictable psycho in a TV drama was always a Vietnam veteran. The Memorial Wall in Washington DC was still new, and still controversial. But some veterans who’d visited The Wall realized that it was also a place of healing, and they knew that others who might never get to the nation’s capital needed the chance to rub their fingers over the names, and see for themselves that the loved ones were not forgotten. A group formed, and they commissioned a 1/3 sized, fiberglass replica of the granite monument. It traveled from town to town, at the request of civic organizations, and when the panels were set up in their V shapes, and the ropes arranged to form a trail leading the public into the area for reverent viewing, people came. By the hundreds, they came, and I did, too.
I was a Navy wife, living in Southern California. Years before, when Saigon fell, and the refugees came to America, I had lived near the base where the thousands of confused frightened people were housed in a sprawling tent city. Then, the displaced Vietnamese people were gradually absorbed into the community. I rarely thought of them except to notice that, in addition to the store signs written in Spanish, I began to see new signs in their Asian script.
One beautiful California winter afternoon, my husband and I took our young children and joined the line of people waiting to see the Wall Replica. After getting directions from a soft-spoken, bearded man dressed in a medal-bedecked, worn Army jacket and a Harley T-shirt, we moved quietly down the length of the panels, counting until we came to ones that displayed the names of our two home-town casualties.
One boy had lived across the highway from my parent’s farm. He was the baby of his large family. His death was my introduction to the war at age twelve, and every day, as I waited for the school bus, I watched as his grief-stricken elderly father faithfully hung “Alma’s flag” on the pole in their front yard. The other boy, also a farmer’s son, had been a teenage crush of one of my older sisters. It was sobering to see their names among so many others, each representing a family and a community with a wound that would always be tender. Yet, popular culture still disdained their answering of the call to duty.
We were about to leave when I noticed a small commotion, a flurry of activity. It was obvious, because the mood of the visitors had been restrained and reverent. It had been sobering to my little children to see grown men with their arms clasped around each other’s necks, shedding tears. So the movement of the group of men near the entrance caught the attention of all. It was an honor guard, of sorts.
Seven Vietnamese men were carrying two flag poles with the flags wrapped up, and they were positioning themselves in the entrance of the area, and asking for the attention of those watching. Then, they formed themselves into ranks: two men with the flags, and directly behind them came two rows of two, with their leader in front. Their attire caught my eye. Some were wearing parts of army uniforms, but not GI issue. Most wore suits or sport jackets that were the best of Goodwill. Their dignity was palpable.
Then, the flags were unfurled; one the familiar Stars and Stripes, the other less known, and no longer current–the Republic of South Viet Nam. They stepped out smartly and marched to the center of the display, then turned sharply and halted, facing the two black wings covered with names that stretched off to either side. The man leading the group stepped forward, and in gently accented English proclaimed:
“We are here to honor these men who came to our land to help us in a cause that was not their own. Many have said they were failures, but we come to give our thanks. We will be forever in your debt for your effort to help us save our country. Your sacrifice is known to us, and we salute you.”
Or something like that. It was so poignant and honorable and earnest. It was in vivid contrast to everything I’d heard about our involvement in that conflict since I was twelve years old, and Alma’s death had brought the war to my attention. It changed forever my perception of our country and what made a person an AMERICAN. Here were new Americans, people who had never intended to be Americans, people who had been involved in a life-threatening struggle to remain in the land of their birth, giving a great American gesture–showing gratitude to those who fought for freedom. Their speech has become my own personal Gettysburg Address: words that both soothed psychic wounds, and ensured that the dead would always be remembered and honored.
Published in Military
My cousin’s name, Gordon Campbell, is on that wall, and he was also a childhood playmate. I miss him.
Great story Cowgirl. It brought tears to my eyes.
That portable wall, or a replica, was vandalized in west Los Angeles a few years ago, Sort of appropriate. The location and all.
I was on the medical associations admissions committee when the South Vietnamese were settling in. We interviewed quite a few Vietnamese doctors applying. It was very interesting. They were often seeing their old patients from Vietnam. Whole villages were reconstituting and the doctors with them. I asked one how his practice was going. He said it was slow as he was not able to afford a van. This brought up another subject. Many of their patients were elderly and did not drive. The doctors would send a van around to pick up all the scheduled patients. They would drop them off at the office, then go back for the next group. When they brought that group, they would take the first group home. If you dd not have a van, it was hard to get started but they did. They were one of the most successful groups of immigrants in our history.
Thank you for sharing this @cowgirl . I sent a copy to a friend who is a Vietnam Vet and has multiple infirmities from Agent Orange exposure. He does not wallow in self-pity, but actively seeks out other veterans to share the Gospel with them. The display of gratitude related above is very moving and I am sure would be very appreciated by many veterans.
I remember when that traveling wall came to Tulsa.
I wasn’t prepared for how emotional an experience our visit to it would be. I didn’t know until I got there that even on the traveling version, visitors with more personal connections than I would leave notes and mementos for lost friends and loved ones, and to fathers they never got to meet.
But having experienced that, I thought I’d be prepared when I finally saw the actual monument for the first time on a visit to DC a few years ago.
I was wrong. The design is deceptively simple but as you cover the length of it and see the columns of names grow, it’s a sobering, sacred walk.
Thanks for sharing your memory of such a beautiful tribute to the fallen.
I remember the fierce opposition to the design by Maya Lin, an unknown artist who was then still an undergraduate at Yale. Who the heck is this girl and what does she know about the Vietnam war? It was a blind competition and it’s pretty clear that her design would never have been selected had the identities of the competitors been known.
At the time, I had no particular opinion about the design, favorable or otherwise. Years later, the controversy faded and there is a consensus that the design is a respectful, even moving, tribute. Having visited the wall, I agree. There are lessons in there somewhere about initial reactions and about judging a work by its source. The girl did good, reservations about her motives and ideology notwithstanding. And yeah, I did call her a girl seeing as how she was barely 21 when she designed it. If some undergraduate guy had done it, he’d be a boy. This was all well before the whole 57 genders thing.
I had the same reaction. I’d seen the traveling wall—it was very moving, even before the Vietnamese veterans tribute showed up. Then, when my husband’s work moved us to the east coast, very near to D.C. we saw the real Wall. Wow. That was sobering beyond expectation. And at both representations, there were so many mementos being left, and so many people just standing quietly, with tears running down their faces. It is a very fine monument.
I was among those who was disappointed in the design. I thought it reduced the whole war to only the sum of its human cost.
The gesture by the group of Vietnamese men at the replica memorial in the story seems like a very fitting complement to the design.
I don’t know if you’ve visited the memorial in Washington D.C. But, you weren’t the only one who felt that it needed more. There is now a really great statue (I think two, actually) of soldiers in the same area. The statues are a good contribution to the atmosphere. I haven’t been out there for about five years, but I’m going this summer again. This statue is some infantrymen, and the other honors the medics, I think.
I had only seen photos of the design and wasn’t enthused. However, when I went to D.C and saw it, I was over whelmed with the depth of it. It actually made me cry. I took photos back to my cousin’s mother, and tried to convey the magnificent of it for her. She died just a couple of years ago one week short of her 100th birthday.
I think Jim Webb was involved with the statues issue. I tried yesterday to find the discussion but it was too long to pursue.
I personally viewed the memorial many years ago. Like you, I was moved by many features of the design, particularly its color and the vanishing point feature which moved the viewer into the transcendent.
I don’t suppose, though, that even Michelangelo could illustrate the contrast in America’s embrace of national purpose before and after that tragic war.