Strong language advisory to the above video.
Fighting a war of almost eight years duration, the US troops deployed to Vietnam fought magnificently in a conflict while support for the war disintegrated at home. Winning every engagement above company level, our troops broke the back of the Viet Cong insurgency, and fought to a standstill the legions of North Vietnam. It was not their fault that the civilian leadership refused to authorize an invasion of North Vietnam, the only way that the war could be won. Condemned as baby killers by American Leftists, who proudly marched under the banners of the enemy killing American troops, Vietnam revealed how deeply economically upper class Leftists despised the blue collar Americans who made up the bulk of our armed forces in Vietnam, a schism that has only widened in the past half century. Ironically Vietnam has grown more capitalist and diplomatically closer to the US, fearing the power of China. Our involvement in Vietnam was highly debatable and reasonable minds could disagree. What is not debatable is the honor in which we should hold the troops who answered when Uncle Sam summoned them to fight an unpopular war.
Amen, Donald.
In the early 1990s, I had several Vietnamese immigrant students in my chemistry and physics classes at a Catholic girls school. Our multicultural club had a food fair, with flags marking the tables, and theirs had the old flag of South Vietnam. I asked (as a bit of a joke) if that was a political statement. The girls looked me straight in the eye and said “Yes!”
Fortunately I was discharged from active duty in South Alabama where we were treated with respect. I might also add that the record of the black soldiers greatly contributed to the final legal and most social constrictions of segregation in the South.
Another vet and I went to the Wall Street ticker tape parade they gave the first GULF war soldiers. Neither of us thought about the reception we got. Happy to be able to do it – 58,000 weren’t. They were GIs and they deserved it.
Now, we are old. Tempus fugit. My grandmother [lived to 103] said, “The days drag, the years fly.”
Greet them ever with grateful hearts.