Vietnam Veterans Day

[JMA]

Poem by Major Michael Davis O'Donnell, U.S. Army

(Major O'Donnell was listed as MIA while piloting a helicopter on a mission in Cambodia on 24 March 1970. His remains were recovered and interned at Arlington National Cemetery on 16 August 2001.)

If you are able,
save them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind

[Bill Moore]

(AP) Today, April 30th, marks the 35th Anniversary of the fall of Saigon, when communist North Vietnamese forces drove tanks through the former U.S.-backed capital of South Vietnam, smashing through the Presidential Palace gates. The fall of Saigon marked the official end of the Vietnam War and the decadelong U.S. campaign against communism in Southeast Asia. The conflict claimed some 58,000 American lives and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese.

The war left divisions that would take years to heal as many former South Vietnamese soldiers were sent to Communist re-education camps and hundreds of thousands of their relatives fled the country.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured...f-saigon/1781/

A very moving series of photos

[JMA]

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured...f-saigon/1781/

A very moving series of photos

Magnificent!

Thank you for posting that link... moving indeed.

The comment from one George Martin is worthy of insertion here:

I am A Vietnam Veteran, but I hid this fact from people for several years after the war, because I was caught up in the National shame of being involved in the War in Vietnam.

I did not want friends to know how I spent a couple years of my life facing my mortality and being involved with what so many protested as an American mistake.

When my own service, the United States Air Force, acted as if we should hide the fact of our involvement by ordering us to not wear our uniforms off base, I was convinced it was a shameful thing I had been involved in, even though it was my country that ordered me and over a million others to go to Southeast Asia and defend something.

I never gave it much thought whether it was right or wrong to fight in that war. My country sent me, and because I was a member of the military I went.

When my country abandoned the South Vietnamese I was ashamed of that. I was ashamed of the way the United States ran helter-skelter from the friends they had promised to support.

I was ashamed at the lack of support our country showed us. We were never given the support that America had given its military throughout history. It was as if it were our fault that things did not go right for this country that had gotten us involved and did not have the resolve to finish what it had started.

It is now forty years after my tours in Vietnam, and somewhere along the way my thinking changed in the way I see my personal involvement.

The pride started creeping into my thinking as we, the Vietnam Veterans, started the movement to get a Memorial, "The Wall". Since Americans and our own government abandoned us, we would pay for and build our own Memorial.

The war protesters, the draft dodgers could go on with their lives after Jimmy Carter gave them amnesty.

So, our lives could go on too, even if we only recognized our accomplishments without support of the American people. I started seeing other Vietnam Veterans as Brothers, and shared what only close brothers could share.

I began also, to think of the war as a test, a rite of passage that my Father's generation went through in World War Two, and my Brother went through in Korea. I know now, that had I not gone to Vietnam when I was called, I would wonder all my life if I had what it takes to be an American, called on to do a duty for my country. I don't have to wonder. I served. I went when called.

I have spoken with many men since the war, who did not serve in the military. Many say they wished they had gone. They feel a part of their life passed by while they watched from the sidelines.

They will carry with them to the grave an unanswered question that I was fortunate enough to have answered. Would I serve if called by my country? I did and I survived, and now I walk with my head held high.

When I meet other Vietnam Veterans I immediately feel a bond, a Brotherhood that only we, who have been there, can understand. My life would be missing a large part if I did not have this comradeship with my fellow Veterans.

Some say, "it's been over forty years ago, forget about it." I am here to tell you that you can not forget the defining episode in your life that sets you apart from others.

How can you forget something as life changing an experience as the War in Vietnam was for so many American men?

Some who are old enough to remember where they were and what they were doing when John F. Kennedy was shot, or when Martin Luther King was shot can no more forget that, than a Vietnam Veteran can forget about the combat in which he was involved so long ago.

How can someone who did not experience it, and does'nt know if they would have gone had they been called, tell Veterans to get over it and forget it?

I wore the uniform of The United States Air Force for 26 years. I went when called to serve in Vietnam For that I stand tall! I am proud. I am a Vietnam Veteran!

George Martin, Da Nang RVN

First Tour -1967 - 1968

Second Tour - 1969 - 1970

George is correct... there is a bond between those who have served together in battle that only we can understand.

God bless the Vietnam Veterans!

[JMA]

I would like to honour the 58,156 US soldiers who were KIA/MIA in Vietnam in my own humble way.

They say to us:

I did my duty, I paid the supreme price,
I pray you'll remember my sacrifice,
My life was short, I did my best,
God grant me peace in my eternal rest

To which we reply:

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

(first quote unknown, second quote from: Laurence Binyon's poem "For the Fallen")