I stood in line on a hot and muggy tarmac at Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside Saigon, dressed in a clean-pressed Army khaki uniform, along with 100 or more other soldiers returning home on the plane. I had somehow comforted myself during my tour by imagining a welcome home feeling of appreciation would be waiting for me when I got home.
As the plane took off there was spontaneous applause, cheering, and tears with the feeling of being off the ground. I remember looking down at the ground, waiting until we got enough altitude to feel completely safe. The flight attendants were our age, beautiful, extremely friendly, and made us feel very appreciated. I remember landing at San Francisco Airport and the wild cheering among us in the plane and the feeling of making it home.
Then I remember deplaning and I was totally unprepared for what happened next. There were no hugs, no appreciation just indifference, humiliation, and hurt. A young woman with a hate-filled face walked up to me and shoved a sheet of paper in my hand saying something about being disgusted with the immoral war and the killing of innocent men, women, children, and babies. I went numb and felt bewilderment. I have heard other returning Vietnam veterans who were at that airport or nearby Traverse Air Force Base say they were spit on, and called baby killers. They related going through a crowd of protesters, with protest signs, shouting obscenities, shaking their fists, giving the finger, and throwing food at their cars. I can still feel the bewilderment and pain. No one spat on me- just my heart. Words can’t describe that deep feeling.
After a short leave, I was assigned to Ft. Lewis, Washington for the remainder of my Army service time. I was involved in a big troop welcome-home event and feel it was a sham. In the spring of 1969, President Nixon began the withdrawal from Vietnam policy calling it “Peace with Honor.” A welcome home “Peace with Honor” parade was planned in Seattle. I was told there was intelligence that the Weathermen radical group would try to disrupt the parade, maybe with weapons. The first 700 soldiers leaving Vietnam under the policy (many were draftees processing out of the army) arrived at Fort Lewis in July. My commanding officer told me to sign for and be responsible for their barracks but I refused. I knew once they were ordered to march in the parade they would get drunk and tear up the barracks- which they did. Riot-trained troops from Ft. Lewis had to replace them, dress in combat fatigues, and carry fixed bayonet rifles with live ammunition.
I went on to law school in the fall of 1969 at a time when anti-war protests, rallies, and demonstrations were at a fever pitch. I tried to hide that I was a Vietnam veteran. I felt that I had served honorably and done my duty but that society treated me with indifference and in some ways with distrust and anger. I withdrew my thoughts and feelings about the war into a deep mental hole and some stayed there until I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 1985. No statute to generals, no politically correct patriotic words- just a solemn testimonial and memorial to those who served and those who died.
One of the names on the Vietnam wall is Major Davis O’Donnell who, three months before he was killed in action in Vietnam, wrote my favorite poem-
“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 you with their dying and keep it with your own. And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.”
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