35 years later, Vietnam vets welcomed home By Claudette Langley
Veterans of the 25-year conflict and war in Southeast Asia received their due at the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday.
On behalf of Chapter 391, Vietnam Veterans of America, Dan Brown accepted a resolution from the board honoring Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day, which is March 30. Supervisors Merita Callaway and Gary Tofanelli presented the resolution to Brown during the consent agenda period of the regular meeting.
“Whereas, beginning in 1950 and ending with troop evacuations in 1975, the Vietnam War was the longest conflict in American history,” the resolution reads. “Whereas, 324,000 Californians, including Calaveras County residents, served in Vietnam...”
Stop playing political games using veterans and shame on Governor Schwarzenegger for not signing it to get his way, but also shame on Alberto Torrico for daring him to do it. Vietnam veterans have waited far too long for their sacrifices to be honored, not used in some kind of political game! Don't they get this? Don't they understand that some Vietnam veterans enlisted and others were forced to go but they all worked together and risked their lives no matter how they ended up there for each other? They did not serve Republicans or Democrats! They served doing what the nation asked of them. No one owns them but everyone seems to forget what they owe them!
Schwarzenegger vetoes bill honoring Vietnam veterans
By Kevin Yamamura The Sacramento Bee In the latest round of Capitol brinksmanship, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill honoring Vietnam veterans and threatened to kill 72 other proposals on his desk because he said lawmakers have ignored his priority issues.
The Senate withdrew all of its 43 bills from the Republican governor's desk for temporary safekeeping. But in an act of defiance, the Assembly left on his desk a bill that would designate March 30 as "Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day."
LYNN - The older ones are in their late 70s, the younger just about 60.
They're veterans of the Vietnam War and on Sunday they'll be honored across Lynn, the result of a special proclamation read aloud Friday at City Hall by Mayor Edward Clancy Jr.
Veterans representing every conflict since World War II gathered in the lobby for a recognition ceremony, some still able to fit into their military uniforms.
"I had to go outside," said Tom Miller, 67, of Lynn, who spent 22 years in the Marine Corps and served two tours of duty in Vietnam. "I got too emotional when I heard them play the Star Spangled Banner."
The notes burst from veteran Dick Perry's trumpet, filling the cavernous room. The men saluted flags held erect by members of the ROTC. Chris Lewis, president of his class at Lynn Classical High School, read the sobering statistics from the Vietnam War - 47,424 battle deaths and 153,303 with non-mortal wounds. More than 58,000 died as a result of the war. About 7.1 million Vietnam-era veterans are living. go here for more http://www.itemlive.com/articles/2009/03/28/news/news04.txt
Vietnam veterans gathering in Raleigh By David Perlmutt dperlmutt@charlotteobserver.com Posted: Thursday, Mar. 26, 2009 De Hillyer spent 13 months as a howitzer mechanic in Vietnam and returned home from war in February 1969 to a red-carpet greeting by World War II and Korean War veterans.
His welcome didn't last for long. At El Toro Marine Air Station in California, he and other returned U.S. troops boarded a bus to Los Angeles, where they were met by anti-war protesters.
"It was a less-than-memorable welcome. They were shouting obscenities and spitting at us," said Hillyer, now a retired United Methodist minister from Charlotte. "It was scary; I just wanted to get out of my uniform. That happened to a lot of Vietnam veterans when they came home.
"Many veterans still don't feel they've been welcomed home."
That was the intent of a resolution passed by the U.S. House earlier this week that proclaims March 29 as "Vietnam Veterans Day" -- a recognition that veterans returning from America's longest war didn't come home to parades.
But apparently the resolution came too late for this March 29. Few Charlotte-area Vietnam vets know about it.
Saturday, the N.C. Vietnam Veterans Inc. is holding its first annual "Welcome Home -- Vietnam Veterans Day" event in Raleigh at the Raleigh Elks Lodge #735. The event is from noon to 4 p.m. at Lead Mine and Millbrook roads.
All N.C. Vietnam veterans and spouses are invited. There will be fellowship, barbecue and music. Sunday, a church service will be held to honor those who served and those who didn't come home.
Hillyer had to stumble onto the event and the House resolution. He's found no one in Charlotte who knows about either. A few states such as Minnesota, Tennessee and New York have proclaimed the day as a recognition for sacrifices made by their veterans in Vietnam. go here for more http://www.charlotteobserver.com/breaking/story/624868.html
by Chaplain Kathie There are wounds you can see with your eyes.
Then there are wounds you can see part way with your eyes. His hair will grow back in and cover the scar of his head wound, but you will not see what has happened to his life after.
But there are also wounds that cut so deeply you never manage to see what is right in front of your eyes. You need to see these wounds, these hidden casualties of war, with your heart.
Sometimes they grieve and the pain fades while memories linger. For far too many the pain feeds on the sensitive soul within the heart of the warrior.
They come home, try to return to friends and family but they are not the same. They want to excuse it as everyone else has changed instead of them until they finally stop denying the nightmares and flashbacks have managed to change the way they think and react to others.
Paranoia takes over and trust erodes. They cannot trust what friends tell them or even what their spouse tells them anymore. They cannot trust strangers. When it's the government they cannot trust, it hits them like a knife in the back.
Imagine if you served your country, followed orders, did what you would not do of your own accord for the sake of others, risked your life and ended up finding that the war came home with you, but the government decided to ignore all of it. They ignore what they promised you to take care of your wounds and provide for your family when you were not able to. This would cause a deeper wound within you as well as resentment. It would eat you away. It would make any shred of hope within you evaporate. You would find it unnecessary to wake up in the morning because everyday would be one more never ending nightmare.
For too many, PTSD has been allowed to fester like gangrene on their soul. Every relationship they had begins to fall apart. They are blamed for all the turmoil in the family and financial difficulty. They are blamed for drinking too much or turning to drugs to kill off feelings they can no longer bear on their own. They are then abandoned by family and friends they used to have before the wound of PTSD took control over their lives.
Abandoned by the government they thought they could trust, by family they thought would love them no matter what, friends they thought they could trust, what's left? Faith? Faith in what or whom? Faith in God? Could you hold onto faith in God when everyone has turned their back on you? Could you hold onto faith when you believe that you've been judged and are being punished for what you had to do? Wouldn't you wonder where God is when everything is happening to you and inside of you without anything or anyone coming to help you? Pretty impossible when you think of all that is involved in claims denied or trapped in a backlog with hundreds of thousands of others reduced from human to a number.
When claims are denied while the veteran carries the wound inside of them, it entraps every part of the veteran's life. There is nothing that is not being consumed by PTSD. This is a battle against evil for the sake of the good but the good end up being disarmed by everything that comes with PTSD.
First came denial. They were told they could train their brains to deal with the traumas they would face in combat. They were told that only the weak would fall prey to the wound of the mind. They were told this by people without a clue that it is not really a wound to the mind and that the mind cannot be trained to do something it was never intended to do. PTSD is a wound to the soul. It is a wound that strikes the sensitive and sets off changes in how the mind functions protecting itself from further harm. If they are changed by trauma it has to be their fault. Unable to think of themselves as weak, they believe they can get over it if they try hard enough. After all, they know they are not weak and they know they are not a coward. They know they are just as strong as everyone else they served with. They'll just have to get over it, bury it inside of themselves and never allow anyone to see their wound. There can't be anything "wrong" with them.
Then comes anger. They can't get over it. They can't stop the flashbacks and nightmares. They can't calm their nerves. They are quick to react with anger because that is a sign of "toughness" masking the pain inside. They get angry with themselves because they cannot move on the way everyone else they know did. They take out what they see as their own weakness on everyone around them. They push friends away and disconnect from family as walls are being built brick by brick around their soul.
When someone finally gets to them to help them heal, when they finally understand PTSD is not a sign of weakness and it is not their fault, they must find the courage to seek help. They need to talk to strangers about what is in their hidden world of pain. The walls begin to come down because relief restores hope of healing but soon they discover the same government they risked their life for is denying ownership of everything that is happening to them. Claims are denied. They are chastised for being weak by commanders. They are punished for drinking or doing drugs to relieve the pain. They are discharged with the wound disregarded. They are told they will no longer have their base housing. They are told they will no longer have their basic needs taken care of. They are told they are no longer worthy of any of it and they are told their service to the nation is no longer needed. They have lost everything they had including themselves.
When PTSD is disregarded until they become a combat veteran civilian, they arrive at a point where they are able to seek help from the VA. They know they can no longer function on a job because of the gangrene of their soul, nightmares robbing them of rest and flashbacks draining them of strength. They turn to the VA to be treated so they can heal and financially compensated for when they cannot work but end up being told whatever is happening to them is not the fault of the government. They find their claims denied and any responsibility the VA doctors tell them belongs to the government is ignored by the government.
This is what we face when we finally get to them. This is what we face when we finally get them to the point where they understand PTSD is a normal reaction to the abnormal world of combat. How can we offer them any hope of healing when it is being denied and their lives are still falling apart? How can we tell them the devastation of their lives goes on with these denied claims but they need the government to treat them?
I can come up with videos to get them to understand PTSD is a wound. I can email back and forth with them and their families until my fingers are ready to fall off but all the education I can offer, all the hope I can demonstrate from coming thru the darkness in my own family, will do them virtually little good when the help they need is being denied to them.
I cannot replace hope when it is being denied by someone else. I cannot tell them to trust the VA or the DOD to take care of them when they are telling them "no" all the time. All the hope that is there for them is impossible for them to get to when doors are shut and they are told the responsibility for their state of life belongs to someone else.
It's time we paid the IOU we gave them the day they were sent to serve. It's time the DOD stopped telling them they can train their brain to be tough enough to take it when it is their soul that is attacked by the horrors of combat. Stop doing the same research that was done 30 years ago. Stop asking the same people the same questions settling for the same answers they heard 30 years ago.
We still owe Vietnam veterans the truth. We still owe them the knowledge they were denied over 30 years ago and compensate them for the wounds they brought home with them. It’s too late to save most of their families from falling apart but it’s not too late to restore relationships they had. In many cases it’s too late to save the homes they lost because they couldn’t earn income to cover their mortgages as PTSD claimed more parts of their lives but we can provide them with the compensation to secure their futures. In doing so, we will honor the debt that should have been pain long ago but we will also restore within them the belief their service was honored, their sacrifice was worth it because this country honored it.
Vietnam Veterans Day is March 29. The last accountable death was in May of 1975 but the fatalities truly connected to the Vietnam War are still happening today. They die from Agent Orange exposure related illnesses. They die on the streets and in shelters across this nation. They still die from reaching for alcohol and drugs to cope with untreated wounds. They die when they can no longer find the strength to carry the burden their service caused by their own hand. None of their deaths are counted as the price paid by them. We need to get this right for them and stop ignoring them within the growing numbers of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan flooding the system seeking the same help that was not available when Vietnam veterans came home. None of the accomplishments reached for veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder would have been begun had it not been for Vietnam Veterans fighting for it and all other veterans.
We can build them monuments from coast to coast but if we do not honor the living monuments of sacrifice to this nation they are all reduced to hunks of rock. We can give them parades and all the flags in the world, but until their sacrifice to that flag is truly honored, they are all empty gestures. We can place all the flowers we want at their graves but until we honor all the living the lives already gone will have disregarded.
As we try as a nation to honor the IOU to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, we must pay the original debt we owed to the Vietnam Veterans. This is not an option. Taking care of them is not something that can be put off any longer or we further assault their service to this nation. We further deny them justice. We further allow them to pay a price for a debt we owed to them.
VIETNAM WAR STATISTICS IN UNIFORM AND IN COUNTRY...
Vietnam Vets: 9.7% of their generation.
9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the Vietnam Era (Aug. 5, 1964-May 7, 1975).
8,744,000 GIs were on active duty during the war (Aug 5, 1964 - March 28, 1973).
3,403,100 (Including 514,300 offshore) personnel served in the Southeast Asia Theater (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, flight crews based in Thailand, and sailors in adjacent South China Sea waters).
2,594,000 personnel served within the borders of South Vietnam (Jan. 1, 1965 - March 28, 1973)
Another 50,000 men served in Vietnam between 1960 and 1964.
Of the 2.6 million, between 1 - 1.6 million (40 - 60%) either fought in combat, provided close support or were at least fairly regularly exposed to enemy attack.
7,484 women (6,250 or 83.5% were nurses) served in Vietnam.
Peak troop strength in Vietnam: 543,482 (April 30, 1968)
CASUALTIES...
Hostile deaths: 47,378
Non-hostile deaths: 10,800
Total: 58,202 (Includes men formerly classified as MIA and Mayaguez casualties). Men who have subsequently died of wounds account for the changing total.
8 nurses died -- 1 was KIA.
Married men killed: 17,539
61% of the men killed were 21 or younger.
Highest state death rate: West Virginia - 84.1% (national average 58.9% for every 100,000 males in 1970).
Wounded: 303,704 -- 153,329 hospitalized + 150,375 injured requiring no hospital care.
Severely disabled: 75,000 -- 23,214 - 100% disabled; 5,283 lost limbs; 1,081 sustained multiple amputations.
Amputation or crippling wounds to the lower extremities were 300% higher than in WWII and 70% higher than Korea. Multiple amputations occurred at the rate of 18.4% compared to 5.7% in WWII.
Missing in Action: 2,338
POWs: 766 (114 died in captivity)
go here for more http://history-world.org/vietnam_war_statistics.htm
1.7 million have served in Afghanistan and Iraq so far. 1.6 million were in what was considered combat areas of Vietnam. When you think about the military operations going on today, it is stunning to know the amounts Vietnam produced and how long it went on.
The new video I did has pictures of Bringing Home The Wall built by Tom Twigg and his wife Dee, loving reconstructed in Lakeland Florida in 2006 by member of Rolling Thunder. The songs came from God Bless the USA cd, Some Gave All by Billy Ray Cyrus and 8th of November by Big & Rich. The video is not about PTSD or the wounds they carry but about how they live as veterans everyday, still caring and still grieving the loss of friends. Look to the top of the side bar from this video. It will stay at the top until after Veteran's Day.
To me, the Vietnam veterans are the greatest generation because they did not do what other veterans had done. They did not settle for excuses from the VA when it came to the wounds of combat. They fought to have their chemical exposures treated and are still fighting to have all veterans exposed to dangerous chemicals treated properly. They fought to have PTSD treated and compensated, a wound all mankind has suffered from since the beginning of time. The advances in the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD are there for the new veterans because they fought for it. They have a motto that never again will one generation leave behind another. This, they have lived up to.
We forget about the price they paid for serving the country and we forget about how many still do. What Vietnam produced was stunning and very telling about what today's veterans will experience. By 1976 when the DAV produced a study, there were 500,000 with PTSD and the rate was expected to increase, which it did. By 1986, 117,000 had committed suicide, more followed. Over 300,000 ended up homeless. Many ended up in prison because of undiagnosed and untreated PTSD, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol as well as domestic violence, all characteristic of PTSD. The newer veterans will not have to go through years of being treated like criminals for this wound because of them.
We have a lot more work to do to take care of all our veterans but we are as far as we've come because of them. One more glaring fact is that the Vietnam veterans taught this country a lesson on how we view those who serve it. Never again will the people of this nation take out their anger at what politicians decide to do on the men and women who serve. We all acknowledge that the men and women serving this country were willing to lay down their lives for the sake of this nation and we respect that and honor them. We will never all agree on where they are sent but we all agree that they are not a political issue but an obligation.
So this video is a tribute to them. They captured my heart 26 years ago and have tugged at my soul ever since I fell in love with one of them and adopted all of them.
Happy Veteran's Day to all veterans, old and young, especially the Vietnam veterans.
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington
It was great timing for the Vietnam Veterans who live in the Northland. A traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial made a stop at Ironworld, just in time for their big day.
"We felt we were doing the right thing," said Bob Sieler, a Vietnam Veteran who says he was not welcomed home from the war. "And finally people are recognizing veterans for what we do."
Crowds of veterans came to the wall to pay their respects to their fallen brothers, and for the first time, they were able to wish each other a "Happy Veteran's Day."
Inside, at the Ironworld theater, Representative Larry Howes spoke about why he wrote the bill in the first place.
"They've never been thanked or welcomed home," he said. "I think everyone I talked to said, 'It's about time.'"
Major General Eugene Andreotti also spoke to the crowd, personally thanking the veterans.
"To the Vietnam Veterans," he said, "They are, you are, all heroes."
One veteran said he didn't have big plans to celebrate the day. He was just happy to see a formal day of acknowledgement.
"We just want to see the country in a positive way, and this is a great first step for the veterans," said Victor Zupanicich, another Vietnam Veteran.
Some went willingly, some were forced to go with the draft, yes, just like Korea and WWII. Some agreed, some didn't. What happened was that they ended up fighting for each other. They followed their orders to take the hill and then give the hill up only to loose brothers and then have to take it back all over again. Fighting for each other. That's something the Patriots and the Founding Fathers knew all too well. Those who are sent to fight in the wars the politicians pick have no say in what, when, where or how. They go. If you've been watching HBO's John Adams, I'm sure you are getting a bit of a history lesson in case you forgot what you learned in school. They do it for each other and because the politicians said it was necessary for the nation.
It's the job of the rest of us to honor them and to hold the politicians accountable for what they do, where they send them, if they provide the proper equipment and plans and if they take care of them or not when they come home. Think of how rare the combat veterans are to us. Think of what this nation would be if men and women were not willing to serve to defend it. That's what this all boils down to. If they get used by the government, it's up to us to hold them accountable for the sake of those risking their lives. But no matter how we feel about the reasons why they went, we cannot act as if they are of any lesser value than a Patriot.
I am very proud of this country, not the government at the moment but of the people of this country. We learned one lesson very well. That you do not take out anything on those who serve this nation. Both sides support them, they to help them and do what we can for them. We all hold them in our prayers. The only regret I have is that those doing the most screaming of "support the troops" are the first ones to not be doing it when they need us. We need to do so much more for the wounded than we are doing and for the families. Let's support all of them for real when it really matters to them.
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation."
