Illustration: Sarah Hanson
This Veterans Day, there are few World War II veterans in New Jersey. There are thousands of Vietnam vets ranging in age from their 60s to their 90s. Exactly how many is unknown. Only those who died during their service are numbered: 1,565 names appear on the Vietnam Memorial in Holmdel.
My husband is one of the lucky ones who, after having been drafted in Monmouth County in 1967, went through Officer Candidate School, served his one full year in hell and came home healthy. He now proudly wears that Vietnam experience on his hat. He likes to strut down the Spring Lake boardwalk in his black canvas baseball cap, embroidered with the words “grumpy old vet,” a gift from his ten-year-old granddaughter, Hayden. Mike thinks it’s funny. So does Hayden.
Those who pass him on his walks take the message seriously. Greetings of “thanks for your service” follow him. Those words were never spoken back when he and thousands of others returned from a war that was questioned and bitter.
Only now, as the country becomes even more partisan than in those Vietnam-protest-era days, are Mike and other vets like him seen as heroes. They didn’t run. They didn’t hide. They served. But they didn’t volunteer. They were drafted and often mocked for not finding a backdoor out of military service. At that time, America didn’t believe it was under attack. Patriotism was at a low ebb. September 11 changed all that. Today, deep within the American psyche is an awareness that we, as a country, are vulnerable. And those who protect us are worthy of respect. The Vietnam vets are getting a second look.
This year, I decided to reread the letters my then boyfriend sent me from the jungles of Vietnam—letters I saved for more than 50 years. I had forgotten what it was like to be 20, in the infantry, and scared.
I found a man who believed, and still believes, in service; a man of his word; a man who left after three years in Uncle Sam’s army without great ambitions for money and power. He had seen death, and he wanted a life punctuated with the simple and eternal values of respect, dignity and service. He finished an MBA program, graduated from law school, and is still a professor. He doesn’t hoard his talents—he shares them.
Grumpy? Yes. He complains about unexplained illnesses, some that show up more commonly in those exposed to Agent Orange. But he is mostly proud: proud that he served, and prouder that he survived.
We should remember, in today’s time of uncertainty and increasing partisanship, that Vietnam vets were molded during the red-hot era of protest in a nation divided. Many, like my husband, came home from a war they didn’t believe in, strong enough to believe in the ideal called America.
If they could put their harrowing experiences behind them and move America forward with courage, then we should be able to do the same today, when politics is again dividing the country. I hope, at least, in time.
Susan King was a journalist in the nation’s capital for 20 years and returned to her home state of New Jersey after serving for a decade as Dean of UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism & Media in Chapel Hill.
