LETTER | Honoring Vietnam veterans
Why they have their own day
Vietnam Veteran’s Day is March 29. It was declared so by President Barack Obama as Vietnam Veteran’s Day, and legislation to that effect was later signed into law by President Donald Trump. Why, one might ask is there only one war that has its own Veteran’s Day?
Vietnam veterans are a singular group. No one stood at airports applauding when we returned home, no one was buying our meals in restaurants and there were no “Support Our Troops” car signs. We were unwelcome by traditional veterans’ groups who told us that “Vietnam was not a real war,” and that they had won their war. Subsequently, the history of the Vietnam War was scarcely taught in our schools and younger veterans knew little or nothing about it.
Over 58,800 men (and eight women) were combat deaths in the Vietnam War. Contrast this with approximately 6,800 casualties for a decade in both Iraq and Afghanistan combined. In Vietnam, there were over 16,000 combat deaths in 1968 alone.
Military statistics show that during World War II the average infantryman saw 40 days of combat per year; during the Vietnam War the average was 240 days in combat per year.
Left to our own, Vietnam veterans stick together. Whenever one sees another with a Vietnam cap or t-shirt in a parking lot or on the street, the universal greeting is “welcome home, brother,” as no one else welcomed us home.
In this recently passed Vietnam Veteran’s Day, I say to my fellow Vietnam veterans, “Welcome home, brothers.”
Gary P. Thimsen
Sioux Falls
Thank you Gary for remembering the eight nurses who are among the over 58,000 Americans whose names are carved on The Wall. Because of them and their medical colleagues including doctors, techs, corpsmen, and the female volunteers affectionately known as "Donut Dollies", thousands of us who fell, were able to rise up again and come home.
I will add one more woman to this list - fearless in the face of the enemy and any authority - and that is photojournalist Dickey Chappelle. She was originally sent to cover the nurses during WWII, but talked her way to the front lines!
She had the Battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa under her belt before she went to Viet Nam. She was killed by a booby trap while on a patrol with "her Marines".
Amen!!