One Small Voice: Vietnam Vets’ Day is silent holiday

by Lynn Mandaville

I write this in recognition of Friday, March 29, National Vietnam Veterans Day, a national holiday signed into law on March 28, 2017, by (and don’t let this irony escape you) President Donald J Trump, referred to by some (not me) as President Bone Spurs.  It is called officially the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017.

I have wanted to write something about the subject of Vietnam Veterans since last September, when I accompanied my husband to his first reunion with the men with whom he served during the Vietnam War from 1971 through 1972.

The reunion was a fine gathering of the men who served aboard the ammunition ship USS Suribachi AE21.  They enjoyed reliving the good times (the Med cruise where they did what sailors do on leave).  They bemoaned the bad times (the crazy, hazardous rearmings of destroyers, destroyer escorts, and aircraft carriers on unstable seas while within dangerous limits of the Vietnam coast).  These were the men who (like Dave Mandaville did) steered that ship on calm seas and high seas, were the radiomen and signalmen who attempted secure communications in a day when semaphore was still used and radio contact was sometimes silenced.

My husband served in the United States Navy from the time he enlisted in the Naval Reserve in high school.  A total of eight years in all.  For two years as a high school teen he participated in weekly meetings, drills, exercises and training cruises aboard naval vessels.  Throughout college he did the same, all while taking a full load of engineering classes.

Despite opposing the war in Vietnam, Dave fulfilled his obligation to the Navy, including two years of active duty upon college graduation.  Rather than follow in the footsteps of many of his contemporaries who went into their respective careers, Dave put his life on hold to serve as quartermaster of an ammunition ship.  During the era when President Lyndon Johnson declared that we (the US) were not engaged in bombing the coast of Vietnam, Dave steered that small, floating, explosive vessel to rearm the boats and planes that dropped ordnance nightly that lit up that coast like the Fourth of July.

And when his tours of duty was over, he, like his shipmates, returned to his wife, his family, his friends, not to grateful recognition for service to his country, but to derision, ridicule and insult.  And along with the others, they were all swept under the rug of remembrance because that war was so unpopular.

Being sailors, my husband and his fellow vets escaped a lot of the horrors of that war. The health horrors of Agent Orange that affected so many ground troops.  The PTSD that still had not been identified and acknowledged.  But they did not escape the bullying of a nation that called them, collectively, baby killers.

For those men from Dave’s ship, and I’d wager many other vets, this national holiday of recognition means very little, if nothing at all.  At any event we have ever attended where the hymns of the branches of the armed forces are played and vets were invited to stand and be recognized, my husband has never risen. When it mattered, in the 1960s and ’70s, when he and his contemporaries returned home, there were no parades, no “atta-boys” for defending American freedom.  Too often it meant incidents like what happened to Dave’s good friend Ralph. Ralph came home to Tennessee, arriving at the airport in uniform, where a man strode right up to him and spat in his face.  Some gratitude.

So this new National Vietnam Veterans Day holiday is, in my opinion, an empty gesture.  Well-intentioned, but with very little feeling behind it.  Vietnam veterans are the bastard children of the US military.  You have to acknowledge them, but you don’t have to give any significant recognition except as an afterthought nearly 50 years later.

In spite of my cynicism about this holiday, I do silently salute my husband and the other men and women who served our nation during another extremely divisive time in our history.  These men and women, then and even now, struggle with their perceived complicity in an unjust war.  Those who couldn’t connive a way out of serving (and we knew several who mirrored the strategy of deferments used by our Commander-in-Chief) went, reluctantly, into service.

Some (like my husband) were the children of men and women who had served in World War II and had come home to heroes’ welcomes.  These, their offspring, came home to silence.

So maybe it’s fitting that this is a silent holiday.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington is an understated affair, yet it elicits tremendous emotion in those who visit there.

National Vietnam Veterans Day is an obscure holiday, yet it evokes in people like me a sense of bittersweet pride that this generation of servicemen and women have survived the schizophrenia of the American Vietnam Veteran, patriots in service to a country that reviled them for their patriotism.

Men like my husband are the silent patriots of our country.  They display no flags.  They do not wear ball caps with their ships or units emblazoned on the front. They do not hold memberships in the VFW or American Legion.  They quietly donate to veterans’ charities.  They do not wish to draw attention to themselves.

It is my hope that this National Vietnam Veterans Day will be observed in silent reverence by those who understand the unique circumstances and contributions of this generation of humble veterans.

Let there be no hypocritical pronouncements from on high.

These unique veterans know what they have done.  Let’s not sully their honor with belated, insincere kudos.  A discreet and subtle “thank you” will do.