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Come Writers and Critics
Monday April 21, 2003
From Wichita Falls, Texas
If you, like me, were in your twenties during the Vietnam war; and, if you, like me, remember the ugliness of the civilian reaction to military personnel returning from that war; and if you, like me, have become weary with the pretend protests of the Anti-Iraq-Fur Coat-Genetically Altered Corn-Florida Recount Was Fixed-World Bank-IMF crowd then you probably became, like me, a blubbering mass of weeping middle-age, as you watched the return of the seven prisoners of war to their home bases in Texas on Saturday night.
In the 60's and early 70's when military personnel stationed in the US left their base or their ship they were warned to wear civilian clothes, the better to avoid run-ins with, as the song lyric went, "long-haired-freaky-people."
Too often, the soldiers were treated like losers who did not have the guile, the juice, or the grades to stay out of the military; by people their same age who, having done nothing whatever with their own lives other than waste their parents' money pretending to go to college, would assault them with the ultra-hip phrase of the time: "Baby killer."
Nice huh?
I was watching the return of the POWs while sitting across a kitchen table in Wichita Falls, Texas with a great friend, Kenn Hill. I was 600 miles from Fort Bliss and about 260 miles from Fort Hood. For much of the time as we were waiting for the plane to land, my friend was a million miles away.
Like Chief Warrant Officers Ron Young and Dave Williams, Kenn had been a helicopter pilot. He flew a helicopter in a war. The Vietnam war.
Earlier in the evening his wife had shown me a black and white photo of Kenn, somewhat thinner and much younger, standing at attention as he received - according to the inscription on the back of the photo - the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster.
"What were the circumstances of your being awarded that medal?" I asked.
In the way of soldiers, even - or maybe especially - long-retired soldiers, he just shrugged, half smiled, and shook his head, as if to say, "Not important. I was with a lot of other guys." Later, under close questioning, he admitted he had also been awarded a Bronze Star.
The Vietnam war touched the Administrations of four US Presidents: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon; and went on for parts of three decades.
Operation Iraqi Freedom was a hot war for just over three weeks.
Someone on Tony Snow's Fox News Sunday show noted that too many senior reporters are still covering the Vietnam war. "They've covered the Vietnam war, now, four times: Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and now Iraqi Freedom."
My friend suggested there would be a difference in the way news media covered these sorts of things, as the reporters who have been embedded for months with their units move up through the reportorial ranks and into management.
"They've seen this war," he said, "from the bottom up."
Shortly before midnight Central Time, the two pilots stepped off a van and onto a small red carpet, acknowledged the rhythmic clapping of the soldiers who had gathered to welcome them home, and were joined by their families on a stage.
As they each spoke their brief words of thanks, and of prayer, and of respect for their colleagues and their country, I looked over at my friend. Tears were streaming down his face.
He looked over at me. "I'm so happy for these kids," he said in a very small voice for a large man. "They're getting what they deserve." He did not have to say they were getting what he, and his colleagues never got.
In 1963 Bob Dylan wrote an anthem for that era which had as one of its verses: "For the loser now; Will be later to win."
The reception those young soldiers got Saturday night was more evidence, for the hundreds of thousands of Vietnam-era veterans; for all the Kenn Hills: The Times, They Are a'Changin'.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: The lyrics to the Dylan song; the "long-haired freaky people" reference, the Kenn Hill Photo, and a really sweet Catchy Caption.
--END --
Copyright © 2003 Richard A. Galen
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