Much of what I write here comes from looking back over 40 years of hindsight, many books read, much self analysis and many discussions with my fellow Vietnam Veterans.

I wish I could name everyone who contributed to the thoughts and words that make up this article I write but so many years and so much water under the bridge make that practically impossible.

When I went to Vietnam in the beginning of 1967 I had a sketchy understanding of the past 20 years fighting in Indochina: the catastrophic French defeat at Dienbienphu; the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964; the First Cavalry’s big battle in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965. I felt certain that my military knowledge could and would keep me alive.

But there was a great deal that my comrade in arms and I did not know. We did not understand that for nearly two thousand years the Vietnamese had fought valiantly against foreign invaders and occupiers, Chinese, French, and now American. We were unaware that this protracted resistance had shaped a culture that was martially competent and infinitely patient, one that placed a premium on superhuman courage and sacrifice.

We did not know that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist first and a communist second and that his relatively recent alliance with Moscow and Peking was a marriage of convenience rather than the manifestation of a cohesive international Marxist plan. We did not comprehend that the Americans had allied themselves with a clique of corrupt and discredited Vietnamese mandarins.

Nor did we realize, to many, if not most, Vietnamese the Americans were as emblematic of colonialism and social injustice as the French, whose ill-fated effort to reassert France’s glory in Indochina after World War II had been heartily supported by Washington.

In a young airman such ignorance was forgivable, perhaps even necessary. Twenty-eight year old flight crew members who spent their time pondering geopolitical nuances would probably make poor Pilots and Flight Engineers. The military taught history that, understandably, was skewed to the prevailing American view of the world, imbued with the unique native blend of blind optimism, self-righteousness, and genuine beneficence.

What I did not know on arriving at Da Nang AB in early 1967 I could not have been expected to know; what the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Military’s top Generals did not know would cost 58,000 American lives and lose the war.

The essential morality of the soldier is that he is willing to give his life for something larger than he is. The principle that some values are worth dying for is what finally underlies patriotism – but the hard part is, which values? Vietnam was a war of great moral confusion – we were fighting for the people of Vietnam, but we never knew which of them was our enemy and which one was our friend. All we had was each other, and our pride. A soldier alone and without moral clarity, no matter how good his weapons, is a soldier crippled.

We had been willing to give our lives for our country, no less than our fathers had been at Normandy and Iwo Jima. This war, however, was different. We lost. And the country that sent us did not take us back into its arms. It either hated the war, or simply wanted to forget it.

But if the war had no value, then what were the men who fought it worth? Many Vietnam veterans thought of themselves as losers, outcasts, and suckers. They blamed everyone: protesters, the government, the media, and their friends who didn’t serve.

Or they blamed themselves and wallowed in guilt. Of course most veterans came home, put the war behind them, and proceeded with their lives. That’s what I tried to do. But for us too, the war wouldn’t quite settle into our memories.

The image was fuzzy and troubling. Even as we climbed the ladders of success and acceptance, we were never quite sure how to think about the war. The media was no help. Throughout the 1970s Vietnam Veterans were routinely portrayed in movies and on television as crazed drug addicts, psychopaths, or pathetic cripples. But that image was no more accurate than the rip ‘em up post Granada macho fantasies of Rambo.

We are, in fact, ordinary men. We are the doctor, the lawyer, the airline pilot, the plumber, and the trash collector. And instead of blaming the war for our problems, many Vietnam veterans now give it credit for their success.

The best example of what Vietnam taught its veterans is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. On July 4, 1979, Jan Scruggs, who had been an Army Private in Vietnam, announced to the press that he had raised $144.50 toward establishing a memorial for Vietnam Veterans in Washington. It was the perfect beginning. A memorial for all of us, announced not by a grateful President, but by a buck private

After building their own memorial veterans decided to give their own parade, a full scale ticker-tape parade down the canyons of lower Manhattan, a hero’s parade. They had remembered, finally, what they learned in the war: no one cares, really, except the men you are with; if you want anything, you have to do it yourself.

The parade began on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge on a bright May morning. Memorial Day, 1985. More than 25,000 of us, an aging army in blue jeans, Brooks Brothers suits, and faded combat fatigues gone tight around the waist, milled about, preparing to cross the bridge on one last mission.

Back at the parade headquarters and at a fund raising dinner the night before we all had been apprehensive. We didn’t know what we would find on the other side of the bridge, whether we would be cheered or booed or just ignored as we had always been. We didn’t know what America thought of us. But when we crossed the bridge the next morning we were singing "Born In The USA" at the top of our lungs. By then, if no one had been there it wouldn’t have mattered. We were marching for ourselves.

The parade passed City Hall. More than a million people crowded the streets, standing four and five deep on the sidewalks, with many others in windows, overlooking the street. They were waving flags. The policeman and sanitation workers lining the sidewalks applauded as we passed.

All along the sidewalk people were shouting at to us.

"Welcome Home!"

"Welcome Home!"

"We love you!"

Thanks I thought.

Better late than never.

Yes, I am A Vietnam Veteran, but I hid this fact from people for several years after the war, because I was caught up in the National shame of being involved in the War in Vietnam.

I did not want friends to know how I spent a year of my life facing my mortality and being involved with what so many protested as an American mistake.

When my own service, the United States Air Force, acted as if we should hide the fact of our involvement by ordering us to never wear our uniforms off base, I was convinced it was a shameful thing I had been involved in, even though it was my country that ordered me and over a million others to go to that place and defend something.

I never gave it much thought whether it was right or wrong to fight in that war. My country sent me, and because I was a Soldier I went.

When my country abandoned the South Vietnamese I was ashamed of that. I was ashamed of the way the United States ran helter-skelter from the friends they had promised to support.

I was ashamed at the lack of support our country showed us. We were never given the support that America had given its military throughout history. It was as if it were our fault that things did not go right for this country that had gotten us involved and did not have the resolve to finish what it had started.

It is now almost forty years after my war in Vietnam, and somewhere along the way my thinking changed in the way I see my personal involvement.

The pride started creeping into my thinking as we, the Vietnam Veterans, started the movement to get a Memorial, "The Wall". Since Americans and our own government abandoned us, we would pay for and build our own Memorial.

The war protesters, the draft dodgers could go on with their lives after Jimmy Carter gave them amnesty.

So, our lives could go on too, even if we only recognized our accomplishments without support of the American people. I started seeing other Vietnam Veterans as Brothers, and shared what only close brothers could share.

I began also, to think of the war as a test, a rite of passage that my Father's generation went through in World War Two, and my Brother went through in Korea. I know now, that had I not gone to Vietnam when I was called, I would wonder all my life if I had what it takes to be an American, called on to do a duty for my country. I don't have to wonder. I served. I went when called.

I have spoken with many men since the war, who did not serve in the military. Many say they wished they had gone. They feel a part of their life passed by while they watched from the sidelines. They will carry with them to the grave an unanswered question that I was fortunate enough to have answered. Would I serve if called by my country?

I did and I survived, and now I walk with my head held high.

When I meet other Vietnam Veterans I immediately feel a Bond, a Brotherhood that only we, who have been there, can understand. My life would be missing a large part if I did not have this comradeship with my fellow Veterans.

Some say, "it's been over thirty years ago, forget about it." I am here to tell you that you can not forget the defining episode in your life that sets you apart from others.

How can you forget something as life changing an experience as the War in Vietnam was for so many American men?

Some who are old enough to remember where they were and what they were doing when John F. Kennedy was shot, or when Martin Luther King was shot can no more forget that, than a Vietnam Veteran can forget about the combat in which he was involved so long ago.

How can someone who did not experience it, and does not know if they would have gone had they been called, tell Veterans to get over it and forget it?

I wore the uniform of The United States Air Force for 26 years. I went when called to serve in Vietnam

For that I stand tall!

I am proud.

I am a Vietnam Veteran,

First Tour -1967 - 1968