Were Vietnam veterans the greatest generation?

Were Vietnam veterans the greatest generation?
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
February 17, 2013

The answer is, yes. Vietnam veterans were and still are remarkable.

This morning started out with reading an article on Washington Times because the title of it didn't seem to match who wrote it. Mario Salazar describes himself this way.

Mario Salazar, the 21st Century Pacifist, is a bleeding heart liberal, agnostic, exercise fanatic, Redskin fan, technophile, civil engineer, combat infantry veteran, jewelry maker, amateur computer programmer, environmental engineer, Colombian-born, free thinker, and, not surprisingly, pacifist.

I was not sure what I'd end up reading but considering the title is the what I've been saying all along, I was pulled into it.

Were Vietnam veterans the greatest generation?
Saturday, February 16, 2013
21st-Century Pacifist
by Mario Salazar

MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Md., February 15, 2013 — A fellow Vietnam veteran sent me a link to a video of a speech by retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, who also served in Vietnam as a second lieutenant on his first tour there. And he doesn’t apologize for being a Vietnam veteran. While some of his sound bites are open to closer analysis, he talks like an enlisted man and not an officer.

Zinni speaks on how there are people who never served in Vietnam, but lie that they did. This to him is a vindication of the real veterans. His reasoning is that if people lie, it is because they wish they could make this claim, and therefore it is something desirable. On the other hand, his comment that no one lies about having been in Woodstock is not factual. Many people do claim they were in Woodstock, that the farm was probably stacked three stories high with hippies.

Zinni, who was the former Commander ion Chief of the U.S. Central Command, also explains how the Vietnam combat soldier had 240 days of combat, as compared with about 40 for World War II soldiers in the South Pacific. His comment that this helps in making us the “greatest generation” still may not be shared by many of us, even those of us who had boots on the ground in Vietnam.

He also extrapolates that because of the Vietnam generation, the U.S. military revised its ways, creating a force that caused the Soviets to give up. While this fact may be included in the reasons for the collapse of the Soviets, it is by no means critical. As we have learned from disclosures after the demise of the Soviet empire, it never had the strength that Cold War mongers made us believe.
read more here

This part jumped out at me because what happened to Vietnam Veterans when they came home depended more on where they came home to than anything else.

"This, however, is in contrast with other veterans’ experiences, including my own. We were never insulted, we were thanked for our service and many of us received preference in jobs, especially after we finished college under the GI Bill." General Zini

Last year MOH Vietnam Hero Sammy Davis sat down for an interview with me at a Homes For Our Troops fundraiser at the Orlando Nam Knights. Sammy is just about as humble as can be. I've heard the story of how the Medal of Honor ceremony in the movie Forrest Gump was actually taken from Sammy's ceremony many times. I heard the story behind what caused him to play the harmonica and Shenandoah. Many times I've heard the citation read and had tears in my eyes. He was so young. He was a 21 year old Private when he earned the Medal of Honor and he was wounded. He came home and that part of the story I had never heard before.

What did Sammy do after? He kept serving.

It didn't matter how badly he was treated because he still loved this country enough to continue serving it. He didn't stop there. He travels all over the country and is a shining example of what Vietnam veterans are like.

Unlike this generation of veterans they returned home the way all other generations had. Back to their home towns but unlike the other generations, few from their home towns knew what they had been through. They didn't have the internet. They had the old-timers groups like the VFW and the DAV but even they were not welcomed within those halls. It took many years before they were included and accepted. Now they run most of the service groups taking care of the new generation.

Unlike the generations before them, they also decided that they would not settle to suffer from Combat PTSD in silence.

While PTSD is in the news along with suicides and attempted suicides, thousands of veterans waiting to have their claims processed and care provided, they returned to the same issues. What is available to this generation is all due to their efforts and the fact they never gave up on us.

Vietnam Veterans of America was founded in 1978 and they are fighting for all generations of veterans to make sure they are taken care of.

When it comes to spiritual healing, again, they took the lead long before PTSD made the news.

Point Man International Ministries was founded in 1984 addressing the spiritual issues of combat and PTSD because Vietnam veteran Bill Landreth was also a Seattle police officer and knew his fellow veterans needed help to heal from where they had been and what was asked of them. Author Chuck Dean took over the leadership and his research discovered 150,000 Vietnam veterans had committed suicide. Later research put the number at 200,000. Back then Vietnam veterans made the news for being arrested and they were convicted without their military service considered as a factor. They ended up homeless to the point where over 300,000 of them had no place to call home.

The Nam Knights also started by a Vietnam Veteran. "In the summer of 1989 a small group of Harley-riding combat vets of the Viet Nam War, who were also police officers, banded together to form the Nam Knights.
The Club was founded in New Jersey by Jack Quigley, now retired Undersheriff of The Bergen County Sheriff's Department. Jack served as a platoon sergeant with the 11th Motor Transport Battalion, First Marine Division."

The New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans started "In 1986, a group of Vietnam Veterans (Peace Foxx, Mark Helberg and Ken Smith) gathered weekly at a Veterans Outreach Center in the Greater Boston area to discuss and resolve their combat experiences. Two years later, the group visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC and was shocked to find veterans who were homeless living in an adjacent park. Upon their return to Boston, they discovered that one-third of the nation's homeless male population are veterans."

The International Fellowship of Chaplains began with David Vorce, a pastor and Vietnam Veteran Marine topped off with being a retired "Lieutenant with the Saginaw County Sheriffs Department where he served in the Special Operations Division. He also has 20 years as a Police Chaplain and nearly 36 years as a martial arts instructor."

While the above article caused this post, it missed much of what these veterans did for all generations. Most are not aware of the fact that had it not been for them, there would be no research done on what trauma does and people all over the world have been helped because this generation did what no other generation did before. They fought to have the invisible wounds treated even though most reporters in this country tried to make them invisible.

And then there are wives like me doing what we do because of veterans like them. I've been helping veterans and their families heal from PTSD since 1982 when I met my husband and fell in love with a Vietnam veteran.