Vietnam vets finally get a 'Welcome Home'

Assemblyman Paul Cook (R-Yucca Valley) introduced a resolution to establish a "Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Week" in California. It was passed unanimously by both the assembly and the senate.

The week would coincide with the 20th anniversary of the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Sacramento. It begins Dec. 10, with the reading of the names of all Californians who died during the war, and ends Dec. 14 with a sunrise POW/MIA ceremony at the memorial.

Cook is a retired Marine Corps colonel, Nam vet and Purple Heart recipient. "Many Vietnam veterans are still struggling with the way they were treated when they returned to the United States," Cook said. "This resolution goes a long way toward healing the wounds these veterans have carried for eyars in a country that has forgotten them."

More than 5,800 Californians lost their lives in Vietnam--more than any other state, according to California Vietnam Veterans Memorial (www.CAVietnamMemorial.com.

Some 200,000 Nam vets live in the state.

I'm one of 'em.

I was in the Army there, between Long Binh and Bien Hoa at II Field Force, from July 22, 1969, to Aug. 16, 1970. Mostly I was a REMF, and to keep from spelling out the acronym on a family Web site, I'll just say that in Iraq, they're now called "Fobbits"--troops stuck mostly at one of the sprawling Forward Operating Bases set up by the U.S. in the sands of Araby.

I wrote for a monthly Army magazine called "Hurricane" and got to roam around the southern part of Vietnam more than most soldiers. I drove a Jeep, took choppers and once, for a story on the Montagnards in the Central Highlands, I rode the CIA airline, Air America, landing on on a portable corrugated metal runway.

At II Field Force, we got hit by rockets or mortars about once a month, and one night on guard duty in a tower near the berm, I came under small arms fire. My reaction wasn't heroic. I peed in my jungle fatigues.

I've kept in touch with three guys I served with: Larry Schloss in Tucson; Jim Womack in Austin; and Phil Brown, who's been roaming from Switzerland to South America with his wife. There were more of 'em for the first few years after we got back, but contact just seemed to fade away.

Few of my close friends served there, but some did at different times and places than when I was in uniform: Mack Mackenroth, a Marine in '65, with whom I played basketball in Tokyo and later the Bay Area; Doc Egeler, a legitimate hero with Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars and a Combat Infantryman's Badge, who once gave me a job in L.A. and is now retired in Mission Viejo; Brad, another Tokyo basketball buddy, who spent three years in Indochina, not with the military, if you get my drift, and I think you do, who's also retired now in Virginia.

Two other good friends were in Nam: Quang Pham, whom you've met on this site before, who left Saigon at age 10 as a refugee; and Joe Galloway, a McClatchy columnist and co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young," made into a movie by Mel Gibson; and the brand-new book, "We Are Soldiers Still": http://search.barnesandnoble.com/We-Are-Soldiers-Still/Harold-G-Moore/e/...

Some have called Joe our generation's Ernie Pyle, the legendary World War II correspondent (whose picture hangs above my desk here). Here are his columns: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/galloway/

I'll write more about Joe closer to the time his book tour brings him to Marine Memorial Hall in San Francisco Sept. 9.

Meantime, I'd like to thank Assemblyman Cook for conceiving and executing the idea of a "Welcome Home" week. I came home in 1970, and it wasn't till Memorial Day 1991 that I finally felt I was back. I'd gone to a parade to interview a general for a book my colleagues and I were writing on the Persian Gulf War (which is how I met Quang, a Marine aviator who flew helicopters in that war). As I was leaving the Torrance, Calif., town square, I noticed a bunch of guys around my age, standing near the old cannon. They were dressed in shards and shreds of jungle fatigues, boonie hats and green and black boots. Most of 'em wore beards or long hair.

I walked up. Some introduced themselves. I told 'em why I was there, the interview and all. I can't remember how many it was--two or three or four--stepped forward after I'd told 'em that, yup, I'd been over there too. However many, they shook my hand. One said, "Welcome home, brother."

I had to get out of there. So I walked to my car and left.

And it wasn't until May 1993, after I'd spent a month covering the civil war in Bosnia, that I ever went to The Wall, the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C. Awake at 4 a.m. from jet lag, I got in my running gear and pounded through the cool mist to The Wall. I walked along its black, curving contours, looking at names. Even before dawn there were others doing the same. I walked its length, then ran back to my hotel. The sun was just coming up. I've never been back.

Not long before the Torrance event, I'd stood in the corner of a layover terminal at JFK, wearing my Vietnam fatigue jacket with "Correspondent" stenciled over one pocket. I was waiting, between flights, watching the arrival of a planeload of soldiers who'd just returned from the Persian Gulf War. So had I, three months as a combat pool reporter.

Streamers hung from the terminal ceiling, fresh coffee burbled, cookies and soda pop and free phones sat on tables. Passengers and airline folks stood and clapped and cheered as the men and women, wearing desert camo and struggling with rucksacks, paraded before them.

I leaned back, arms crossed, and thought: Good deal. Good for them. Different from what happened to us. But good for them.

I applaud Assemblyman Cook for what he's done. I hope a lot of folks show up there in November. I won't be among them, though. I'm not much of a joiner. Not much on war reunions. Not much on formalities.

I'm still not sure what being a soldier in Vietnam has meant in my life. All I know is that it was changed forever. Some time back I made a separate peace.

And, at least because of Larry and Jim and Phil and Mack and Brad and Quang and Doc and Joe, for the better....