Vietnam War Veteran's Day

A Better Thing To Stand Up For

I was born while my father was in Vietnam. I have 4 uncles. One was in Vietnam at the same times as my father; they enlisted together in 1964. Another served on the USS Midway during her last tour in Vietnam. The 3rd was in Korea during his Vietnam era service. And the 4th turned 18 just a couple months after the draft ended.

The Vietnam War ended 51 years ago. When it ended, I was 8 years old and World War 2 was just 30 years in the past. I grew up with World War 2 and Vietnam War vets around me, and their wives and daughters raising my brother and I, and my cousins. I knew I would also serve in the military somehow, and it was understood that I would probably serve in war as well …. I did, of course, in Desert Storm and beyond. I like to think I did it fairly well, I hope to the standards of my family and all the other millions of Americans who have served this country in wartime.

But today is not that day, it is the day to remember and thank my father, my uncles, my mother, my aunts, and all the others that spent 12-13 months in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the South China Sea) fighting and dying to stop communism.

These men and women came home with no ticker tape parades, no victory marches.

At least for this one moment, on this lonely substack, you get remembered and stood up for and thanked!