Your Two Cents Submit your stories, news items, or a benefits update -- and help Military.com bring the best, most important stories to your fellow servicemembers, veterans, and family members. Contribute here
Page 2
[Have an opinion on this article? Go to the Discussion
Forum to sound off.]
I didn't get much sleep that night. Two thoughts kept running around in my brain. The first was the Petty Officer's question: "How bad would things have to be?" The second thought was even more sobering. The horror that these people were fleeing so desperately was the very thing that our Soldiers had been battling during the war. Sleep was out of the question after that bit of revelation.
I had spent my youth questioning America's need to be in Vietnam. I had thought poorly of our Soldiers for interfering needlessly in the affairs of a foreign nation. I had dismissed any suggestion that our troops in Vietnam had been engaged in any legitimate battle against tyranny and oppression. I had been morally certain that the monster in Vietnam was a figment of the American propaganda machine. And now, years after the end of the war, I was helping an entire village to escape the clutches of the very monster I had refused to believe in.
Over the next few days, as our ship sailed toward a friendly port, I spent a lot of time watching our Vietnamese guests. I could see it in their faces. These people weren't out for a joyride. They hadn't jumped the fence to get to greener pastures. They were fleeing for their lives. They weren't running towards anything; they were running away from something. The monster was real. It was alive. And it was terrifying enough to chase seventy people into the sea.
I began to face the realization that I might have been utterly wrong about America's involvement in Vietnam. With the exception of a few younger children, every one of those refugees had lived through the war, and they had lived in the Vietnam that came after the war.
I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I listened in on as many of their conversations as I could. They mostly spoke in Vietnamese, but I caught occasional scraps of English. I also picked the brains of the few crewmembers who spoke a little of the language. I wasn't able to piece together a very clear story, but several words kept cropping up. Rape. Torture. Murder. Execution. Not enough for me to know exactly what had happened to these people, but more than enough to glimpse the horror that they were running from.
My Senior Chief was a Vietnam veteran. So were a few other members of the crew. One by one I tracked them down and apologized for ever doubting the legitimacy of their fight. I thanked each man for his service.
I didn't know it at the time, but the village we rescued wasn't even the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Through the seventies, the eighties, and well into the nineties, over a million Vietnamese citizens took to boats and ran from the benevolent protection of their own government. (Some estimates place the number of post-war Vietnamese refugees at more than twice that. It's hard to get solid figures, because we can only count the survivors. No one really knows how many boat people died in unsuccessful attempts to escape oppression and despotism in their own country.)
Twenty years later, as I watch college students protest against the American military, I'm struck by the supreme irony of the situation. They are assembling to protest the very people who fight and die to protect the right to protest and assemble. These college students are exercising their right to Free Speech to attack the very men and women who dedicate their lives to protecting the First Amendment.
I won't argue for a second against the right of any American to protest. True freedom of speech includes the right to bite the hand that feeds you. But I have to wonder how many of those protesters will wake up one day to realize that they got it wrong? Ten years from now, how many of those protesters will regret not having supported America's fight to bring freedom and self-governance to a people who have known only cruelty and oppression?
I don't regret the idealism of my younger years, but I do regret any disservice I did to our men and women in uniform. In the years since my ship rescued that boatload of villagers, I've repeated my apologies and thanks to many many Vietnam veterans. Most of them accepted gracefully, but I've had to eat more than my share of crow. I can't complain. I have it coming.
If you happen to be a Vietnam veteran, please accept my heartfelt appreciation for your service to our nation. I hope you that will also accept my humble apology. I should have been waiting at the pier to welcome you home from the war. I wasn't. I should have met you at the airfield and shook your hand as you walked off the plane. I didn't. I can offer no valid excuse. I can only plead the indiscretions of youth. I realize that this apology is coming a little late, but remember that I've been working at it for years. Besides, some of us take a little longer to grow up than others.
