Ask yourself two questions:

How many Vietnam veterans do you know?

How many of them have expressed any resentment about the nation's hugely supportive attitude toward today's troops?

Like most of us, I have known dozens of veterans of the Vietnam “conflict” who spent anything from a few weeks in-theater to six years in Hanoi. I'm acquainted with scores more.

None of them has uttered one syllable of the indignation that we might expect: “People spat on us but why do they stand up and clap for troops today?”

That attitude was expressed after Desert Storm, maybe because it was so much ado about so little. The ground phase of the “war” lasted four days yet the troops returned to tumultuous parades and yellow ribbons. We lost fewer people to all causes in Desert Shield/Storm (148 KIA, 235 others) than in one week's combat in Vietnam—which dragged on for more than a decade.

Think about that. On average, from 1967 through 1969, more Americans died in Southeast Asia every week than were killed by enemy action in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. In 1967 the average weekly loss was 320, or 45 per day. (Consider the likely reaction if 45 Americans were killed in Iraq tomorrow.) Furthermore, over 80% of Vietnam deaths were the result of enemy action; in 1991 it was barely one-third. Many SEA vets can be understood if they found no comparison.

Today it's different.

Why is that?

Well, let's ask some of those graying warriors.

From a Navy attack pilot: “I am one of those who truly will never forgive the Peace, Flower, and Protest Bunch for the way we were treated.

“But it fills my heart with joy to see the change. For anyone who has ever done a Thanksgiving service on the fo'cscle with jets being catapulted in harm's way overhead; or spent Christmas doing shore patrol, the holidays have a whole different poignancy.”

This from a helicopter commander who received the Silver Star for fetching a jet pilot from Haiphong Harbor: “ I never considered it, though I agree that today's heroes are properly recognized and am happy for that. I was welcomed by family and friends 40 years ago -- what others thought just didn't matter much.”

From a former Marine, RVN 1966-67: “ I have not heard anyone comment on it at all. The only thing I have seen is support for the troops. We have sent boxes of goodies to 1/5 whenever they were over there, and had a couple of busses full of them come to our reunion.”

Apparently the reason that the Vietnam generation is so even-tempered about a potential sore point is, in a trite phrase, they've been there and done that. Many of them even have the T-shirt to prove it (“Second Place, Southeast Asia War Games 1964-1973”).

What the old-timers feel for the current troops is more profound than esprit and runs deeper than patriotism. It's gut-level emotion: only a soldier can truly walk in another soldier's boots.

That sentiment can even extend to the enemy. I recall a dear friend, an enthusiastic warrior who logged three tours in SEA. At the end he was so disenchanted that he expressed genuine sympathy for the fate of many Viet Cong. “They fought long and hard for their cause only to be pushed aside by the Northerners,” whom he called “Damnyankee NVA.”

If some Vietnam vets can empathize with a once bitter enemy, there is no wonder that they now welcome public support of their own countrymen. The nation that once turned its back on them is following their example in a new war in a new century.