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I used to be lately made conscious that March 29 is Nationwide Vietnam Struggle Veterans Day. I confess that I by no means knew that such a day existed. I think that lots of my fellow Vietnam veterans are unaware that they’re to be celebrated on today. Being relegated to a day in March with little fanfare appears to be according to how this nation has handled Vietnam veterans for the final six many years.
There’s a {photograph} that has haunted me for longer than I care to recollect. It depicts a transformed tank loaded with wounded Marines who had been combating for his or her lives on the metropolis of Hue through the Tet Offensive. They’re wounded terribly. You possibly can virtually really feel the life ebbing away from one of many Marines. Many who noticed the {photograph} assumed he died. He didn’t. He survived and has lived a productive life as a father and grandfather.
There isn’t any one, irrespective of their degree of erudition, who might persuade me that these younger Marines on that tank have been any much less brave or valiant than those that stormed the seashores at Tarawa in World Struggle II or Inchon within the Korean Struggle.
I don’t know whether or not any of us is on the lookout for parades or applause a lot as merely the popularity that we served as honorably as anybody else.
Thomas J. Irwin
Falmouth
The author served as a Marine corporal in Vietnam in 1969 and ‘70.
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