'Embrace those gentle heroes you left behind'
By Bill Cunningham, Princeton, Ky.. Bill is a justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court.

Posted in the Lexington Herald-Leader Nov 11, 2011

I'm proud to be a Vietnam veteran. But I was paid for every day I was there. I went where I was told to go; did what I was told to do. I came back safe and sound in body and mind. I am no hero.

The real heroes are the 58,484 men and women whose names are inscribed on that long black Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. The real heroes are their families who made the ultimate sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

The real heroes are those who came back dismembered, mangled, crippled and blind. Those who even now waste away in veterans hospitals and rest homes; those who were robbed of their youth and their futures; those who are haunted still by the mental and emotional demons that infest their days and nights.

They are the real heroes — the ones we should honor this Veterans Day. Those who have no legs to march in the parades, no arms to raise the flags, no joy left in their souls.

The first known casualty in Vietnam was Richard B. Fitzgibbon of North Weymouth, Mass., way back in the very early going of 1956. His name is there on the wall, along with the name of his son, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who died in Vietnam over nine years later on Sept. 7, 1965.

There are three such sets of names of fathers and sons on the wall.
Incredibly, to those of us who served, it's been 36 years since the last casualty in Vietnam. Equally astonishing is the fact that most of the surviving parents of those who died are now deceased.

We hurt even today for those dead fathers and mothers who suffered so much. And some poor parents lost more than one child. There are the names of 31 sets of brothers on that long black wall.

I can still see the image of my father standing at the fence at the airport in Paducah, waving goodbye as my plane lifted off. Looking back through the little window, I saw him getting smaller and smaller, his hand still waving as the huge silver craft got lost in the distant clouds and my face faded into the sky. Not until I had sons of my own would I know the aching heart behind that lonely wave.

Perhaps one of the most soul-wrenching statistics of that Asian war is that 3,103 of those we lost were only 18 years old.

There are 8,283 names on the Wall of youngsters who were only 19 years old. Teenagers. Most of them had never known marriage and having children. They hadn't watched color television. None of them would know the joys of the end of the Cold War or the everyday use of computers, microwaves, MP-3 players, cell-phones and the Internet.

Almost 1,000 of my Vietnam brethren died on their first day in The Nam. Almost 1,500 died on their last day there. Tragedy was written with a stabbing exclamation point.

There are the names of 1,057 Kentuckians on that wall of honor. West Virginia paid the biggest price per capita of any state in the blood of their young.

So, there you have it, folks. A bloody, old war. The only war we ever lost, they tell us. Maybe so. But I've got news for you. It wasn't lost by the guys I knew or by any of those gallant soldiers whose names are etched on that long black wall in Washington, D.C.

We were there, so far away from home, for a reason. And that reason was not what some — who are now safely removed from the bedlam of those dangerous times — accused us of having.

One of those brave souls was Major Michael Davis O'Donnell of Springfield, Ill. He was a helicopter pilot killed in action a short time after he wrote these departing words. I leave his farewell with you to consider this Veterans Day as you pause in your peaceful and happy life to pay homage to our vets — our Vietnam vets:

If you are able, save for them a place inside of you

And save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always.

Take what they have left and what they taught you with their dying

And keep it with your own.

And in that time when men decide

And feel safe to call the war insane,

Take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.

10-4 brave warrior. God Bless you and all those brave men and women who served -
10,000 days in the Vietnam war. About three million men and women served there.

In fact that war was won, because the communists did not over-run Southeast Asia (our objective was to prevent just that.)

Major O'Donnell's quote is remembered. Many repeat it to themselves daily.

Let us help our children understand what honor and sacrifice are all about and how many times American soldiers have gone in harm's way to further the causes of meeting human needs, protecting freedom and promoting democracy around the world.
This is the American Warriors legacy. “Never Forget – Never Give Up”

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Veterans’ Sacrifices Continue After War's End - A Tragic Story

The following text is extracted from a Lexington Herald-Leader article written by Tom Eblen, May 28, 2011

Veterans who survive combat too often have been denied care for their damaged bodies and minds. In every war, including the American Revolution, caring for wounded veterans has been a cost this nation’s leaders have been reluctant to pay.

That is the story told in a new book by Lexington authors Robert J. Topmiller and T. Kerby Neill, Binding Their Wounds, America’s Assault on Its Veterans (Paradigm Publishers, $22.95).Topmiller served as a Navy hospital corpsman with the Marines at Khe Sanh, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War. He wrote about his horrific experience in a previous book, Red Clay on My Boots.

Topmiller earned a doctorate in history from the University of Kentucky and taught at Eastern Kentucky University.
Binding Their Wounds grew out of Topmiller’s combat experience, his study of the Vietnam War and veterans’ issues, his many trips to Vietnam to help orphans with birth defects likely caused by Agent Orange, the defoliant used by the U.S. military, and his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq.

But friends think this was a book too painful for Topmiller to finish. In August 2008, he left home with the manuscript, checked into a motel and killed himself. Neill asked Topmiller’s widow and publisher for permission to finish the book. “I had lunch with Bob about 10 days before he died, and he was talking about the book,” Neill said. “I’m a clinical psychologist and I had no inkling at our lunch that he was in the kind of distress he was in.”

Neill and Topmiller, who was 59 when he died, became friends through their work as peace activists and a shared passion for veterans’ issues. Neill, a Navy veteran and retired psychologist, had worked several years in the Veterans Administration. Neill finished this book with help from many people, including Peter Berres, a Vietnam veteran and scholar who wrote a chapter about Agent Orange. George Herring, a University of Kentucky historian and leading expert on the Vietnam War, wrote the forward.

After telling Topmiller’s compelling story, this well-written book chronicles the history of broken promises to and mistreatment of America’s veterans. In every war, veterans have had to lobby, protest and even fight to get promised compensation and care from politicians who wanted to save money or “move on.” Minority and women veterans fared even worse than white men. The book explores the government’s attempts to deny care to veterans exposed to radiation, Agent Orange and other chemical hazards. And it details how the Bush administration was unprepared to care for so many injured soldiers in the early years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today’s combat veterans return home with physical wounds that would have killed previous generations on the battlefield. But perhaps the biggest challenges now, as always, are the unseen wounds.

This psychological damage has gone by different names throughout history: “soldier’s heart” in the Civil War, “shell shock” in World War I, “battle fatigue” in World War II and Korea. Now referred to as “post-traumatic stress,” these injuries have been a huge issue for Vietnam veterans and those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee recently grilled VA officials about rampant suicide, which has surpassed combat as the leading cause of death among active military personnel. Veterans now account for about 20 percent of the nation’s 30,000 suicides each year.

Neill said significant progress has been made in care for veterans in recent years, from electronic medical records and post-traumatic stress treatment to training and pay for family caregivers. But he said more must be done, despite projections that veterans’ care will push the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan past $3 trillion.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, or the USS Maddox Incident, are the names given to two incidents, involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.
 
On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox, while performing a DESOTO patrol, was engaged by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron. A sea battle resulted, in which the Maddox expended over 280 3 inch and 5 inch shells, and in which four USN F-8 Crusader jet fighter bombers strafed the torpedo boats. One US aircraft was damaged, one 14.5 mm round hit the destroyer, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed and six were wounded; there were no U.S. casualties.

The second Tonkin Gulf incident was originally claimed by the U.S. National Security Agency to have occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle. The outcome of these two incidents was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was jeopardized by "communist aggression". The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

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The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war took place after the First Indochina War. It was fought between North Vietnam, which was supported by its communist allies, and the South Vietnamese government, which was supported by the U.S. and other anti-communist nations. The Viet Cong, a South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, fought a largely guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region.

The Vietnam People’s Army (North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations that involved ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes.

The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam; preventing such a takeover was in keeping with the U.S.’s wider strategy of containment. The North Vietnamese government viewed the war as a colonial war, fought initially against France (which was backed by the U.S.) and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a puppet of the U.S.

U.S. military advisors began arriving in 1950. U.S. forces escalated in the 1960s, with the number of troops tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. Beginning in 1965, U.S. combat units were deployed on operations that spanned borders, during which time Laos and Cambodia were heavily bombed. In 1968, U.S. involvement peaked at the time of the Tet Offensive.

The Tet Offensive was a military campaign during the Vietnam War that began on January 31, 1968. The term “Tet Offensive” usually refers to the NLF offensive that continued through February 1968. Regular and irregular forces of the People's Army of Vietnam fought against the forces of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the United States, and their allies. The purpose of the offensive was to strike military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam and to spark a general uprising among the population that would then topple the Saigon government, thus ending the war in a single blow.

The operations are referred to as the Tet Offensive because they began during the early morning hours of 31 January 1968, T_t Nguyên _án, the first day of the year on a traditional lunar calendar and the most important Vietnamese holiday. Both North and South Vietnam announced on national radio broadcasts that there would be a two-day cease-fire during the holiday. In Vietnamese, the offensive is called Cu_c T_ng ti_n công và n_i d_y ("General Offensive and Uprising"), or T_t M_u Thân (Tet, year of the monkey).

The NLF launched a wave of attacks on the morning of 31 January in the I and II Corps Tactical Zones of South Vietnam. This early attack did not, however, cause undue alarm or lead to widespread defensive measures. When the main NLF operation began the next morning, the offensive was countrywide in scope and well coordinated, with more than 80,000 communist troops striking more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of six autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the southern capital. The offensive was the largest military operation conducted by either side up to that point in the war.

The initial attacks stunned the U.S. and South Vietnamese armies, but most of them were quickly contained and beaten back, inflicting massive casualties on communist forces. During the Battle of Hue, intense fighting lasted for a month and the NLF executed thousands of residents in the Massacre at Hue. Around the U.S. combat base at Khe Sanh, fighting continued for two more months. Although the offensive was a military defeat for the communists, it had a profound effect on the U.S. government and shocked the U.S. public, which had been led to believe by its political and military leaders that the communists were, due to previous defeats, incapable of launching such a massive effort.

After the Tet offensive, U.S. ground forces slowly withdrew as part of a policy called Vietnamization. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, which all parties signed in January 1973, fighting continued. U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the Case-Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress. The North Vietnamese army’s capture of Saigon in April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War. The following year, North and South Vietnam were reunified.

The war exacted a huge cost in terms of human fatalities. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed are more than 3 million. Around 200,000-300,000 Cambodians, 820,000-1,000,000 Laotians, and 58,484 U.S. service members also died in the conflict.