I personally do not believe my parents' generation dwelt very much on their war. It was a singular event with two climaxes: VE Day and VJ Day. It seems, from what little I have gathered, that everyone went back to whatever square they were on before Dec 7, 1941; and picked up from there.
Jobs, marriages, children; always with one eye on the brass ring of prosperity. After the free round of drinks in their local taverns, the returning troops just shed their Class A uniforms and went back to forty hour work weeks, to meld into a postwar economy bent on conspicuous consumerism. Buying brand name appliances with names like Crosley and Kelvinator; cars with Packard, Kaiser and Willys emblazoned on the hood
Well, why not? It was the greatest victory this country had ever experienced. We were the champions of the world; shortly to become the champions of the so-called free world. There isn't a lot to ponder when you are Number One.
Korea was another matter. Calling it a victory would be something of a stretch. We didn't out and out lose the Korean Conflict; but sixty years later, we help guard a wall between two parts of one country, praying that another Commie hoard doesn't blow a tinny bugle and mount another suicidal charge.
We may not recall that towards the end, Korea was an extremely unpopular war in this country; sufficiently so that Eisenhower made a truce in Korea a point in his campaign for the presidency (not that he couldn't have won the election without ever leaving the golf course, had he chosen to do so).
Then, there was Viet Nam. The American War, as the Vietnamese refer to it. Forty years later, sixty percent of Viet Nam's population were born after 1975. Do they dwell on the War? In an exploding economy like theirs, certainly not.
The jolt of reality came to me last year when an aging Bob Dylan performed a concert in Ho Chi Minh City. The attending crowd was a mixture of Vietnamese and foreigners and the stadium was only half full, but news of the event stunned me into a world I have had to come to accept: no one gives any thought to the Viet Nam War anymore.
Except a dwindling group of tottering white haired old men who are coming out of the bunker they relegated themselves to forty years ago--to see the world as the post-1975 world sees it.
I wear my Vietnam Veteran gimme cap with some trepidation, even now. Youngsters call me 'sir' and shake my hand, thank me for my service to our country; totally unaware of the core of shame within me that is finally, finally beginning to ebb away.
At the end of 'Saving Private Ryan', the aging Ryan turns to his wife and begs an answer to his question, 'have I lived a good life?'--not for himself, but to give meaning to the sacrifice of the Rangers who saved him, and all who remained forever on the battlefields, to give us that shining victory.
The 'Dirty Little War', as Bernard Fall depicted it, remains the defining moment of my life. The twelve month tour from 1969 to 1970 has colored every click in my timeline, try as I may to place it in a small felt-lined box on the mantlepiece of my memory.
Despite my uneasiness, I continue to wear my hat now for the 58,000 whose spirits remain forever in that sweltering green jungle half a world away. I don't dwell on the events, whether the history that was incessantly delivered into our consciousness by the evening news; or my own insignificant footprints in the sands of China Beach.
But like a low grade fever or a knot in my back, the sense of it is always with me; the foci of the maelstrom that is the life that I have lived
Today, I strive to maintain a sense of gratitude for life and the serendipity of having survived Viet Nam, to bear witness to a national folly.
The final irony? My elaborately embroidered gimme hat is manufactured in China.
