Healing

The following are excerpts from remarks made at the presentation of the Veteran Advocate of the Year Award by the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans of America on October 10, 2004, at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

      You know to say thank you is not really fully expressing my feelings. My feeling goes to the fact this afternoon, you paired me with one person, Chris Smith, who I consider to be one of the greatest veterans’ advocates in the Congress of the United States. Along with Sonny Montgomery and Lane Evans, he stands tall and stands strong. He stands for you, me and all the veterans, throughout the country.

      You know it’s important, I forgot which speaker said it before, who said “never will one generation abandon another.” How true this is. So while you give me this honor today, may I ask you for a favor, a very important favor?

      When you went to Vietnam you were young, and when you come back you were still young. You came back to find out that you were drug-ridden baby killers, and then all of a sudden you didn’t trust anyone. You didn’t trust your nation; you didn’t trust your society; you didn’t trust your fellow veteran organizations. We were and are all a part of the same establishment. You didn’t trust anyone at all. So you dwelled within yourselves, for at least ten years, until the Wall was built in Washington, DC. I must say that I am very proud to have been one of those who wielded a shovel when they first did the ground breaking.

      You said then that you were embarrassed to say “I’m a Vietnam veteran.” We really didn’t stand up for what your rights were, nor did you participate with the veterans’ organizations and what they were seeking for all veterans. As a matter of fact, we at the JWV ran a program of visits similar to a hospital visit. We went to the support centers to assist as much as we could. Actually, after a while it came down to two major centers that we operated with one run by the JWV Vietnam Vets out of Jersey City and one in Atlanta, Georgia.

      You bound yourselves together. You helped each other in a way that neither the VA nor anyone else could help you. So you learned a lesson which we can now use, and that’s the favor I ask of you.

      Iraq Afghanistan—American troops are going over, and they’re not young. Some are in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s, and come from different stations of life. Now unlike you, these veterans coming back are not a cohesive group. They do not have an organization for Veterans of Afghanistan, Iraq or otherwise. Over a thousand dead, probably over 10,000 wounded in the hospitals, the thousands upon thousands who have no place to go to speak and get the support that each one of you gave to the other.

      You had a very unique experience and a knowledge that cannot be transmitted by a VA program or any other program. I hate to tell you something right now. Most of you are in your 50’s and 60’s; like it or not, you’re the Veteran establishment now. What the hell are you going to do with that one? You’re like your Judge Advocate Mike Berman and the other Jewish War Veterans and the rest of you from all of the other organizations led by veterans such as Bob Wallace who take positions of leadership in the Veteran community.

      WWII people are dying at a rate of 1,000 -1,500 per day, so I was glad to be able to get this award today, but you have a certain ability which I ask you now to transmit. I ask it from you, the Vietnam Veterans, as well as those from the other veteran organizations.

      Now start to put together, if you will, support groups for those who are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan—support groups which had allowed you to speak out your feelings which no body else was willing to listen to, which they all poopooed. But not among yourselves you didn’t do that. You helped each other then and even now as much as anyone could help another. And it’s that moral help, that’s so dramatically needed now.

      As they come back from Afghanistan and Iraq, some are coming back to find out they have no fail-safe options. They come back to find out that there is no one that they can speak to, as to what their feelings are and were. There’s no one there to comfort or bond with them; there’s no one around who can feel or understand what they have been through, and what they are going through now. Many of us after 9/11 found that people who were not even from New York, nor from the area, developed emotional feelings about what happened with the 3,000 murdered.

      Very similar feelings evade those who are coming back now. You with your knowledge, your ability and your experience, now have the material and the ability to go forward and bring them together so that they do not find themselves—I think the word used in Korea applies more so now—they do not find themselves “forgotten,” because they are easily forgotten. Korean Veterans who say they’re forgotten have organizations. Vietnam Veterans have this organization; they had no group or organization to come back to, absolutely none to come back to.

      So I call upon you, because you’re the ones, as I said, the ones with the experience. I call upon you to help; I call upon you to help heal what their feelings are. I call upon you to do what you did for yourselves and now as the establishment can do for the new veterans coming back.

      You know, one thing that we can really find ourselves stuck with is failure. We don’t have failure unless we try; once you have tried, then you have the strength to do. All the laws in the world will not help them, although the laws are important, and we look to people like Chris Smith to make sure we get those laws. It’s the personal touch which is so needed today more so than anytime when any veteran has come back home. You can provide that. I hope you will.

      Thank you again for the award.