# Vietnam Veteran on His Homecoming and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - Original post: https://www.twitter.com/i/status/2118410248541139003 - Source account: [@DemocraticWins](https://x.com/DemocraticWins) - Source language: English - Duration: 3:32 - Published: 2026-11-07 - Canonical URL: https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial ## Transcript [0:00](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial) I went to Vietnam in September 1967 as a twenty-one-year-old Army helicopter pilot, warrant officer. [0:10](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=10) I flew in combat for thirteen months, Big Tet, Little Tet. [0:13](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=13) You all write-- remember that in your history books. [0:17](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=17) When I came back and went on to my next posting, which was in Germany, and finally came back to the US in May 1970. [0:26](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=26) Well, some of you were old enough, most of you don't look like it . [0:30](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=30) May 1970 was not a hospitable time for a Vietnam vet in America. [0:36](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=36) Now, I didn't experience directly any abuse other than the sort of quiet avoidance, the polite dismissal of you as a inconvenient reminder of a war that was fading from, uh, popularity and they wanted it to fade from the mind. [1:02](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=62) So like all-- most of my buddies, I put my head down, plowed forward, trying to leave Vietnam behind. [1:11](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=71) Uh, went year-round through university, took the Foreign Service exam, came in, and I had a thirty-four-year career. [1:21](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=81) But when I came ba-- uh, back from my first posting in Moscow, it was in the State Department, and I attended the 1982 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. [1:34](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=94) And I had some of my, uh, Vietnam flight school buddies who came down to join me, and I can't tell you how emotional it was, emotionally cathartic for some of them who were carrying, carrying that memory and that burden, [1:52](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=112) and they had been basically ignored and dismissed. [1:56](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=116) You're inconvenient. You know, go away. Uh, get on with life. Uh, I would then walk over from the Vietnam Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial and look up across Memorial Bridge at Arlington House and Arlington National Cemetery. [2:20](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=140) God, by then I'm in my late thirties. [2:27](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=147) And I would feel the hurt, the anger, the pain, the trauma to begin to recede. [2:42](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=162) That's why this means so much. [2:47](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=167) And I have a duty as a Vietnam vet, as a, as a survivor to my buddies buried there to honor their sacrifice and protect their memory from this vainglorious monument. [3:07](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=187) This is not just, I'm sorry, another park. [3:15](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=195) This is something more profoundly important and incomparably different. [3:23](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=203) And we have to remember that, respect it, honor it, protect it. [3:29](https://www.translate.mom/transcript/71N2X5Og6rLl/en/vietnam-veteran-on-his-homecoming-and-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial?t=209) Thank you.