The traveling Vietnam War Memorial will be in Parkston, South Dakota from Wednesday, June 29th through Monday, July 4th. All are invited to come view the wall and to participate in the various activities and celebrations held on those days. A full calendar of events can be found at http://www.parkstoncelebration.com.
July 26, 1950 marks the beginning of the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. That’s the date when President Truman authorized $15 million in military aid to the French (that’s $182 million in today’s dollars) to help them fight communism in Indochina, a portion of which would later become known as Vietnam and the rest would become the nations of Laos and Cambodia.
President Eisenhower sent the first military advisors to Vietnam in November of 1955 and it was President Johnson who sent the first combat troops in 1965. The war was initially very popular. In fact, the motorcycle gang Hell’s Angels offered their services to President Lyndon Johnson to break up anti-war protests as early as 1965. Apparently even the criminally lawless can also be patriotic.
The Soviets had reneged on all of their WWII promises, having taken over Eastern Europe with communist puppet governments, blockaded Berlin and later building the Berlin Wall then also taking the world to the brink of nuclear war with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The American people didn’t have to be convinced that communism was a threat or that it could spread like wildfire enslaving all who came in contact with that odious form of government. People had absorbed the lesson of history remembering when Hitler was humored and appeased instead of firmly opposed and the horrors of World War and concentration camps were visited upon mankind as a result. So a small war in Indochina to stamp out the embers of communism before it could spread made sense. After all the Eisenhower Administration led by President Eisenhower who was once the General and chief architect of the fall of the NAZIs, postulated the Domino Theory; when one country falls to communism then all around it eventually succumbs to communism as well.
At first it was thought that superior American technology and firepower would easily win the day. Massive bombings such as Operation Rolling Thunder, which dropped more bombs on North Vietnam than had been dropped on Germany in all of WWII, took place. Agent Orange was used to defoliate trees, supposedly making it easier to see the Viet Cong. In an ironic twist of fate, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt had authorized the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and his son; Lieutenant Elmo Zumwalt III subsequently contracted cancer from exposure to Agent Orange then ultimately died at the age of 42. The CIA, which also operated in the war zone, planted seismometers (usually used to measure degrees of earthquakes) in order to track Vietnamese movement along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The CIA hid the seismographs by disguising them as tiger scat.
Eventually 9 million people, of which 2,700,000 were front line combat troops, served in Vietnam from 1955-1975, 61% of all US troops killed in combat were younger than 21. Pilots were issued with “Life Barter Kits” that included things like commemorative coins, ornate belt buckles and items of jewelry to use if shot down to exchange for at least their lives if not their freedom.
I’m sure you’ve seen the movie “Forrest Gump”. What you may not know is there were 100,000 Forrest Gumps in Vietnam. Project 100K lowered the mental and physical standards for service in the Army and these real Forrest Gumps died at three times the rate of their A1 rated counterparts in uniform.
Ironically it was President Truman, the man who first made Vietnam a priority of United States’ foreign policy that saved a number of young men from dying in Vietnam. President Truman did that by dying himself on December 26, 1972. In deference to a deceased president, all federal offices were closed until later in January of 1973. Those young men who were drafted in December 1972 and who were supposed to be inducted into the Army were not, because of Truman’s death. By the time those federal offices were open again the draft had ended and the government decided that recent draftees would be exempt from military service.
The war in Vietnam was not like World War II. Most of the fighting did not take place between two uniformed armies of young men. Rather it was our boys on the one side and people 8 to 80, of both sexes, in and out of uniform on the other. There were no ticker tape homecoming parades for Vietnam Veterans and for the longest time, no respect for their service either.
It was decided that a Vietnam memorial of some kind would be constructed on the Mall in Washington D.C. but what kind of monument? An open design competition was held. There were 1422 blind entries – meaning that the age, sex and pedigree of the designer were unknown to the committee. June 6, 1981 the winning design was unveiled. Vietnam Veterans were aghast. A 21-year-old Yale undergraduate submitted the winning design. That college student had never designed anything before. The designer was inexperienced, young, female and although a natural born American citizen from Athens, Ohio she was of Asian descent; her name, Maya Lin.
Even before the Memorial was built the decision was made to appease angry veterans by adding statuary to the site because the original design was so sparse and unpopular. November 13, 1982 the Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated and on November 11, 1984 the statue of three soldiers was placed at the entrance to the Memorial Wall and dedicated. There are now 58,318 names inscribed on the Wall. The Vietnam War Memorial is currently the most visited, most popular, most respected and most revered of all memorial sites in Washington, D.C. The statues meant to “save” the Memorial now seem almost superfluous and strangely out of place compared to the somber majesty of the Memorial itself.
President Obama issued a presidential proclamation in 2012 declaring March 29 National Vietnam Veterans’ Day. He chose that day because March 29, 1973 was the day the last combat troops left Vietnam. President Trump signed the date into law in 2017 after Congress codified that date.
There are six million living Vietnam Veterans in the United States today. There is a cigarette lighter from the Vietnam Era, once carried by a vet who saw front line action, that has engraved on it, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”
All service personnel give their DNA now upon induction so that they can be identified should something horrific happen to their bodies. The serviceman buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier representing the unidentified of the Vietnam War was Michael Blassie, a United States Air Force Officer, who was killed in action in May of 1972. May 14, 1998, due to the advances in DNA testing, his remains were subsequently identified and then removed from the Tomb of the Unknowns returned to his family in St. Louis and reburied at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.
The traveling wall in Parkston is 360 feet long and will have an additional 68 panels depicting other American wars and history. It will be on display in Parkston’s East City Park. For more information interested people may call Bill Maxwell at 605-999-2556 or Rob Monson at 605-505-0556.