In the summer of 1970, I finally got the chance to go home after my third combat tour in Southeast Asia. I arrived in LAX, worn out both physically and mentally. As I was in the terminal walking to another gate to connect with my flight from LAX to Ohare Field in Chicago, I was confronted by a hippie looking couple who promptly got in my face, spit on me, and called me a war criminal. Welcome home.

When I was finally discharged, I just tried to put the war behind me. I still remember in horror watching Democrat remove Richard Nixon from office, and then refuse to let President Gerald Ford preserve the peace. After all those years and sacrifices, particularly by the men we left behind, Democrats in congress just decided that the war they had voted for just wasn’t worth it anymore, so they just quit.

For a long time, I rarely talked about the war. Why bother. Vietnam veterans were basically ignored unless we were portrayed as idiotic out of control homicidal drug addicts in some ridiculous movies. Then there was the disgraceful moment John Kerry lied before congress and called us all war criminals. The same John Kerry who pretended to throw his military medals away, only to have them resurface recently in a failed attempt to pretend he too deserves to be recognized as a veteran.

Then, in the late 1990s, I won a jacket at a trade show with a “Dicks” logo. At the time, I had never seen a Dick’s sporting goods store, so I thought the logo looked ridiculous. I convinced my wife to try and remove the logo. Instead, she covered it up with a Vietnam Veteran badge. I wasn’t enthusiastic about wearing that either. Then one day, while shopping in San Rafael, I felt a tap on my should. A woman looked at me and said: “Thank you for your service.” She didn’t realize that this was the first time I had been thanked for my service since the war. I had been home for over 25 years. I was shocked almost to the point of tears.

Now, after the two Iraq war, veterans are being honored again. Today it is common for someone to thank me for my service. Even at times when it was not expected. Like Yesterday. I was in the long, long gas line at Sam’s Club. This lady cut in front of me and managed to block three lanes at once. Eventually she finally got out of the car and used the pump in front of me. She couldn’t find her Sam’s Club card. Then she used the wrong credit card. Finally, she figured things out and started to pump gas. But even this took forever, because she took long pauses since at Sam’s club you must manually keep the pump grip closed and she was getting tired.

Finally, the car in front of her finished, so I pulled around her and backed into the empty space so I could pump gas. As I was pumping gas, she honked her horn at me and pointed to the back of my car. I walked back there, could see no problem, so went back to pumping gas. Then she honked at me again and pointed to the back of my car again. Now I was getting frustrated, so I just shrugged and kept pumping gas. At that point, she rolled down the window of her car, leaned out the window and then said: “thank you for your service.” Obviously, she had been pointing to my Vietnam Veteran license plate. I just smiled and said thank you. But I laughed about this all the way home. It is also a reminder to be a little slower to judge others.

To my Vietnam Veteran comrades, “welcome home”!

TDM