It’s Time to Start Talking to Veterans of Vietnam
Wait and it will be too late.
We had gone swimming at the same beach in Guam (Gab-Gab) 50 years apart. One of several shards of fun facts I picked up while working with World War II veterans in the early 1990s. Yet I blew my opportunity to learn more.
These veterans are mostly gone now. I could have learned so much more — but I was naive, and just not interested. So, I didn’t ask. I didn’t engage.
Despite the reputation the “Greatest Generation” has for being closed lipped about their wartime experiences, if they found your experiences relatable (and with me they did — merely by dint of our shared exposure to the Marianas Islands) they’d talk. A lot. Yet I squandered my opportunity.
Many Vietnam veterans are now in their 70s.
The same age as the WWII veterans I knew in the early 1990s. If you know one, and if you are comfortable asking about their experiences, I strongly recommend you do it. Now. Or you will blow it the way I blew it.
Although my Coast Guard career spanned 25 years, from the early 1990s until 2015 and had lots of ups and downs, my most significant miss was whiffing on my opportunity to learn directly from the people who experienced this most significant of human events.
