Sharing My Story

This doesn’t mean that the sacrifices of our
Vietnam vets weren’t noble in trying to
preserve the soverneity of a non-communist
people, but their efforts ultimately proved
in vain when on April 30, 1975 the North
Vietnamese Army conquered South Vietnam.
Ironically on April 30, 1945 thirty years earlier
Adolf Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker
and a few days later the German armies surrendered
ending Europe’s long nightmare. On April 30, 1975,
South Vietnam’s nightmare was only beginning.

I had a good friend who was a Vietnam vet
(a helicopter medic) who literally cried as he
watched the Americans being airlifted from
the roof top of the U.S. Embassy that spring
day in 1975. Even today when someone talks
about “the war” I have to ask them to define
which war they are referring to. “The war”
in my thinking was the Vietnam War” not a
war before I was born (World War II). However
life goes on and I find it amazing and somewhat
comforting that even people a few years younger
than myself who lived throught the Vietnam years
as children have no explicit memories of this
chapter in country’s history.