6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
Founded in 1873
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
Ronald Anderson,
Astoria
Alan Barnett,
Astoria
Patrick Cadwallader,
Astoria
Francis Campbell,
Gearhart
James Emerson,
South Bend
Carl Green,
Seaside
Melvin Hebert,
Seaside
Richard Holman,
Astoria
Dan Klindt,
Astoria
Daniel Lloyd,
Astoria
Thierry Maxim,
Ocean Park
Terry Rippy,
Hammond
Gordon Zimmerle,
Seaside
Kenneth Phares,
Astoria
R emembeRing the
fallen heRoes of V ietnam
T
hursday marked National Vietnam
War Veterans Day, honoring the mil-
lions of men and women who served
in the longest conflict in U.S. history.
March 29, 1973, is recognized as the date
that most American combat and support
units withdrew from South
Vietnam.
While some argue that
the war in Afghanistan has
gone on longer, at 16 years
and counting, Vietnam
spanned 20 years if you
JIM VAN
measure it from the first
NOSTRAND American casualty in 1955
to the fall of Saigon in
1975.
More than 58,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors,
airmen and marines were killed. Fourteen
from Clatsop and Pacific counties are listed
on the Wall of Faces (vvmf.org/Wall-of-
Faces), and Clatsop Post 12 of the American
Legion is looking for help locating their
families and friends. If you have information
to share, please call Adjutant Mike Phillips
at 503-791-1921 or email clatsop12@gmail.
com.
The Legion has scheduled a Vietnam
War commemoration day ceremony at 2
p.m. Saturday. Also on Saturday, at 11 a.m.,
Marine Corps League Daniel E. Crockett
Detachment 1228 will sponsor the annual
Welcome Home Veterans Appreciation Day
to honor local military veterans. See page 3B
for details on both events.
Sobering exercise
Scrolling through the faces on the wall
is a sobering exercise. I was too young to
serve in Vietnam, but likely would have had
I been old enough. Military service was a rite
of passage for the men in my family. I knew
from a young age that I wanted to follow that
path. The war arrived on our doorstep when
the brother of one of my younger sister’s
classmates came home in a casket. My
uncles, who all served, fortunately escaped
that fate.
I enrolled in college on an Army ROTC
scholarship three years after the war ended.
It was not a popular time to walk around
campus in a military uniform. Catcalls,
derision and ostracism were the norm. Then,
as now, society was divided — a small, pro-
fessional warrior class of those who chose to
serve, and everyone else. The draft had been
eliminated in 1973 and the Army was an
all-volunteer force.
The ROTC cadre who trained us had all
fought in Vietnam. We were eager to learn
from them. They didn’t gloss over anything.
They told of the hatred they experienced on
their return home.
They described a shattered, demoralized
force, abandoned and forgotten by the coun-
try which sent them off to fight.
Discipline was nonexistent. For several
years in the mid-1970s, you risked your life
entering an Army barracks unarmed.
They were loyal and chose to stay in,
volunteering to train the next generation of
leaders.
When I reported to my first assignment
as a young infantry lieutenant in Germany
in the 1980s, the officers I served under
expressed many of the same sentiments.
AP Photo/Art Greenspon
A first sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division guides a medevac helicopter through jungle foliage to pick up casualties suffered
during a five-day patrol near Hue, April 1968.
The war arrived on our doorstep when the
brother of one of my younger sister’s classmates
came home in a casket. My uncles, who all
served, fortunately escaped that fate.
They were determined that the lessons of
Vietnam not be forgotten.
They were committed to building a
better Army. President Ronald Reagan
doubled the defense budget, equipment
and technology were modernized,
professionalism and morale soared, and
America’s armed forces again became
the best in the world.
I had left the active Army for newspaper
work before the shockingly easy victory in
Operation Desert Storm in 1991, but most
of my fellow officers fought in that war.
Never forget
I never fired a shot in combat, but have
had the honor over the years of talking at
length with many who have.
I’m proud to count Joe Galloway, the
legendary war correspondent, as a colleague
and a friend. We worked together on cover-
age of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He
was the young reporter who, in 1965, took
part in the first major battle between the U.S.
Army and North Vietnamese regulars in the
Ia Drang valley in the central highlands of
Vietnam. That battle and Joe’s role in it were
immortalized in the book “We Were Soldiers
Once ... And Young,” and the movie “We
Were Soldiers” (Joe was portrayed by actor
Barry Pepper).
Joe brought the commander in that battle,
retired Lt. Gen. Harold “Hal” Moore Jr.,
to our office in Washington, D.C. for a
meet-and-greet a few years ago (Moore was
portrayed by Mel Gibson in the movie).
I asked Gen. Moore about ordering
men into battle, many to their deaths, in an
unpopular war in a remote place halfway
around the world that many Americans
wouldn’t be able to locate on a map.
His response was forceful and unequivo-
cal. They followed his orders and gave their
lives because it was their duty, he said. There
was no question, no hesitation. They were
serving their country.
We should never forget their sacrifices.
Jim Van Nostrand is editor of The Daily
Astorian.