Gerard Abbett, right, and Skip Smith, both Vietnam veterans, still vividly recall how they were treated when they returned home from the war.
Kevin Brady photos.
A few choice epithets and rotten eggs greeted Skip Smith when he stepped off the plane at San Francisco airport, returning home after serving in Vietnam.
“My homecoming was my supposed peers standing on the balcony throwing eggs and tomatoes at people in uniform,” said Smith, a U.S. Air Force combat photographer who served in Vietnam from 1970 to 1973.
Unlike with today’s veterans, there were no ticker-tape parades or “thank-you-for-your-service” handshakes for Smith or his comrades.
A small step to righting that wrong took place Saturday, March 28, at Veterans Memorial Park on U.S. 301 where more than 200 servicemen and servicewomen and their supporters turned out for Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day.
“The kids who came back from the first desert war [Desert Storm, Jan. 16 to Feb. 28, 1991] changed a lot of things for my generation,” Smith said. “They made it honorable to serve again.”
Smith said he believes he was denied jobs because of his service in Vietnam. “I can’t prove it empirically,” he said, “but I know it.”
“There is a special bond among Vietnam veterans,” said Jim Fletcher, secretary of Chapter 787 of the Vietnam Veterans of America, which draws members from across Hillsborough County. Fletcher praised organizers of the Welcome Home event for acknowledging the service of women in the war. “We had a lot of women who served as well who have never been truly recognized,” he said.
While veterans are treated much differently today, “It’s too late for me,” Smith said. “My generation is sat off in a corner somewhere.”
Gerard Abbett agreed. A U.S. Army infantryman who was wounded in battle, he served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968.
Abbett returned home to people who “were not friendly,” he said. “People who we thought we were over there preserving their rights kind of took ours away. They watched TV and formed an opinion on Vietnam based on that, but that was not the reality of it.”
The reality was that the U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were there “to do a mission just like the military does today, and some of us lost our lives over it,” Abbett said.
The often subdued and sometimes hostile welcome home the troops received made some veterans angry and others withdraw, Abbett said. “When you join the military, you do it for your country, and then when you come home your country spits on you.”
While events like Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day go some way to making up for that, “This is 48 years later,” said Abbett, who plans to attend a welcome-home parade for Vietnam veterans in Inverness next month. “I haven’t seen a parade since I got home.”
“The perception of what was going on over there was misrepresented,” Skip Smith said. “We were there to help the South Vietnamese preserve their freedom, and in my estimation we abandoned those people.”
The Vietnam War took the lives of more than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans. Direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended in 1973. North and South Vietnam reunited in 1976, and the country has been under communist rule ever since.
“At the time of the Vietnam War, it was such a hated thing that most of the soldiers when they did come home had feces thrown at them or were spat on,” said Eugene Wheeler, who served in the U.S. Army and was based in West Germany during the Vietnam era. “They were not welcomed the way the soldiers are today. This day is to give them the welcome home they deserved.”
While their welcome home, or lack thereof, is something most Vietnam era veterans don’t like to talk about, “When a few of the guys from that war get together it does come up,” Wheeler said. “It was a hurtful thing. You are over there defending your country and willing to give up your life and then when you come home you get called ‘baby killer,’” he said.
A career military officer, Jim Fletcher didn’t experience the disdain others did, shielded somewhat from antiwar protesters by living on base. “[Within the military] being a Vietnam veteran was seen as a badge of honor and a sign of service to your country,” said Fletcher.
However, on his train ride from Washington, D.C., to Florida after his first tour, Fletcher said, “It did strike me as odd that the public did not come up to you and thank you for your service. The public looked at you and just stayed away,” said Fletcher. He served two terms in Vietnam from 1968 through 1969 with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division and in 1972 with U.S. Special Forces.
The Welcome Home ceremony commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War as recognized by the U.S. Department of Defense. Retired Col. Hal Youmans and Brig. Gen. Bernard J. Pieczynski were the keynote speakers for the event, which was organized by the Veterans Council of Hillsborough County.
Rolling Thunder, Florida Chapter 11, ran the POW/MIA Missing Man Ceremony, which was followed by a rifle salute and taps by the Riverview Detachment of the Marine Corps League.