Veteran's Cemetery, Beloit, WIThis past weekend, the football field in Green Bay, WI, was transformed by an event called
LZ Lambeau, a welcome-home celebration for those Wisconsin veterans of the war in Vietnam, many of whom never received a welcome home before. Some were spat upon. Many had psychological problems, such as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder); having suffered some from PTSD myself, albeit to a much lesser degree than any war veteran, I give them my empathy.
Had I not been involved all weekend in Madison with concerts and meetings, I would have gone to the LZ Lambeau event, no question. I probably would have met some old friends there: those men and women just slightly older than me, who survived the Vietnam War. I was approaching the age of having to register for the draft when that unpopular war came to and end. The War affected my entire and childhood and teenage years; it was on TV all the time, I was having to think about it all the time, you couldn't avoid. The Armed Forces recruiters were allowed in those years to come into the high schools and give batteries of aptitude tests, and to try to recruit from among the students. I took a series of those tests; I was told that I was in the top 1 percent of those tested (I never fully understood what their tests were looking for), and they tried hard to recruit me. I was polite in my refusals, although silently inside my own thoughts I was suspicious and mistrusting. I told the truth when I said that what I wanted to do was go to college, which is what I did; and then the war, and the draft, were over. So even though I didn't go to war, the war was everywhere, affecting everything we saw and felt and did during those years. And for years afterwards, there was confusion, and horror at home. Veterans were not embraced with open arms; they were not welcomed home. In some cases, they were vilified and rejected. Some never survived the return "home," and died by their own hands, or in situations in which they made their own deaths happen in other ways. A loss of a whole generation of men and women, wasted.
rose at the Moving WallI haven't been back to visit Washington, D.C., in many years; so I haven't stood at The Wall, the Vietnam War Memorial. The next time I'm in D.C., that will be my number one priority. In the meantime, the
Moving Wall has visited my small town in Wisconsin, on its gradual progress around the country. I visited it, in the rain, when it was last here, and was deeply moved by it. This image of a rose placed before the Moving Wall, in memoriam, in my very town, just reminds me that war affects everybody, everywhere. There is no escape.
There are still broken hearts to be mended. Perhaps there always will be. It has been my highest hope that some veteran, attending the LZ Lambeau event, will find some sort of peace, some quite healing, some soft grief, and be able to go with their lives, changed for the good.
Labels: digital art, history, personal essay, Vietnam, war
