View of names etched into the granite face of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
REMEMBER
This weekend hundreds of thousands of bikers rode to Washington, DC, for the Rolling Thunder commemorative. Its purpose for years has been to bring awareness to the POWs and MIAs still unaccounted for. It also is dedicated to those who gave all. The tally from World War I through the present is over 85,000 souls unaccounted for. The ride is a solemn event, and I recall during my participation one year that part of the route, after we staged at the Pentagon and on the way to the Vietnam Memorial, the emotions, as we passed active duty military and law enforcement personnel positioned along the route saluting with flawless military bearing and precision as we rode past. The sound of hundreds of thousands of motorcycles ridden by patriots is and was in stark contrast to those who hate this country and seek to destroy it. Remember.
My focus today is to honor those whose sacrifice was eclipsed by the cruel politics of the 60’s and the “anti-war” movement. The young men who went to Vietnam were a mix of draftees who did not have the pedigree to escape the draft and those who volunteered to go. The media of the era had a lock on the American psyche, and what we saw according to that media was not the true depiction of the bravery and honor demonstrated by those young men. Marines, sailors, soldiers, including their special operations forces, along with Air Force personnel, faced a well-equipped and supplied North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong that were propped up by the most modern Chinese and Russian equipment. They went around the Ho Chi Minh Trail and used Laos and Cambodia, off-limits to us until Nixon ordered incursions to attempt to interdict this perfidy. The air defenses of the North were the most formidable in military history as SAMs took a deadly toll. Our aircraft penetrated these defenses, and those pilots, NFOs, and Weapons Officers faced them down. Our military defeated the enemy in every major ground engagement. Tet was a disaster for Hanoi, with over 45,000 NVA casualties and the near destruction of the Viet Cong in the South. Marines drove the NVA from Hue city with valor that went unreported. Those draftees and volunteers fought valiantly and died while Walter Cronkite broadcast to the American public that Tet was somehow the bellwether for defeat. The three broadcast stations of the era were firmly in the antiwar camp. Certainly, there was strong political debate, but the soldiers and Marines in the bush fought for one another. Of course, morale would suffer when you are ridiculed for doing your duty under horrific conditions. The enemy knew the terrain and had many advantages. They were lauded by their government, not ridiculed. Their morale never wavered even as they lost 10 to our 1. Khe Sanh was supposed to be General Giap’s great NVA victory akin to the French defeat at Dien Ben Phu. The Marines disagreed, and though they paid a heavy price, thousands of NVA were killed by artillery and air strikes. Media coverage distorted the ground war, and the signal was clear to the enemy that they simply needed to wait the American political system out. The soldiers and marines were eventually sold out through “Vietnamization,” wherein we left, and Nixon knew that the upcoming 1972 election needed a speedy withdrawal. He did, however, order the mining of Haiphong Harbor earlier and pushed back the NVA’s Easter Offensive by massive airstrikes during Operation Linebacker I and II. This was the war initiative that the military wanted, but politics led to the ultimate isolation of the ARVN, who could not withstand the renewed NVA offensives, and maybe they lacked the will to stand and defend a South that was corrupt. Earlier such initiatives would never have been supported by the protestors on American campuses. Too little. Too late. Remember.
None of this should ever eclipse the true courage and bravery of our military in that era. Over 58,000 deaths have been recorded in theater. Those who survived came home to a hostile public who treated them with contempt. Disgusting. Many cases of suicide and PTSD were exacerbated by these memories. Some ditched their uniforms to be spared this indignity. No parades, no accolades, such as those lavished, deservedly, on the Greatest Generation. The bravery and honor of the Vietnam-era fighting man was no less laudable. Remember.
The thousands who died taking hills with the survivors ordered to abandon them, crawling through tunnels or walking into countless ambushes have not been remembered as they should be. They were characterized by an opportunistic media as madmen who plundered villages and napalmed children on purpose. Every war has its tragedies. This was the first wherein the enemy was many times unknown and indistinguishable from the farmers and villagers those soldiers passed by only to be ambushed by them as they left. We still see the execrable Jane Fonda in an NVA anti-aircraft emplacement and know the anti-war leaders who became stockbrokers. I choose to remember the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who died fighting an unpopular war and who have never been honored as they should be. Their names are on the Memorial, but we too easily forget what they did and the impossible circumstances under which they were fighting. Think of them because not enough of us do. Remember.
Mike Imprevento
May 26th, 2025
