Veterans Now and Then

For my generation the war was Vietnam.  When our boys came home from there they barely received a welcome home.  Our soldiers were fighting in a war that was immensely unpopular here.

They went through that war to see their efforts were for naught.  They watched their friends die in the jungles and swamps without glory.  Many of them came home addicted to drugs and with psychosocial problems.  They didn't have the modern mental health professionals available to give them support.  Many were shuffled off to VA hospitals and placed on meds just to keep them from having nightmares or being a problem for the staff. 

None of them got any help from the communities they had come from.  Their parents felt for them but the general public was apathetic.  Some who came home could be considered the living dead because of the blankness of their facial expressions.  Nobody knew the demons who lived in their bodies would keep them in such a hypnotic state.  The war ended with our men running for airplanes when the Viet Cong finally captured the country.  It was sadly, the only war we lost.  It wasn't a holy war like WWII was.

It was a sign for them that they and our country were losers.  Nobody waited at airports for them.  They were mostly lost to our world.  Now our men come home and there is a lot of hoopla for them.  It must make the Viet vet really feel good.