An Overheard Conversation
Just outside of Wilmington, North Carolina I had stopped at a grocery store to pick up a few things before heading to a friend’s house for dinner. It was September of 2023, and I was on the long drive from New England back to my home in the Florida panhandle. The past three days were spent visiting old friends and reminiscing about our families and our time in uniform, but I still had one more stop to make. It was to the home of my former commanding officer, a great leader, and a peerless mentor. We had served together during the early days and years of the War in Iraq, and my visit was long overdue.
As I walked into the market, I noticed two men speaking quietly to one side. Thinking nothing of it, I strode past them but quickly picked up on the subtleties of the conversation. I had, by chance, stumbled into a very private and intimate but somehow public conversation – and in doing so, had unknowingly taken a small step back in time.
Both men donned ball caps, and I noticed the distinctive Republic of Vietnam Service Medal embroidered on both. As I slowed my pace, I heard the energetic voices of young men straining to communicate through the weathered mouths and withered hands of the old men they had become. I paused, feigning to find a cart, and listened more intently. It took me some time to piece together what I was hearing and seeing, but it was clear the two had never met. I listened to them speak softly about their now-distant lives. Spoken in an almost secret code of units, locations, and dates. I heard, “1st Cav, ’69, north of Saigon, and 5th Marines, Phu Bai, ‘68”. Before I realized it was over, the two shook hands, turned, and went their separate ways.
As one of the two stepped towards me, the impact of the conversation was immediately recognizable. In his face, as he looked past and through me, I saw anguish and pain. Something in that simple exchange with another forgotten ghost of the Vietnam War had struck an emotional chord. Whatever senses of loss, frustration, or grief he felt while serving in that war – nearly 50 years after the last helicopters lifted off the US Embassy in Saigon – were still there.
The Value of Service
I was frustrated and somehow embarrassed that I didn’t have something to say to him. Something or anything to let him know I cared without seeming patronizing, but I let him pass without uttering a word. It is difficult, and increasingly frustrating, for me to understand why it has been so hard for the nation to repay its debts to our veterans. How we devalue their service and sacrifice through the underfunding and the sidelining of veterans’ services while simultaneously spending our nation’s wealth, often frivolously, is shameful.
The Veteran’s Administration (VA) has been stressed since its start. The unwieldy and largely underfunded department continues to struggle to support the sixteen million living veterans and their families. America’s history of supporting veterans dates to the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock. The Plymouth Colony authorized benefits for those injured defending the colony, but as the nation grew and conflicts mounted, veterans continued to suffer.
By 1929, the political pressure to support World War I veterans, now suffering under the added stress of the Great Depression, had come to a head. The following year, the modern VA was established under executive order by President Hoover. The combat experiences of the nearly five million World War I veterans were nothing anyone back home could have anticipated – indescribable and unimaginable to anyone except those who saw it firsthand.
World War I was a war like no other. It brought all the innovation and invention of the Industrial Revolution onto the battlefield – industrialized killing on a grand scale, creating terrifying images otherwise never seen or conjured. The use of heavy artillery, tanks, machine guns, poison gas, and aerial bombardment took the lives of one hundred and twenty thousand Americans, leaving another two hundred thousand wounded and untold numbers suffering from “shell shock.” Shell shock can be described as a combination of undiagnosed and untreated post-traumatic stress (PTSD) and/or traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Prior to the outbreak of World War II and during the mobilization, more emphasis was put on mental health screening, but less was known about the long-term psychological damage created by combat. World War II would see sixteen million Americans serve. With the entire nation at war, America would demand inconceivable sacrifices from the “Greatest Generation.” A pre-war US Army of just one hundred and eighty thousand would grow to eleven million by the war’s end.
With most service members being discharged from 1945-48, they went home without sufficient physical or mental screening. They went home without sufficient tools or organizations to help them cope with still unprocessed thoughts and lingering injuries. The post-war drawdown sent more than six hundred and fifty thousand wounded troops and countless millions suffering from undiagnosed PTSD and TBI, or “battle fatigue,” back into American society.
Even with the often-lionized lens of Hollywood and a belief that World War II was the last moral war, we still failed our veterans. The G.I. Bill, written by the American Legion and signed in 1944 by President Franklin Roosevelt, was the first step in helping servicemembers reintegrate into society. The bill was designed to provide home loans and educational benefits to veterans, but it was also designed to jump-start the housing boom and to bring more educated and productive veterans back into the post-war workforce. Even with an expanded VA mandate, there was neither the infrastructure designed and built nor a plan initiated to support the needs of World War II veterans then or in the years to follow.
Today, only an estimated seventy thousand World War II veterans survive, and when Chief Warrant Officer “Woody” Williams died in 2022, it represented the end of a chapter in the never-ending story of our veterans. What made the loss of Williams so significant was his leadership both in and out of uniform. As a Marine Corporal fighting on the Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Seeing firsthand the horrors of war, Williams spent fifty years both fighting for veteran’s rights and his own battle with PTSD. His passing represented the last living Medal of Honor recipient of the Greatest Generation – they deserved better from us.
The story becomes more disheartening as we look at the treatment of our veterans from the Korean War through the Vietnam War. According to the US Census Bureau, of the three and a half million Americans who served in Vietnam or operated from the surrounding countries, only six hundred thousand are still alive. As I remember the two veterans in that North Carolina market, I also realized their sacrifices went largely unappreciated, their efforts undervalued, and their suffering likely deemed to be their burden. Those men had few welcome home parades and likely fewer “thank you for your service” moments. The linkage between an ungrateful nation, divisive domestic politics, and a VA unprepared to cope with demand would symbolize to many, fairly or unfairly, how we valued our veterans of the Vietnam War.
The images of Vietnamese civilians hanging from helicopters as the US Embassy in Saigon was evacuated in 1975 bares an eerie resemblance to Afghans clinging to the sides of departing C-17s out of Kabul in 2021. With college campuses and cities amid social and cultural revolutions in the 1960s and 70s, it is not so different from what we see today. Neither generation of veterans got to choose their war; the war was thrust upon them. What we witness at the highest levels of our government are mistakes being repeated. The VA, admittedly, has enough empirical data from the past twenty years to not only show the gaps in infrastructure, services, and support but also to get ahead of a bow wave they know is coming. As veterans age, the physical and mental wounds simply don’t disappear – and don’t believe the next generation isn’t watching.
“The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation.” — George Washington
A Shockingly Low Number Would Consider Military Service Today
Recruiting for all the military services has been dismal for more than ten years. With nearly thirty percent of high school-aged Americans physically disqualified to serve, the services continue to waive prior drug use, criminal records, education, and other basic qualifications to meet their recruiting numbers. What is most alarming is the recent NBC News report that shows a slim nine percent of age-appropriate Americans would consider military service. They considered the risk to their mental, psychological, and physical capabilities after service as too high.
As I sat in the living room of my former commanding officer, exchanging stories about our days and years at war, it was clear that time was passing us by. The stories, still fresh and vivid in our minds, were now relics from decades ago. It is long overdue for those who sent our service members into harm’s way to pay their debts; there is no running from responsibility. This is a time to show all Americans that politics is not an endless wasteland of divisiveness. We only must remember how we felt on the morning of 9-11; remember how Congress authorized US forces into Afghanistan and Iraq, remember how a generation of heroic young men and women soothed an equal sense of outrage and vulnerability. If we want our next generation to stand ready when the wolf comes back to our door, we can’t forget the words of George Washington, and we must demand a new road to redemption for our veterans.
Eric F. Buer
March 12, 2024
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A native Californian, Colonel Eric “Ferris” Buer, USMC (Ret), spent his formative years in rural New England before graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University with a degree in economics. After accepting a commission from the Marine Corps, he was trained to fly attack helicopters. His deployments took him to the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He commanded in combat, served on the staff of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as a professor of national security strategy at the National War College, and as an air group commanding officer. Eric is currently a senior executive for an aviation and training company. He is also a consultant and public speaker in the areas of military and commercial aviation and global conflict.
He is the author of the bestselling book Ghosts of Baghdad: Marine Corps Gunships on the Opening Days of the Iraq War, which you can purchase here and reach him at www.ericbuer.com
