Goodnight, Saigon

The sky yesterday in Norwich was so brilliantly blue it hurt your eyes to look up into it. In literally the last three days, Spring has arrived here in Southeastern Connecticut and the buds on the trees have exploded as new leaves so green it's almost impossible to believe they are a living thing have pushed out and started to cover bare limbs savaged by months of winter weather.

We were at Chelsea Parade in Norwich, across from the Norwich Free Academy, and, also, practically across the street from my house. We were many more this year than we had been last year. This time there was a fly-over by an Army helicopter--with their usual precision, spot on the dot at one o'clock while those on the ground were still assembling themselves. There were families and lots of small children, who sprawled out on the grass near the monuments where the podium had been placed. The children stole glances skyward, in case the helicopter returned and when they were satisfied it wouldn't, they settled themselves to listen to the grownups talk about long ago and far away.

The Military Order of the Purple Heart, Norwich Area Veterans Council, Norwich Vets Council, the VFW and American Legion as well as the Disabled American Veterans, and many others, were all there, as were the New London Fire Fighters Pipes and Drums. There were many older men who, as young boys we had sent off to a war more than ten thousand miles away and over four decades ago and whom we regarded as fortunate if, or when, they returned because over three hundred and ten thousand Americans were wounded during the Vietnam War and over fifty-eight thousand died.


There wasn't and isn't a city in this country that didn't lose a young man before his time in that war. Norwich isn't alone with its losses, but the Rose City is a bit unique in that we have tried, in the hustle and bustle of the 21st Century, to set aside ninety minutes or so to remember what many worked very hard to forget for a long time and to finally welcome home those who bore the burden of fighting an unpopular war and who were so often blamed for actions and deeds not of their doing.

Saigon fell on 30 April 1975, officially marking the end of the US involvement in the War in Vietnam. For many across this country who fought in Vietnam, the date is a footnote because they, themselves, still struggle everyday with often invisible wounds by a war so many of their countrymen wanted to forget ever happened. "Remember Charlie. Remember Baker. They left their childhood on every acre. And who was wrong? And who was right? It didn't matter in the thick of the fight."

Sometimes, in small towns like Norwich, we get very close to simple and straight truths. We stop speaking in code and pause in the pursuit of our secret agenda and talk, one citizen to another, about our dreams and our hopes. Together we remember those, known and unknown, who made our today, but more especially, our tomorrow, possible by the sacrifice of all their yesterdays.
-bill kenny