"If You Have a Farm in Vietnam and a House in Hell..."

If it were in my power, most specifically at one this Saturday afternoon, here in Norwich the sky would be so brilliantly and deeply blue and cloudless it would hurt your eyes to look up into it.

Within the last ten days or so, Spring has arrived in these parts, and buds on trees and bushes have burst and started to blossom with new leaves so green and so vibrant it's hard to fully accept they are living and not magical things that have started to cover all those bare limbs that were savaged by so many months of winter weather.

But even if the weather on Saturday the last day of April is even more of what much of April has already been, grey, windy, and rainy, I know where I'll be.

I'll be at Chelsea Parade in Norwich, across from the Norwich Free Academy, and, also, practically across the street from my house. I’ll be alone but certainly not by myself as I spend a few minutes ankle-deep in thought paused at Monument Park before meeting up with all those who'll also be on the Chelsea Parade. 

This Saturday is the Vietnam Veterans Day Commemoration, an annual tradition for far more years than I’d ever pretend to know. It’s a collaborative effort by among others, the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 270, Norwich Area Veterans Council, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and American Legion as well as the Disabled American Veterans, and others (some of whom I fear I’ve forgotten).

There will be many older men, even older than I, who, as young boys, were sent off to a war more than ten thousand miles away over five 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.

Saturday’s speakers will include local and regional dignitaries as well as Dr. Linda Schwartz, and Father Phil Salois. But as someone whose draft lottery number was 4 in 1974, I don’t ever really come for the speakers, as eloquent as they will be, or for the heartfelt prayers that will be offered.

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 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.

As Michael Casey, himself a Vietnam veteran offered in, “Obscenities,” a collection of poetry he first published in 1972, “If you have a farm in Vietnam and a house in hell, sell the farm and go home.” so many could do neither.

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 ending US involvement in the War in Vietnam. For those across this country who fought in Vietnam, the date is a footnote because they, themselves, still struggle every day with often invisible wounds from a war so many of their countrymen wanted to forget ever happened. Join us this Saturday and Remember.
-bill kenny