Viet Vets Finally Get Their Due 10 Years After The War's End The Stigma Of Defeat Is Gone

April 28, 1985|By Randolph Harrison, Sentinel Foreign Correspondent

By definition, war signifies failure. Nations resort to force of arms only when peaceful means fail to produce the desired results. Until Vietnam, all of America's wars resulted in the achievement of this country's goals. Even the Korean conflict restored the status quo: removal of communist forces from south of the 38th parallel.

Vietnam was the first total failure to confront America, and the country has not yet figured out how to handle it. For most Americans the Vietnam experience was so miserable that it is only recently that we have begun to delve deeply into exhaustive post-mortems, to analyze what went wrong.

Out of all the controversy, one thing is widely accepted: The Vietnam veterans were treated shabbily by the nation that sent them to war. There were no homecoming parades, no block parties.

Many who came back from that far-away place where they had put their lives on the line were shunned or subjected to overt acts of hostility. Even now, Vietnam veterans' benefits are not close to those offered to their predecessors in other wars.

The bitterness and frustration felt by some vets is exacerbated by the fact that American military forces were never defeated in a major battle. Military historian Col. Harry Summers recently revisited Vietnam and in a conversation with a Vietnamese Army counterpart, Summers observed, ''You know you never defeated us on the battlefield, don't you?'' The Vietnamese responded with a smile. ''Yes, but that is irrelevant isn't it?''

Hundreds of articles have been written about post-Vietnam stress syndrome, the Viet vets' unique type of combat fatigue, about the bizarre impact of modern transportation that wooshed an 18-year-old kid from home to Vietnam in 21 hours and then, at the end of his year tour of duty, sluiced him from his combat unit to his front doorstep in the same amount of time. World War II vets had weeks, in some case months, to decompress from the stress of combat as their troopships wallowed across the oceans separating their personal hells from their personal heavens.

What is not so widely known, and what is particularly galling to the men who served in combat units in Vietnam, is the fact that so few of those who actually went to that place actually served in combat units or saw combat duty.

From 1964 to 1975, there were 27 million American males eligible for military duty. Nine million actually served. Of those 9 million, only 2.7 million set foot in Vietnam. Once there, even fewer were assigned to combat units. In ''normal'' wars, the ratio of support troops to combat soldiers is 6 to 1. In Vietnam it was between 10 to 1 and 12 to 1.

At the height of America's involvement in Vietnam when more than 529,000 men were in or around Vietnam, on even those days when several simultaneous combat operations were in progress fewer than 15,000 to 18,000 men were in the field trying to find the enemy and stay alive -- not necessarily in that order.

Yet everyone who went got combat pay -- $55 a month -- and it is hard to find a Vietnam vet who admits that he never saw combat and lived a fairly comfortable life while there, even though that is the case for most of those who went.

But all who served in Vietnam are stigmatized by the defeat this country suffered there. They came back identified as the losers who couldn't beat a bunch of barefoot ragamuffins who carried supplies to battle on bicycles.

It is for others to decipher what Vietnam means to America and its place in the world, how it forced the American juggernaut off the express lane and into the viscous mud of the rice paddy. It is for others to study what Vietnam did to the national and, by extension, to the world economy.

It is for the Vietnam vets alone to decide what Vietnam did to them. They look around now to see open embraces where for so long they saw only clenched fists. People want to talk to them now about what it was like. To their astonishment Viet vets are even hearing some who evaded the draft muse aloud and in print about ''missed opportunities'' to participate in combat for the unique experience of being close to death.

But as the society that scorned them now seeks them out for praise, many Viet vets are perplexed by what they feel. Grateful that their countrymen are showing interest, they nonetheless are drawing back in suspicion of the motives of their interrogators. They don't want to trivialize what they have seen by dicing it up to serve with cocktail party hors d'ouevres. They are uncomfortable with trendy camouflage clothing, the handsome young television characters who nowadays all seem to have Vietnam as a mandatory part of their backgrounds.

They want to tell their stories and they want people to listen but only if the listening is serious and not frivilous. They want to be accepted but not to be told to forget Vietnam, to cast it out of their system, for that is something they cannot do even if they want to.

Perhaps the ultimate surprise, the most bizarre twist in this most bizarre segment of American history, is that so many of those who were there, who survived, who saw smashed bodies and splintered bone, splattered brains and more blood than they could believe a human body could hold, don't want to forget it at all.

It cannot be explained, and because of that it will keep them permanently apart from those who didn't go. It is something exclusive they have that can never be touched or even understood by anyone else. It is a mystique, an aura of the secret society of the reluctant warrior forever closed to the non- participant.

The wheel has swung full circle. Today, the Vietnam veteran once cursed by those who didn't go can look with disdain at those who played it safe, who ask what it was like. The temptation is overwhelming to tell the questioners ''go to hell. We did.''

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