It’s time to salute a new generation of veterans.
Today, as a prelude to Tuesday’s Veterans Day, I salute Dan, Bob, Pat, Scottie, John, Andy, Bill, Larry, and Harlan plus many thousands of others.
For the past 30 years, on Nov. 11 Veterans Day, we have joined with others in saying farewell to members of the Greatest Generation, an age group of veterans who fought in World War II and saved the free world.
By now, most of them are gone. Just a few remain.
I am old enough that as a teenager, I could even recall seeing Civil War veterans being celebrated and then veterans of World War I.
In older age, we saluted my dad and the millions of other men and women who fought in World War II and who were dying off rapidly.
And now, we are watching as thousands of veterans of my generation – those now elderly men and women – who participated in the Vietnam War.
Not Me, Thanks To A Deferment
Like most of my contemporaries, I was able to get a marriage deferment, a college deferment, a parent deferment, and then, luckily, drew a high lottery number. I did not have to go.
My dad was so relieved. My older brother Tom was already in the Army and he thought our family had fulfilled the imaginary military quota he had in his mind.
As we approach Veterans Day next Tuesday (Nov. 11), these days are times to salute the veterans that we know who are all around us – the guys who went to Vietnam.
I mourn those guys who died in battle over there. One of my fellow high school graduates was Harlan Bilden. I had heard that he was one of those poor guys who died shortly after getting there.
Statistics show of the 58,220 who died in Vietnam, just slightly less than 1,000 died, on their first days there. Perhaps just as sad, some 1,448 different soldiers died on their last days in Vietnam.
Praise For Survivors
But today, I am writing about the veterans who survived and made it home. However, they are dying off fast – some 390 per day are leaving us.
Some like my friends Dan Whetstone of Libby, MT and Bob Spengler, Lander, are still living but suffering from being shot.
Pat Schmidt of Cheyenne has been bedeviled by being sprayed by Agent Orange, a horrible herbicide that has negatively affected the lives of millions of Viet vets.
Scottie Ratliff and John Washakie are two of my best Shoshone Indian friends who both served and carry scars of that conflict. The Wind River Indian Reservation has one of the highest percentages of persons who served in the military. They are true patriots and warriors.
Andy Gramlich of Lander flew thousands of missions and survived when most of his buddies were shot down. He is haunted by why he survived when so many did not.
One of the funniest men I have ever known is Bill Jones, the cowboy poet. He was a long-time columnist for me at the Lander newspaper before moving back to his home in Kentucky three decades ago. He wrote a gut-wrenching book called “The Body Burning Detail,” which is must reading for anyone wanting to know what Vietnam was really like.
The best athlete I ever played with was my late friend Larry Halverson of West Union, Iowa. In high school, he averaged 29 points a game in basketball, batted over .400 in baseball, and was quarterback on the undefeated football team. He died at the age of 56 while squirrel hunting. He had been shot up in Vietnam and never quite recovered.
And then there was my friend Harlan, who was the first person I knew to die in Vietnam. I remember shaking Harlan's hand on graduation night.
He was a short, freckle-faced farm boy. He was shy and friendly. I always liked Harlan a lot because he was one of the kids in our class who had gladly welcomed me to his school. We had what was called a consolidated high school of three towns and my town didn't really merge with the others until high school. Thus, I didn't know any of them until my freshman year.
Over 2.7 million American men and women served in that horrible war on the other side of the world.
Just about all of them were treated horribly when they got home. The war so unpopular, many were told to not wear their uniforms when they reached the USA. With time, I am hoping we are making that up to them.
Our Greatest Generation
So come Tuesday, when everybody is remembering all the veterans who gave their lives for our country, I am going to doff my cap to those guys I know best. They went off to war while I got to stay home.
Thanks for your service and please take care of yourselves.
Bill Sniffin can be reached at: Bill@CowboyStateDaily.com
