THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 8, 1995 TAG: 9504060012
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 41 lines
I take strong issue with Tom Evans' ``Anniversary means little to veterans'' (Another View, April 2).
I am not a veteran but the wife of a recently retired 26-year career Marine. I spent 13 months waiting at home while he served a combat tour near Danang, Republic of Vietnam, in 1968-69.
Mr. Evans talks about going to a college interview in his ``dress-green Marine uniform,'' which technically does not exist; the green uniform, known as Alphas, is a service uniform. The dress uniform is called Blues due to its color. A small point, yes. But he goes on to say that a classmate who found out that he had been in Vietnam moved several seats away from him and a manager during a business interview mentioned helping his son avoid the draft. When Evans removed ``Vietnam veteran'' from his resume, he got a job.
The passionate emotions stirred by dodging the draft to serving with pride have coalesced, after 20 years, to a common emotion of regret. Not regret for having served, but regret, in hindsight, at the devastating slaughter that took place, on both sides, with very little result.
To me the Vietnam War has always resembled the Civil War, fought with such intellectual conflict at the price of such a tragic loss of life.
Not wasted lives, surely, for every combat death was, to me, a hero's death for an honorable cause. But tragic in that from the beginning it was a war that could not be won nor even ever fully comprehended.
So all veterans, and their families, when they hear that April 30 is the 20th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War will note that date with sadness: For those who lost a loved one, the sadness of grief; for those who came back, that things didn't turn out differently.
GAY G. MOORE
Virginia Beach, April 3, 1995 by CNB