The remains of Lance Cpl. Edward Miller were shipped home from Vietnam in 1967, if I remember correctly, a little before it became fashionable for college students to spit on the idea of being a soldier and view returning veterans as war criminals. Knowing they will behave foolishly, God builds extra time into young people so they have a chance to have regrets once they grow up.
I was never much of an anti-war boy during the Vietnam era, but I wasn’t much of a patriot either. High draft number. Abysmal college student. Old back operation. Other life plans. It all added up to a draft pass for me. Oh, I knew all the protest songs because they enhanced my chances at dating, but I wasn’t burning draft cards or anything.
Miller joined the U.S. Marine Corps before he got out of high school and did very well because, despite a dismal academic record, he was a very smart, ambitious guy.
The guys on our block loved him because he was our mentor in grown-up behavior, being a few years older than the rest. He was also one of the most driven, focused characters I had met up to that point.
A tireless worker, he moved with such passion into the local Pepsi bottle cap (collect caps, buy stuff) auction that he was able to use what seemed like 10 million caps to purchase a go-cart, which he drove to elementary school with lots of us hanging from the sides. The nuns made him stop.
Life went the way life went and we all moved on, Miller to Vietnam and glory as a great Marine, me and the rest of us to our other things.
It was sad for all of us to hear that he had jumped from a helicopter and landed on a mine, which exploded and tossed him up into the rotors. There was not much left of the hero. His picture in his dress blues was on top of his coffin when we went to pay our respects at the funeral home.
Years later I found his name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, all but lost among all the other sad losses. There were disabled vets, widows, children, kin of the lost, all around me, touching the wall, weeping, putting mementos like old boots or toys in front of the memorial.
I try to write about veterans at least a couple of times a year, and I think I have mentioned Lance Cpl. Miller before.
I am worried that as our interest in the Iraq war continues to slide, we will transfer some of that anger, some of that despair, or indifference, onto returning veterans from the war.
We shouldn’t do that.
I think it’s fine to despise policymakers, those brave office-bound ideological warriors who crafted this mess and set it into motion. Soldiers don’t make policy. They make war, with all its brutality and senselessness. My guess would be that for most of them, they would rather be home. It’s just that making war is part of the job description.
If you have respect for soldiers, then I suspect you were also upset at learning from various media reports over the past few months that we are not, in many ways, doing our best for those who have returned from war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I find that somewhat hard to believe, given the Bush administration’s passion for going to war in the first place.
You would think that a collection of politicians who are so wedded to the use of military force would understand something of the size of the debt we owe to the young and not so young men and women we put in harm’s way. I’m seeing lots of flag-waving from the administration. I’m also seeing lots of bad news about what veterans find when they return home.
I think you can help resolve this problem. I think we all can.
We should start a campaign, from high schools, churches, college campuses, living rooms, from everyone.
The message should be very simple: These are our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, our kin. As they return from war, they must have the best the nation can offer. The best disability treatment and payments, the best long-term mental and physical care. The best family counseling, too, because even the families back home go to war when a loved one ships out.
I don’t know what kind of life Lance Cpl. Miller might have had if he had survived Vietnam.
I do know we have a chance now to give this era’s veterans the right to the peace they have won by serving their nation.
No matter where you stand on the war, that mission that can unite all of us.
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Charles M. Madigan is a Tribune senior correspondent, editor and columnist. E-mail: cmadigan@tribune.com
