[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 16]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 21934-21936]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              IN RECOGNITION OF VIETNAM WAR VETERANS EVENT

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. IKE SKELTON

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 16, 2009

  Mr. SKELTON. Madam Speaker, on September 12, 2009, the Honorable 
Emanuel Cleaver, Congressman from Missouri's Fifth Congressional 
District, sponsored a remarkable event at the Truman Library. This 
event was in honor of those who fought in the Vietnam War in the late 
1960s and early 1970s. Well over 1,000 veterans attended. The Honorable 
Dennis Moore, Congressman from Kansas's Third Congressional District, 
spoke, and yours truly had an opportunity to deliver a message of 
gratitude to the Vietnam veterans

[[Page 21935]]

present. The keynote speaker was Major General (Ret.) Robert H. Scales, 
former commandant of the U.S. Army War College. His address was very 
well received by the veterans in the audience. The address is as 
follows:

       Mr. Skelton, Mr. Cleaver, distinguished guests and, most 
     importantly, fellow veterans. What a great thrill it is to 
     see my comrades in arms assembled here so many years after we 
     shared our experiences in war.
       Let me give you the bottom line up front: I'm proud I 
     served in Vietnam. Like you I didn't kill innocents, I killed 
     the enemy; I didn't fight for big oil or for some lame 
     conspiracy I fought for a country I believed in and for the 
     buddies who kept me alive. Like you I was troubled that, 
     unlike my father, I didn't come back to a grateful nation. It 
     took a generation and another war, Desert Storm, for the 
     nation to come back to me.
       Also like you I remember the war being 99 percent boredom 
     and one percent pure abject terror. But not all my memories 
     of Vietnam are terrible. There were times when I enjoyed my 
     service in combat. Such sentiment must seem strange to a 
     society today that has, thanks to our superb volunteer 
     military, been completely insulated from war. If they thought 
     about Vietnam at all, our fellow citizens would imagine that 
     fifty years would have been sufficient to erase this 
     unpleasant war from our conscientiousness. Looking over this 
     assembly it's obvious that the memory lingers, and those of 
     us who fought in that war remember.
       The question is why? If this war was so terrible why are we 
     here? It's my privilege today to try to answer that question 
     not only for you, brother veterans, but maybe for a wider 
     audience for whom, fifty years on, Vietnam is as strangely 
     distant as World War I was to our generation.
       Vietnam is seared in our memory for the same reason that 
     wars have lingered in the minds of soldiers for as long as 
     wars have been fought.
       From Marathon to Mosul young men and now women have marched 
     off to war to learn that the cold fear of violent death and 
     the prospects of killing another human being heighten the 
     senses and sear these experiences deeply and irrevocably into 
     our souls and linger in the back recesses of our minds.
       After Vietnam we may have gone on to thrilling lives or 
     dull; we might have found love or loneliness, success or 
     failure. But our experiences have stayed with us in brilliant 
     Technicolor and with a clarity undiminished by time. For 
     whatever primal reason war heightens the senses. When in 
     combat we see sharper, hear more clearly and develop a sixth 
     sense about everything around us.
       Remember the sights? I recall sitting in the jungle one 
     bright moonlit night marveling on the beauty of Vietnam. How 
     lush and green it was; how attractive and gentle the people, 
     how stoic and unmoved they were amid the chaos that 
     surrounded them.
       Do you remember the sounds? Where else could you stand 
     outside a bunker and listen to the cacophonous mix of Jimmy 
     Hendrix, Merle Haggard and Jefferson Airplane? Or how about 
     the sounds of incoming? Remember it wasn't a boom like in the 
     movies but a horrifying noise like a passing train followed 
     by a crack and the whistle of flying fragments. Remember the 
     smells? The sharpness of cordite, the choking stench of 
     rotting jungle and the tragic sweet smell of enemy dead. . . 
     .
       I remember the touch, the wet, sticky sensation when I 
     touched one of my wounded soldiers one last time before the 
     medevac rushed him forever from our presence but not from my 
     memory, and the guilt I felt realizing that his pain was 
     caused by my inattention and my lack of experience.
       Even taste is a sense that brings back memories. Remember 
     the end of the day after the log bird flew away leaving mail, 
     C rations and warm beer? Only the first sergeant had 
     sufficient gravitas to be allowed to turn the C ration cases 
     over so that all of us could reach in and pull out a box on 
     the unlabeled side hoping that it wasn't going to be ham and 
     lima beans again.
       Look, forty years on I can forgive the guy who put powder 
     in our ammunition so foul that it caused our M-16s to jam. 
     I'm OK with helicopters that arrived late. I'm over artillery 
     landing too close and the occasional canceled air strike. But 
     I will never forgive the Pentagon bureaucrat who in an 
     incredibly lame moment thought that a soldier would open a 
     can of that green, greasy, gelatinous goo called ham and lima 
     beans and actually eat it.
       But to paraphrase that iconic war hero of our generation, 
     Forrest Gump, ``Life is like a case of C Rations, you never 
     know what you're going to get.'' Because for every box of ham 
     and lima beans there was that rapturous moment when you would 
     turn over the box and discover the bacchanalian joy of 
     peaches and pound cake. It's all a metaphor for the surreal 
     nature of that war and its small pleasures . . . . those who 
     have never known war cannot believe that anyone can find joy 
     in hot beer and cold pound cake. But we can . . .
       Another reason why Vietnam remains in our consciousness is 
     that the experience has made us better. Don't get me wrong. 
     I'm not arguing for war as a self-improvement course. And I 
     realize that war's trauma has damaged many of our fellow 
     veterans physically, psychologically and morally. But recent 
     research on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by behavioral 
     scientists has unearthed a phenomenon familiar to most 
     veterans: that the trauma of war strengthens rather than 
     weakens us (They call it Post Traumatic Growth). We know that 
     a near death experience makes us better leaders by increasing 
     our self-reliance, resilience, self image, confidence and 
     ability to deal with adversity. Combat veterans tend to 
     approach the future wiser, more spiritual and content with an 
     amplified appreciation for life. We know this is true. It's 
     nice to see that the human scientists now agree.
       I'm proud that our service left a legacy that has made 
     today's military better. Sadly Americans too often prefer to 
     fight wars with technology. Our experience in Vietnam taught 
     the nation the lesson that war is inherently a human not a 
     technological endeavor. Our experience is a distant whisper 
     in the ear of today's technology wizards that firepower is 
     not sufficient to win, that the enemy has a vote, that the 
     object of war should not be to kill the enemy but to win the 
     trust and allegiance of the people and that the ultimate 
     weapon in this kind of war is a superbly trained, motivated, 
     and equipped soldier who is tightly bonded to his buddies and 
     who trusts his leaders.
       I've visited our young men and women in Iraq and 
     Afghanistan several times. On each visit I've seen first hand 
     the strong connection between our war and theirs. These are 
     worthy warriors who operate in a manner remarkably 
     reminiscent of the way we fought so many years ago.
       The similarities are surreal. Close your eyes for a moment 
     and it all comes rushing back. . . . In Afghanistan I watched 
     soldiers from my old unit, the 101st Airborne Division, as 
     they conducted daily patrols from firebases constructed and 
     manned in a manner virtually the same as those we occupied 
     and fought from so many years ago. Every day these sky 
     soldiers trudge outside the wire and climb across impossible 
     terrain with the purpose as one sergeant put it ``to kill the 
     bad guys, protect the good guys and bring home as many of my 
     soldiers as I can.'' Your legacy is alive and well. You 
     should be proud.
       The timeless connection between our generation and theirs 
     can be seen in the unity and fighting spirit of our soldiers 
     in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again and again, I get asked the 
     same old question from folks who watch soldiers in action on 
     television: why is their morale so high? Don't they know the 
     American people are getting fed up with these wars? Don't 
     they know Afghanistan is going badly? Often they come to me 
     incredulous about what they perceive as a misspent sense of 
     patriotism and loyalty.
       I tell them time and again what every one of you sitting 
     here today, those of you who have seen the face of war, 
     understand: it's not really about loyalty. It's not about a 
     belief in some abstract notion concerning war aims or 
     national strategy. It's not even about winning or losing. On 
     those lonely firebases as we dug through C ration boxes and 
     drank hot beer we didn't argue the righteousness of our cause 
     or ponder the latest pronouncements from McNamara or Nixon or 
     Ho Chi Minh for that matter. Some of us might have trusted 
     our leaders or maybe not. We might have been well informed 
     and passionate about the protests at home or maybe not. We 
     might have groused about the rich and privileged who found a 
     way to avoid service but we probably didn't. We might have 
     volunteered for the war to stop the spread of global 
     communism or maybe we just had a failing semester and got 
     swept up in the draft.
       In war young soldiers think about their buddies. They talk 
     about families, wives and girlfriends and relate to each 
     other through very personal confessions. For the most part 
     the military we served with in Vietnam did not come from the 
     social elite. We didn't have Harvard degrees or the pedigree 
     of political bluebloods. We were in large measure volunteers 
     and draftees from middle and lower class America. Just as in 
     Iraq today we came from every corner of our country to meet 
     in a beautiful yet harsh and forbidding place, a place that 
     we've seen and experienced but can never explain adequately 
     to those who were never there.
       Soldiers suffer, fight and occasionally die for each other. 
     It's as simple as that. What brought us to fight in the 
     jungle was no different than the motive force that compels 
     young soldiers today to kick open a door in Ramadi with the 
     expectation that what lies on the other side is either an 
     innocent huddling with a child in her arms or a fanatic 
     insurgent yearning to buy his ticket to eternity by killing 
     the infidel. No difference. Patriotism and a paycheck may get 
     a soldier into the military but fear of letting his buddies 
     down gets a soldier to do something that might just as well 
     get him killed.
       What makes a person successful in America today is a far 
     cry from what would have made him a success in the minds of 
     those assembled here today. Big bucks gained in law or real 
     estate, or big deals closed on the stock market made some of 
     our countrymen rich. But as they have grown older they now 
     realize that they have no buddies. There is

[[Page 21936]]

     no one who they are willing to die for or who is willing to 
     die for them. William Manchester served as a Marine in the 
     Pacific during World War II and put the sentiment precisely 
     right when he wrote: ``Any man in combat who lacks comrades 
     who will die for him, or for whom he is willing to die is not 
     a man at all. He is truly damned.''
       The Anglo Saxon heritage of buddy loyalty is long and 
     frightfully won. Almost six hundred years ago the English 
     king, Henry V, waited on a cold and muddy battlefield to face 
     a French army many times his size. Shakespeare captured the 
     ethos of that moment in his play Henry V. To be sure 
     Shakespeare wasn't there but he was there in spirit because 
     he understood the emotions that gripped and the bonds that 
     brought together both king and soldier. Henry didn't talk 
     about national strategy. He didn't try to justify faulty 
     intelligence or ill formed command decisions that put his 
     soldiers at such a terrible disadvantage. Instead, he talked 
     about what made English soldiers fight and what in all 
     probably would allow them to prevail the next day against 
     terrible odds. Remember this is a monarch talking to his men:

     ``This story shall the good man teach his son;
     From this day ending to the ending of the world,
     But we in it shall be remembered;
     We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
     For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my 
           brother;
     And gentlemen in England (or America) now a-bed
     Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
     And hold their manhood's cheap whiles any speaks
     That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.''

       You all here assembled inherit the spirit of St Crispin's 
     day. You know and understand the strength of comfort that 
     those whom you protect, those in America now abed, will never 
     know. You have lived a life of self awareness and personal 
     satisfaction that those who watched you from afar in this 
     country who ``hold their manhood cheap'' can only envy.
       I don't care whether America honors or even remembers the 
     good service we performed in Vietnam. It doesn't bother me 
     that war is an image that America would rather ignore. It's 
     enough for me to have the privilege to be among you. It's 
     sufficient to talk to each of you about things we have seen 
     and kinships we have shared in the tough and heartless 
     crucible of war.
       Some day we will all join those who are serving so 
     gallantly now and have preceded us on battlefields from 
     Gettysburg to Wanat. We will gather inside a firebase to open 
     a case of C rations with every box peaches and pound cake. We 
     will join with a band of brothers to recount the experience 
     of serving something greater than ourselves. I believe in my 
     very soul that the almightly reserves a corner of heaven, 
     probably around a perpetual lager where some day we can meet 
     and embrace . . . all of the band of brothers throughout the 
     ages to tell our stories while envious standers-by watch and 
     wonder how horrific and incendiary the crucible of violence 
     must have been to bring such a disparate assemblage so close 
     to the hand of God.
       Until we meet there thank you for your service, thank you 
     for your sacrifice, God bless you all and God bless this 
     great 
     nation. . . .

                          ____________________