Why?

The Vietnam War. I think of it as the war we didn’t need to get involved in. I think it and, most likely, a majority of America did too at the time. With wave after wave of troops were sent across the Pacific, many Americans were probably thinking, “Here we go again. We do not need this!” America was still recovering from the Cold War and, to keep alliances, President Eisenhower sent equipment and help over to South Vietnam in 1955, while the US was still fighting the Cold War, to fight their civil war. War on Vietnam was not even declared until 1961. Fighting in Vietnam lasted almost nineteen and a half years and more than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans, were killed throughout the whole ideal.

Throughout the war, Americans tried hard to be patient with their government, truly believing that they knew what was right for the country and that they would be in Vietnam a couple years at the most. A couple of years slowly turned into a decade and, still, no resolve was made in Vietnam. Americans were losing their patience. With so many families members serving overseas, with even a few thousand were missing in action or prisoners of war, families were anxious to bring them all home. Without being able to do much, they wrote letter after letter to their congressmen, begging and pleading with them to vote to bring their troops home.

I read over sixty of those letters, almost all of them said the same thing: bring our troops home. Two of those letters stood out the most to me. The first was a letter from a man named Ed Gonzalez. His letter is short, sweet, and to the point. He even knows that it’s direct and states it in the “P.S.” section of the letter. He mentions that the US “can once again restore its respectability among the other nations.” I find that extremely interesting because he knew and understood that the war was pointless and it was damaging the US, both as a country and a leader to other countries.

The second letter wasn’t really a letter; it was a copy of a newspaper article written by a man named Nat Henderson. The article was an “obituary” for the U.S. Army. It talked about the large amount of soldiers dying in Vietnam, leading toward the “death” of the entire branch. It goes on to say that positive attributes of the country had died, including obedience, pride, honor, sacrifice, and patriotism and that negative attributes, such as anarchy, civil disobedience, shame, defeat, selfishness, and apathy, has taken the Army’s place.

What amazes me about both of these letters and all the other letters that I read, is that they all shared a common idea: bring the troops home; they genuinely care for the troops, see all they do for the country, and want them home safe and sound. I love that they cared enough to fight for them. Nowadays, I find that people aren’t as affected or caring, at least from my experience. Coming from a military family, it frustrated me when people would not care that we had millions of people fighting and even dying just so we could live in such a country where we were free to go to school, free to practice whatever religion we wanted, and even hold public office, no matter what gender, race, or religion we were. I can imagine that is how Americans back then felt too. They understood the sacrifices the military made for them and wanted to repay them by bringing them home after such a long time away from home.

Overall, I found myself relating to the Americans of the time quicker than I anticipated because of my personal experience with war and the military.