November 12, 2009 10:50 am
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The atmosphere in the Boone County Courthouse rotunda was heavy with emotion Tuesday evening as Vietnam veterans, family, friends and supporters crowded together to finally welcome home these veterans properly, perhaps for the first time ever.
The Vietnam War was a 1959-1975 conflict in which more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers died. At the ceremony, Mayor Huck Lewis shared statistics that of the nearly 3 million Americans who served in the war, less than 850,000 are alive today, the youngest at 54 years of age. The average age of those killed was 23.1 years.
Guest speaker Tim Barnes talked about his time serving in the Vietnam War, saying he thought they had dropped him in the “hinges of hell.” He thought he was going to die, hearing tiny tree branches cracking in front of his face from the bullets.
Barnes had heard that people in America were calling the soldiers in Vietnam baby killers, he said, and spitting on them. But when he returned to the states, he didn’t experience any of that. But he also didn’t get one “thank you.”
For more of the story, see Thursday's Lebanon Reporter.
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Photos
Bill Reeves, brother-in-law of Vietnam veteran Jack Waggoner, holds up a sign of support Tuesday evening at the Welcome Home for Vietnam veterans in the Courthouse Rotunda.