Shirt Labels Remind of Veterans’ Selfless Service

A couple of shirts in my wardrobe have “Made in Vietnam” labels. During a recent telephone conversation that touched upon the conflict in Iraq, it tumbled out that, should that nation follow in the steps of previous war-torn lands, it is quite possible that some day we may be ironing clothes bearing the label, “Made in Iraq.”
If so, they will be silent memorials to those who served, and who may forever be spoiled by that military encounter.
The last two editions of the Herald carried stories about two Vietnam veterans. While that war (to those who served there, and a “conflict” to everyone else) has been over since the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, the scars live today, as they do with any war.
What brought both veterans, one from Court House the other from Rio Grande, into the news spotlight was the herbicide Agent Orange and its effects upon them.
Both men proudly served their nation when it needed them most. Both were willing to go into harm’s way, as are young soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. Being filled with youthful vim, illness, old age and death were foreign and distant to them.
No one in the thick, snake-infested jungles and aboard some ships in the Gulf of Tonkin — roughly from 1960 to 1975 — or navigating the muddy rivers on the Mekong Delta knew much about that stuff sprayed from the air to defoliate the land.
The poison did its job. It robbed the North Vietnamese of their hiding places by creating a wasteland. It did not defeat them; since they went on to ultimately gain the upper hand to win the war.
Yet as a terrible consequence, deadly Agent Orange (which got its name from the orange bands that were used to mark its drums) attached itself to the precious cells of organs of ground troops and many aboard those ships and boats.
Nothing happened, or so they thought. Life went on for many. Tragically, many of those veterans were not welcomed home with open arms.
Many veterans who came home were spurned by some of their countrymen. To this day, some have never fully mended, emotionally or physically, from that Southeast Asian war.
And that is where we picked up both stories.
One Navy veteran is a Middle Township Board of Education member who suffers the aftereffects of Agent Orange inhaled while aboard ship in Vietnamese waters. Now, the once vivacious man is confined to a power chair and breathes with aid of oxygen.
He attends board meetings when he can, and other times must join his peers by telephone.
All he asks is respect for himself as a disabled veteran. Perhaps his condition may lead to a new attendance policy for board members whose minds are alert, but whose bodies suffer from the effects of a war long ago and far away.
The next is an Air Force veteran, who worked around planes that sprayed Agent Orange. He needs aid because he cannot get into his mobile home. It seems that the government he served did not correctly diagnose his medical condition. As a result, he underwent a leg amputation.
Because of his condition, he does not have the ability to climb steps, and could use a lift to assist him getting into the unit. An ADA-compliant ramp cannot be built, due to the severely limited space between units.
In the grand scheme of things, neither veteran is asking too much from the citizenry they served in their youth. A friend forwarded e-mail about recent Iowa flooding. The images showed unbelievable scenes of damage, and there was a question where was the federal help that, in some other places, or in foreign lands, would have been there before the rain stopped and the clouds cleared.
As you read this, American service men and women are in places many of us can neither spell nor pronounce. They are in a war, not unlike the one in Vietnam, where enemy forces melt in with the local population. Who knows what scars, physical or emotional, they will carry home? Who knows what latent ills they may harbor that, like the two veterans we reported about, will not surface for decades to come?
Will it be that some future Herald editor may hang clothes that will bear labels, “Made in Afghanistan” or “Made in Pakistan?” Will he or she think of veterans from those long-ago wars in 2009 and 2011 that put their lives on the line so that such mundane purchases could be possible?
Never forget this nation became great, not because of what government did for the people, but what people did to help each other.
Now is the time that we, the people, ought to reach out and help those veterans who served and who suffer today for what we asked them to do. It is the least that can be done to prove our gratitude.