11 Things Coming Home Did to Vietnam Vets That the War Never Did

A firefight on a Tuesday and a prom on Saturday. This file counts eleven things the trip home did to Vietnam veterans that a full year of war never did, including the jet full of strangers, the steak dinner at the gate, the family that did not know his face and the parade that came a dozen years late. Drawn from the words of men who came home and wrote about it under the files of this channel and its sister archive, from Bob Greene's collected letters and Jerry Lembcke's study of the spitting stories, and from the public record of the Wall, the parades and the 2017 law. Every account is attributed, and no witness is invented. Sources: Bob Greene, Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned from Vietnam (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1989), from letters answering his Chicago Tribune column of July 20, 1987 Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York University Press, 1998) The individual rotation policy of the Vietnam War: twelve-month Army tours, thirteen-month Marine Corps tours, and the DEROS date Operation Magic Carpet, the return of U.S. servicemen after the Second World War, 1945-1946 Vietnam Veterans of America, founded 1978, and its founding principle Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated November 13, 1982 (National Park Service) New York Vietnam veterans ticker-tape parade, May 7, 1985 (UPI archive) Chicago Vietnam Veterans Welcome Home Parade, June 13, 1986 (WTTW, WGN) Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017, S.305, 115th Congress (Congress.gov) Accounts written by Vietnam veterans and their families in the public comments of videos on this channel and its sister archive (used without names)