http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs824a,0,7616452.story
The decade-long conflict kills hundreds of LIers and leaves many
veterans embittered
By David Behrens | Staff Writer
[June 2009]
The war in Vietnam left deep wounds in nearly every Long Island
community and, three decades later, the scars are still visible
whenever veterans bare their souls.
More than 58,000 Americans were killed in the decade-long conflict.
When the war ended in 1975, 574 servicemen from the villages and
hamlets of Nassau and Suffolk counties were among the dead. In
Queens, hundreds more were killed, with the Jamaica, Flushing,
Woodside and Astoria sections bearing the greatest losses.
In Nassau, East Meadow, Hempstead, Levittown, Massapequa, Merrick and
New Hyde Park each lost more than a dozen servicemen. So did
Brentwood, Central Islip, Huntington and Lindenhurst in Suffolk.
In the mid-1960s, many young men enlisted without hesitation. Before
the war became one of the great divisive issues in American history,
they signed up for many reasons.
Ron Kovic, who grew up in Massapequa, dreamed of being a war hero
like John Wayne, joining in the fight against communism. He was 18
when he enlisted in the summer of 1964.
Robert Fountain, now a Baldwin resident, signed up as an
officer-candidate because the Navy promised to pay for two years of
college and teach him to fly.
Bobby Muller, as a senior at Hofstra University, thought his
125-pound frame might look more dashing in the dress blues of the
Marine Corps. He enlisted in 1967 and by September, 1968, he was a
combat lieutenant leading a Marine platoon.
To many, enlisting in the military was a patriotic thing to do, said
Muller, who grew up in Great Neck. It was also a smart move to go in
before the seemingly inevitable arrival of a draft notice. By 1967,
the war was heating up. During the year, American manpower in Vietnam
almost doubled, to more than 490,000. The 1968 draft call was
scheduled to bring in 300,000.
But when they came home, few of the veterans felt like heroes. There
were no welcome-home parades, no street celebrations, none of the
crazy joy that marked the end of two world wars.
Ron Kovic and Bobby Muller, both 52 now, came home to Long Island to
testify passionately about the futility of the war. Both returned as
paraplegics and saw themselves and their comrades as victims of an
immoral, pointless war.
Other servicemen came back with a different sort of bitterness: the
feeling they were betrayed by the American people who failed to honor
them and by the American government, which failed to commit itself to
ultimate victory.
The war continues to be a matter of divisive debate when the subject
comes up. But by now, many Vietnam veterans would rather not talk
about the war and very few have joined veterans organizations, said
Mario Lombardi, vice commander of the American Legion post in
Hicksville. "The way they were treated when they got home was an
atrocity," Lombardi, a World War II veteran, said.
Kovic, who grew up in a blue-collar family, emerged as a national
figure. At age 21, he returned home in a wheelchair -- paralyzed from
the chest down when a 30-cal. bullet shattered his spine. After three
years of despair, Kovic signed on with the antiwar movement and began
to speak at Long Island teach-ins. A year later, he and Muller, in
wheelchairs, heckled President Richard Nixon from the floor of the
1972 Republican National Convention. "Stop the bombing, stop the
war," they chanted until they were ejected from the hall.
Kovic was on the podium in 1976 addressing the Democratic National
Convention and he recorded the scene in his wrenching 1976
bestseller, "Born on the Fourth of July." When the film version was
released in 1989, he became, arguably, the nation's best-known
Vietnam veteran. "I never thought I would say this but I believe my
wound has become a blessing in disguise," he told Newsday when the
film opened. "It's enabled me to reach millions of people with a
message of peace and a message of hope."
For many veterans such as Robert Fountain, Kovic's message has
brought little solace. Fountain, who was wounded twice during his
1965-66 tour of duty, came home believing in the rightness of the war.
"Like any military men, we were there to do a job. If the politicians
had just kept out of it and let the military people run the war, we'd
have done a hell of a lot better," he said. In his mid-50s, he
belongs to an American Legion post in Baldwin where Vietnam veterans
number only 10 or so on of a roster of 190.
Fountain is still bitter about the Vietnamese in the south. "They
didn't really care about us -- just wanted to sell us dope and make
money," he said. But he has no apologies for his role in Vietnam. As
a Navy lieutenant with a medevac unit, Fountain said he saved many
American lives. "And at the time, I didn't think our men were dying
in vain . . . We didn't know the government was going to let us down."
Muller, who was wounded eight months into his Vietnam tour, also felt
betrayed when he came home in a wheelchair. In college, he said, "I
trusted the government to do the right thing." But he soon came to
feel the war was a moral mistake from the start. In early 1971,
Muller organized the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and appeared at
rallies throughout Nassau and Suffolk. He later founded the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.
The first antiwar teach-in on Long Island was held at Adelphi
University, on May 10, 1965. At the time, most citizens here
supported the U.S. military involvement, recalled Charles Howlett, a
Long Island historian and writer. "But as Vietnam became a quagmire,
Long Island mirrored the nation's disillusionment with the war."
Sadly, he noted, for civilian opponents of the government's policy in
Vietnam, their opposition to the war evolved into "contempt for those
who fought it."
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