Download PDF of this full issue: v16n2.pdf (14 MB)

Not Every Vet Came

By Pete Zastrow

If many thousands of Vietnam vets marched through the streets of Chicago, there were many more who did not march. For these vets, particularly those who live in Chicago, there was a real choice to make since they could not avoid the presence of the parade.

I took Chicago's "El" to get to the parade start point, and wore my Vietnam fatigue shirt with medals and VVAW patch. As I waited for the train to come, a man came up to me, asked if he had seen me the night before on TV (talking about people's feelings towards the parade), and went on to tell me why he wasn't marching.

An Ecuadorian national, he served in Vietnam, he told me, because he felt he owed something to the country (he had since become a citizen). He had used the GI Bill, gotten a reasonably good job, kept out of trouble, bought a house all the things that go along with the immigrant-makes-good story. Now his son was 15; he would not be going to any war, not if his father could help it. He had not joined VVAW, he said, but he'd marched with us a couple of times in the early '70s. And he just simply could not see following Westmoreland again—not anywhere.

But, each day at lunchtime, he was skipping lunch and going over to the Wall for half an hour or so. He'd already found one name he did not expect; he was still looking for more.

I have no way of knowing how many vets this man reflects. Many, many people in fatigues were sitting along the side of the parade route instead of in the parade. And many of us who marched did so with the hope that the message we had would be heard louder than the hoopla of the parade and glitzy trappings of the day.

Despite the emotions of the day, I can only say that once was more than enough.

Pete Zastrow
VVAW National Office