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Milwaukee Celebrates 25th Anniversary of War's End

By John Zutz

The day was cool and windy on Milwaukee's lakefront, though the sun was shining brightly. But there was plenty of warmth generated by over one thousand veterans, their families and friends who came out to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam.

Striving for the goals of healing, education, and outreach, the program was the first in the nation to involve a coalition of American, Vietnamese, Laotian, and Hmong veterans' groups and to invite the active participation of their communities.

"The healing has been painfully slow and difficult," Milwaukee County Veteran Service officer and Purple Heart recipient Ted Fetting said in his welcoming address, interpreted into three languages.

Veterans, many in uniform, embraced, greeted old friends and met new comrades. Hundreds of Hmong in camouflage combat fatigues stood in ranks while their national anthem was played.

One of the last active National Guard hueys made a pinpoint landing yards from the stage, crewed by Vietnam veterans, while rock music blared. As wreaths delivered by the chopper joined others placed at Milwaukee's Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a "living statue" duplicating the "Three Fighting Men" appeared as if from nowhere.

There was optimism in the appreciative crowd that veterans and their families could finally bury the past.
"Americans have finally separated the Vietnam War from those who served in it," according to speaker John Kuehl, a VA regional office employee. "Those who served in Vietnam have begun to be held in the same esteem as those who served in prior wars."

Andy Tran, the head of the Milwaukee Vietnamese community, thanked American veterans "from the bottom of our hearts for giving our families freedom and protecting us."

Steve Schofield, a former Special Forces major who later served as a civilian health care worker in Laos described how Hmong farmers and hunters were recruited into guerrilla warfare on behalf of the United States, only to be driven from their homes and their native land after the North triumphed. He described how Hmong children as young as eight were conscripted with tacit American approval into secret attacks in the supposedly neutral country. Schofield also recalled how the United States abandoned the Hmong, leaving them to become refugees or to be hunted down by the Pathet Lao regime.

Retired colonel Xay Dang Xiong stated, "Some Americans question why the Hmong are in the U.S." He then explained how he and his men rescued American pilots downed in Laos.

Milwaukee County Supervisor Roger Quindel, who served two combat tours, in a rapid-fire burst of memories recalled the mud and the blood, the snakes and the rats. "It wasn't a war for everyone. No senators' sons fought. Only the sons of the poor and working people (served in Vietnam)."

At the end of the ceremony, Vietnam Veterans Against the War distributed buttons to veterans in the crowd, to recognize their service.

Following the ceremony the crowd proceeded to the Milwaukee County War Memorial building where information tables were set up, and where the ethnic communities performed traditional music and dance.

To conclude the day's events, Mayor John Norquist arrived to read the names of the 204 boys from Milwaukee who died in Vietnam.