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Vets! We Need You!

By Pete Zastrow

"Interview a Vet"—the contest sponsored by CCCO (which is the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors), VVAW, and Veterans for Peace gives today's youth the chance to ask the questions and draw on the experience of those who fought in Vietnam. And it is a chance for Vietnam vets to talk about an experience which is no longer of much interest to a lot of younger people.

This will be the second year of the contest. No one's going to get rich from it, though the prizes are certainly worth going for. I had the experience, for the first contest, of reading through the high school entries to select a few for final judging. High school students interviewed strange men they'd never heard of before (bets who had put their names into the contest booklet), listened to veterans who talked in their high school classes, talked, in a few cases to old family friend and, sometimes, to their own fathers. In every case the interview was some kind of revelation. Not everyone came away with the lesson the vet though he was giving: a couple of vets who seemed to enjoy telling their war stories might have been surprised at the peaceful uses these tales were turned to.

The contest produced some pictures, a few videotapes, many poems and shore stories, a lot of essays. The rules said for students to react to what they were told and reactions came in as many forms as there were students. Some of the entries shoed a real attempt to grapple with questions raised by our participation in the War. Almost all of the questions were interesting.

For vet or for students its worth the time to answer the ad elsewhere on the page; it takes a very little time to learn a very lot—for both vets and young people.

—Pete Zastro
VVAW National Office