A Minnesota PBS Initiative
Aftermath: The Veterans' Burden
By the time the draft had ended and Gerald Ford withdrew the last Americans from Vietnam with the chilling images of the Huey helicopters being pushed off the deck of the aircraft carriers and the end of the evacuation, I went to London, England for my senior year abroad at the University of London.
All of the American students were in the early 20s except one – a tall, quiet man of deliberate intension and thoughtful spoken words. Jim was a Vietnam Vet, from my home town, drafted at age 18 and who had not thought of himself as college bound. While raised in a Republican family and instilled with patriotic leanings, I always verbally sparred with my father over the legitimacy of the Vietnam War as an anti-war teenager.
GRENADE THROWER by Roger Blum, CAT I, 1966. Public Domain courtesy of US Army Combat Art Program.
In our student quarters in the Maida Vale section of London, Jim was the only dorm resident given his own room. He wasn't a party guy but when we went out for pints of beer at the pub, he always engaged in serious conversation, rarely started them, and had a deliberate spiritual and intellectual baring. Small talk for him was a waste of breath. One might say he was touched by life experiences that now sat heavily on his shoulders.
In the summer of 1968 aboard a ship Jim went into Viet Cong-contested areas of the western shore of Da Nang harbor and came under fire and his best friend was blow across the deck of his ship and died while Jim tried to help him hang onto life.
You don't know what being anti-war is until you've fought in a war.
One night we were at the Prince Albert pub and a English WWII vet joined us and start buying us rounds of pints of beer. With theses two vets, I started my description of being a teenage anti-war activist.
Jim said, "You don't know what being anti-war is until you've fought in a war." Just one of those comments he'd make that would cause me to think in an entirely different direction.
The British vet got increasingly drunk and began shouting his opinions rather than discussing them.
At one point the British vet picked up a wine goblet and shook it wildly in his hand and squeezed it hard and it shattered in his hand. Jim grabbed his wrist and told him to open his palm. Pieces of the glass were embedded in his flesh.
Jim slapped his hand downward toward the floor and pieces of the glass fell out of his skin. The British Vet struggled against Jim's hold on him. Jim looked him directly in the eyes and said, "The WAR is over man! It's over. Stop fighting the war. You've got to stop. It's over." The British vet began to cry.
There are things which only two vets can share. It's hard to take criticism from the outside from people who didn't pass though the firewall of war and death.
In a few minutes, Jim signaled we should leave.
Walking back, Jim explained, "There are things which only two vets can share. It's hard to take criticism from the outside from people who didn't pass though the firewall of war and death. I was naively pro-war in a patriotic duty kind of way when I was 18 years old, just out of high school. I probably would have been a hippie anti-war demonstrator if I hadn't been drafted. Now I am a vet. A Vietnam Vet. I am searching for the meaning to it all."
These moments with Jim changed my view. complicated the simplistic pro and anti sides and I came to realize through Jim that there often are not just two sides to anything and there is humanity in everything.
Being a student in London was for him a much larger quest than most of us other students studying abroad.
Biographical Details
Submitted From: St. Paul, MN
Primary Location During Vietnam: Rochester, Minnesota, United States 
Story Subject: Activist
Story Themes: Activist, Brotherhood, College Campus, Dissent, Gerald Ford, Growing Up, London, Protest, PTSD, Read, Respect, Robb Mitchell, Rochester, Saint Paul, St Paul