Vietnam Veterans : Recruits Put New Face on VFW, Legion

After burying Bucky Knudsen the other afternoon, the veterans who make up Flathead Valley’s funeral detail followed Highway 93 back into town and parked their pickups and muddied cars by a small brick building whose sign bore two messages: “Pepsi” and “VFW Post 2252.”

Knudsen, a National Guardsman, had died of a heart attack at the age of 45. His comrades, dressed in white shirts with an insignia of the American flag on the right shoulder, settled onto stools at the bar, a beer and a pack of cigarettes marking each place, and, in an atmosphere sweet with the fragrance of friendship, talked about him and politics and beef prices and the dark skies that spoke of long winters.

Pillars of Community

There is hardly a town out here in the rural West without a Veterans of Foreign Wars or an American Legion post like the one in Kalispell. As often as not they are the social and civic pillars of the community, the place where patriotism never became old-fashioned.

They are where members gather for Saturday night steak dinners and dance to country bands with names like Nashville Gold and Blue Ribbon Express. They are where weddings are celebrated and passings noted, where having worn a uniform in service to one’s country remains the ultimate achievement of life.

Although much of America may still stereotype the posts and their combined national membership of 5 million as a preserve of aging soldiers reliving distant victories, the battlefields of Guadalcanal and Normandy are slowly falling silent at the VFW and American Legion. The torch of leadership is being passed to a new group of warriors--to the men of America’s longest war, men who once shunned the organizations as a relic of all they wanted to forget. And with the influx of Vietnam veterans has come growth and change.

‘Pathetic Sight’

“You know, I can remember 20, 30 years ago,” said the Kalispell post commander, Jim Westwang, a retired carpenter and bartender who fought in World War II, “when a lot of the fellas would go out on the funeral detail like the one today for Bucky and they’d be drunk. It was a pathetic sight. Now that’s all turned around. We’ve got a detail we’re proud of. That’s one thing that’s changed since World War II; no one can call us a bunch of drunks anymore.”

“They couldn’t call us that for a number of years now,” said Lloyd Chapin, a retired logger with a handlebar mustache. “I’d say we’re a very sober, serious bunch, wouldn’t you, Jim? Very community-minded. I’m no liberal. I’m not a left-hander by a darn way, but I think even the lefties would agree that there’s more pride in the country out there today, more pride in the service, and I think the way we turned the VFW around here reflects that.”

“I dropped into the VFW here when I first got back and it was so bad I wouldn’t have anything more to do with the post until about a year ago last April,” John Olsen, a Vietnam veteran wearing a Marines visored cap, said as a visitor joined them at the crowded bar. “It was--and this should be off the record--a filthy, decadent place where you’d walk into a bathroom and say: ‘My God!’ not knowing what to expect.”

Faith in U.S. Unshaken

But with a $30,000 loan and a younger membership--about one-third of the post’s 350 members are Vietnam veterans--the Kalispell VFW has been cleaned up, remodeled and toned down. It’s a warm and sober place now, a fraternal gathering of men whose faith in America was unshaken by the trauma of Vietnam, the turmoil of Watergate, the confusion of the Iran-Contra affair. At one end of the bar is an American flag; at the other is a beef jerky jar used to collect donations for a Vietnam memorial to be built in Missoula.

Other fraternal organizations whose lodges are entwined with daily life in small-town America have suffered in the past decade. The Odd Fellows’ national membership has fallen by a third, to 554,000, since 1977. The Loyal Order of Moose (1.2 million members) and the Masonic Service Assn. (2.8 million) are down slightly; the Knights of Columbus (1.4 million) is an exception, having recorded a modest increase. Spokesmen for the Elks (450,000) and the Eagles (695,000) would not say what their memberships were 10 years ago.

VFW Keeps Growing

At the same time many other memberships have been declining, the VFW, which elected its first Vietnam veteran as commander-in-chief in 1984, has just recorded its 32nd consecutive year of growth and now has 2.1 million members and 10,000 posts. The American Legion (with 16,000 posts) is gaining about 300,000 members annually and expects to reach 3 million next year.

Of the 28 million veterans in the United States, about 2.7 million served in Vietnam; well more than 1 million of them have joined the VFW or American Legion. Many veterans belong to both organizations; their allegiance usually goes to whichever post is the most active in a particular town.

The participation of younger veterans has not greatly altered the politically conservative nature of the organizations, a fact underscored by a popular bumper sticker that says: “VFW Members Are Not Fonda Jane.” The solution to Iranian attacks that have endangered U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf is fairly simple, said one South Dakotan: “Wipe Iran out and get on with it.”

More Than 90% Vote

Surveys indicate, though, that the veterans’ organizations may be more in than out of step with mainstream American attitudes: Upwards of 90% of the VFW’s and American Legion’s members vote in all elections, spokesmen in Washington said, and of the 308 candidates the VFW endorsed in the 1984 general election, 92% won.

In Cody, Wyo., a town founded by Col. William (Buffalo Bill) Cody in 1895, Duane Clifton apologized for arriving late at the VFW post that sits at the end of town. One of the children had thrown up in the school bus he drives, he said, and he had to take the vehicle in to be cleaned. Clifton, the VFW Wyoming commander who spent six tours of duty in Vietnam with the Navy, ordered a beer and a can of tomato juice, mixed them, and said:

“I find the World War II veteran can’t really relate to our combat experience. They just didn’t understand guerrilla warfare. But I think the attitude changed after the parade. Don’t you think the parade turned things around?”

From ‘Pariahs to Heroes’

“Definitely. Overnight we went from being pariahs to heroes,” said Keith Hardisty, one of 24 Vietnam veterans who received an enthusiastic ovation from townspeople lined along Sheridan Avenue as they marched under a banner that said “Proud to Have Served” in Cody’s July 4 parade two years ago. With that incentive, the VFW post in Cody played the leading role in building Wyoming’s Vietnam Memorial, which was dedicated last November down the road from the little regional airport. It contains 137 names.

“Some Vietnam vets tried to join the post at first,” he said, “but the older members let it be known we were not at all welcome. They told us we hadn’t fought in a war, at least a real war. They thought we were just long-haired hippie bums.”

Esteem for Veterans

Whatever cold shoulder Vietnam-era men may have received at first, the politically conservative plains and mountain states of the West have always held the veteran in special esteem. Montana sent more volunteers to World War I than any other state, on a per capita basis. The anti-war movement of the 1960s and ‘70s never really took hold here. Year after year, three states lead the VFW’s list of those with the highest membership percentage of all those eligible--South Dakota (with 52%), North Dakota and Wyoming.

“That’s one of the main reasons I moved to South Dakota,” Larry Scudder, disabled by a rocket attack on Cam Ranh Bay in 1971, said as he sat with friends in Rapid City’s VFW Post 1273. “I’d walk into the VA hospital in Portland (Ore.) and people on the street would spit on you. Here, you’d never find anything like that.

“In the large areas, you’re just swallowed up. People forget you. It’s like that veteran who froze to death last year outside the White House. The man was just completely forgotten and that’s wrong. People back there care more about their limos or whatever than they do for the men who fought for this country.”

Los Angeles Criticized

“I haven’t been in L.A. for many years,” Hal Weber said, “but I’m told by people who have been there recently that no one has any time to worry about anyone but himself.”

“I don’t know about that, Hal,” said Robert King, puffing on his pipe. “I think since the Olympics there’s been a little movement back to the old Americanism. I think more young people are listening now.”

King and his colleague, Ken Nelson, excused themselves. It was nearly 6 p.m. and they had to get home for supper, they said, so they could pay an evening visit to patients at the nearby Veterans Administration Hospital. That small gesture was part of an active community support program for which VFW members and Legionnaires believe they receive too little recognition.

The VFW raised $27 million nationally last year for civic projects, including $2.9 million for cancer research. One post provided smoke alarms for the homes of the needy; another gave assistance to tornado victims in the Midwest. The American Legion donated 372,000 pints of blood to hospitals and gave $1.2 million worth of scholarships.

Spending for Baseball

The Legion also spent $6 million sponsoring American Legion Baseball; 22 former Legion players are in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y., and 54% of today’s major league baseball players are graduates of the Legion program. The two organizations also represent a powerful lobby in Washington for veterans’ benefits.

“Say a veteran comes into town with a wife and kids and no job and he’s down on his luck,” said Fred Popp at the Rapid City American Legion, a few blocks from the VFW. “We’ll give him a hotel room for the night and some groceries to get him on his way. It doesn’t matter whether he belongs to a post or not, we tell him: ‘Hey, a veteran is a veteran.’ ”

The jukebox was playing Mickey Gilley. Popp walked across the club room, past the pool table and bar, and stopped in front of a glass case that enclosed a U.S. unit flag from World War I, an American flag and the post’s wartime records that had been sealed as a time capsule in a tin box.

He stood there for a moment, looking at the World War I flag, and said: “It’s kind of like looking back over history, isn’t it? And to think that was the war to end all wars. God Almighty.”

Researcher Nina Green contributed to this story.