‘You Will Always Be Young’ : Reagan Lauds ‘Heroes’ in Vietnam Memorial Rite

President Reagan delivered an emotional message of gratitude at a Veterans Day ceremony today to the “gentle heroes” of Vietnam, saying young Americans should “never be sent again to fight and die unless we are prepared to let them win.”

Accompanied by his wife, Nancy, Reagan walked along the granite Vietnam Veterans Memorial, paying tribute to the more than 58,000 war dead, and said, “In our hearts you will always be young.”

A crowd of several thousand people gathered on the lawn of the mall facing the memorial, including several men wearing military jackets, some in wheelchairs, who heckled Reagan during his speech. What they said was inaudible to bystanders; the President took no note of the heckling.

His Second Visit

It was Reagan’s second visit to the memorial. He first visited the site on Veterans Day, 1984, to dedicate the statue of three soldiers.

Before he started his speech today, Reagan left a memento, a personal note, at the base of the black marble wall.

In his speech, Reagan said the U.S. government was doing everything possible to learn whether Americans are still being held against their will in Southeast Asia. He said that unless the Hanoi government can assure America that this isn’t so, “we will assume they are and will do everything we can to get them home.”

Dan Reed of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, who said he is a Vietnam veteran, said veterans appreciated the ceremony but didn’t think the government was doing enough to bring home any remaining prisoners of war. “If you can’t bring us home, don’t send us. We don’t want any White House jive,” he told a reporter.

Reagan said that when he visited the site four years ago he voiced the hope that a process of healing had begun and said, “It appears to me that we have healing.”

‘Welcome Home’

The President, noting that he will soon leave office, said “what I can say to our Vietnam vets is ‘Welcome home.’ ” Reagan also said that despite the divisions in America over the Vietnam conflict, “who can doubt that the cause for which our men fought was just?”

He said the Vietnam War was a just cause, “however imperfectly pursued.”

Reagan said a major lesson of the Vietnam War is that “young Americans never be sent again to fight and die unless we are prepared to let them win.”

Earlier, Reagan spoke to a huge crowd in the amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery.

He said Americans traditionally remember their war dead by laying wreaths, attending memorial ceremonies and speaking “words of truth.” But, he said, in honoring the dead everyone must recognize that “they can never be fully ours again--that they belong to God.”