Vietnam Syndrome

Through some simple twist of fate, the Persian Gulf war ended on my 40th birthday. On my 20th birthday, I was three weeks home from Vietnam and driving anonymously across the Western U.S. to my final duty station at Camp Pendleton. There were no yellow ribbons from Omaha to Oceanside, no flags in the rear windows of automobiles or the front windows of homes. There were not a thousand people to greet us at Norton on a cold and crystal clear winter morning. There was only my mother, sister, two brothers and my dad, himself an Air Force colonel and Vietnam veteran. And, their happiness and pride couldn’t have been exceeded by an additional thousand people anyway. Nor could mine.

Today, I’m extremely gratified by the success of my Marine Corps, and my father’s Air Force. I’m also grateful that so many went and only so few will not return. I’m as happy for them and proud of them as my family was (and I believe still is) for me. And I’m so jealous.

Because we lost not only “the war,” or the 58,000; not only the faith of, and in, an entire generation, we lost the trust we deserved to have in ourselves. The loss of that self-trust is only slightly less than the loss of a limb or other serious wound. I’m disappointed in myself to be jealous after so many years have passed. But I’m ashamed to have been wounded in the first place.

BILL TRAVIS, Long Beach