Lary Bloom photo
A half century ago, I wore a uniform of a different hue. The jungle fatigues and cap were manufactured in only one color, olive drab, which the military still refers to, drably, as Color 107. Unofficially, it was the shade of derision during and after America’s most divisive foreign war.
These days, the uniform remnant I wear on the streets of New Haven hasn’t a touch of old 107. On this cap of many colors, the yellow wording pops. Various versions of red, white, black, yellow and green recreate medals awarded to those of us who demonstrated the ability to breathe while in country, which is to say everyone who waded ashore, as I did in 1966, or landed in big silver birds at the airports of DaNang, Cam Ranh Bay or Saigon, including those 58,209 Americans killed and the more than 2,500 gone missing before their Vietnam tours were at an end. The overall effect of the new uniform, then, is one that shouts.
No pussyfooting here. No, “Excuse me, but please forgive my participation in that tragic mess.” For the modest cost of about $20, it announces “Vietnam Veteran” not once but four times, even on its backside should fellow pedestrians, lagging behind, miss the point.
“Thank you,” strangers say. To which I respond, “Thank you,” because “You’re welcome” somehow seems inapt.
Some of these people tell me stories. Others reflect on that miserable time, and the waste of that war. Others tell me that nothing has changed, that ignorance and bigotry are still rampant. They despise the chicken hawks in the nation’s capital.
Veterans of various wars tell me of their personal struggles, then and now. A man pushing a manual lawnmower in front of a house in East Rock, part of a landscape crew, tells me of his experience in Desert Storm. A woman in Edgewood Park, a former Marine, offers details of her tour in Kirkuk as her fiancé rests his head on a picnic table, apparently the victim of a drug hangover. A man walking with crutches in New York City and wearing a similar hat salutes and I return the sign of respect. A woman in Amity wine store talks of her brother, who died from the effects of Agent Orange; her eyes well up as she says she doesn’t know exactly where he was stationed, only that he was “out there.”
A man in a city crosswalk is not as demonstrative but when he sees my cap he smiles wryly, as if we are old conspirators. A young woman on a bike thanks me as she passes by and I am startled, as young people usually don’t respond to the hat. The clerk at a Tyco store on Elm Street gives me an 80-cent discount on a five-dollar copying bill, and when I thank him, he thanks me. A tobacco store owner in Lucca, Italy, tells me his dream is to visit Maya Lin’s Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C. A vet I have seen dozens of times and who wears his own Vietnam hat as if it’s a permanent part of his body tells me, “I don’t want to talk about the war.” So even those who don’t talk do talk, in some way.
Silence, of course, makes for empty narratives, and robs us of understanding. This was the case in all wars, but particularly ours. For how does one explain the very idea, as seen from today’s perspective, of sending young men and many young women to do something that came to be seen as absurd and tragic on a scale that can never be measured in body counts?
My talking hat, then, remains both a symbol and a prompt. It has come to represent the very opposite of what was pervasive during the era of my return from war, when spit symbolized the national response to returning vets.
So my hat and I have become inseparable, a fact that sometimes irks my wife, a haberdasher’s daughter (indeed, one of Suzanne Levine’s poetry collections was titled that), who is of the opinion that a night at the opera or Yale Rep requires a chapeau more appropriate.
And yet, with all this positive news, I wish I didn’t have to include a couple of responses that made my wrinkling skin crawl. The first was a man about my age who, over drinks at a Yale event, wanted to know if I was in combat. I replied that in a great sense everyone who served in Vietnam was in combat, as almost all of us found ourselves in jeopardy. (My own experience, spent mostly in supply, included being ambushed and shot at.)
He objected, saying only those in the Infantry were in combat. I asked him where he served. He said he didn’t. He took an educational exemption from the draft. “Ah,” I replied. “I’d be careful if I were you about lecturing those of us who put our bodies on the line.” And then walked away. (Afterwards, I was proud of myself for not punching him in the nose.)
I walked away from another incident with less satisfaction. It was the response of a worker in the New Haven tax office who proved at least 70 percent unhelpful and unenthusiastic in my effort to register for a tiny tax credit given to vets. She asked me if I wanted to apply it to property tax, car tax, or some other tax I can’t recall. I asked for more information. She said, “That’s not my job. Just tell me what you want to apply it to.”
As a result, I made a choice under duress. And duress was the element of war that I hoped to leave behind a half century ago.
Still, these conversations remain but a small part of a more empathetic public response. It’s true that an astonishing 32 years passed between my return from war and the first “Thank you for your service,” a sentence that in 1999 made me cry. But since then, members of the public have more than made up for the initial “homecoming.” So on Veterans Day, I salute all of you.