Coming Home

Every Veterans Day weekend, my Vietnam unit, the 187th Assault Helicopter Company, holds a reunion somewhere in our nation. We’ve been doing it for more than 20 years. We sit around drink adult beverages, though less every year, and tell war stories that keep getting better. After all, we have an entire year to work on enhancements. 

 We’ve marched in parades, taken helicopter rides on old hueys, toured vintage aircraft carriers, battleships and submarines, held bowling, golf and fishing tournaments, visited great air museums, seen amazing air shows, been warmly addressed by numerous high-ranking military officers and gone to The Wall together and cried. 

 The most important thing we do at our reunions, and the most moving moment for everyone in attendance, is when we read the names of our 43 comrades in the 187th who were lost during the five years the unit was in Vietnam. Eleven died during the year I was there. I knew them all because in a company-size unit everybody is at least casually acquainted with everybody else. 

 According to the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, 2,202 helicopter pilots died in the war and another 2,704 air crewmen also perished. In April of 2018, a monument to these nearly 5,000 men was dedicated in Arlington National Cemetery. The granite block is engraved with a Huey helicopter, which made up the bulk of the 12,000 helicopters that saw service in Vietnam.

 At our reunions, I’ve met some of the families of men who were lost. They come hoping to talk to someone who knew their son, husband, or brother. I know that their pain never completely goes away but they also know that we share their pain. In fact, all of us at our reunions have shared the same traumatic experience. It’s a miracle that I don’t fully understand but the burden is lighter for everyone because we share it.

The first reunion I attended was in Springfield, Illinois in 2006. We received a full-blown police escort with lights and sirens and the traffic blocked at every intersection when we were bused the short distance from our hotel to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. It had been closed to the public but was open, just for us. 

It was there on that bus, in the warm embrace of my 187th brothers, that I realized that Vietnam veterans weren’t as despised as I’d thought. 

I’d finally come home.