Forty-six -years-ago on April 30th, 1975 the Vietnam War ended with North Vietnamese troops entering Saigon and accepting the surrender of South Vietnam.
Ten years and 7-days later, there was a ticker-tape parade in New York City honoring American Vietnam War Veterans and the over 58,000 servicemen and 8 service women who died there.
© Stan Godlewski
I was 28-years-old for that, and had been in high school when the war ended, growing-up with the Vietnam War always in the background.
At 12, I watched the first televised draft lottery. At 14, my cousin sent me a hand grenade pin from basic training. At 18, I pumped gas starting at 6:00 AM weekend mornings with a Vietnam War vet, and sometimes when it was still dark and quiet, he’d sit on the metal folding chair in the garage doorway, and tell fragments of war stories. I’d try to think of something to say and then realize it was my job to just keep quiet and listen.
Relatives and neighbors had gone to the war, relatives and neighbors also had long hair and peace signs on their denim jackets and protested against it.
The war dominated the headlines. Every front page, every day. Every nightly newscast. Body counts on the screen like some depraved sports scorecard.
© Stan Godlewski
When the war finally ended it was like there was one long sigh of relief, but it was too uncomfortable to take a deep breath in again.
Ten years and seven days later, it was like we were all given permission to breath freely, and I wanted to be there.
It was May 7, 1985, a Tuesday in New York, cloudy with temperatures in the low 60’s.
They were there in their tens-of thousands, marching across the Brooklyn Bridge and along Broadway in the largest parade in the history of the city. They wore what remained of their uniforms and jungle boots, with ribbons and medals and tears and smiles of joy and recognition, as they came upon comrades they hadn’t seen since their time in Vietnam.
At a particularly poignant moment, I turned to the photographer beside me and said, “Damn, it’s hard to shoot with tears in your eyes,” and then realized it was David Burnett.
© Stan Godlewski
There are a handful of assignments that, when I think of them, I remember viscerally. I can feel them, hear them, remember exactly how I felt being in the middle of them.
The Vietnam Veterans Parade was a human wave of joy and sadness and grief and release. It was an outpouring of emotion ten-years in the making, and although I was standing in the middle of it, that was as close as I could ever get.
What those men felt that morning as they marched, and hugged, and cried, they felt for each other, and for their brothers that couldn’t be there with them. And it was painfully obvious that the rest of us were outsiders, whose job was to listen and watch and pay our respects.
Some experiences humble you forever.
© Stan Godlewski