March 29th is Vietnam Veterans Day. It marks the day the last American combat troops were finally withdrawn from Vietnam, forty years ago.
Well, not all of them. 1600 troops are still officially missing in Vietnam.
I grew up with Vietnam hanging over my family. My grandmother was a Gold Star Mother, which is what the government calls you when you’ve lost a child in war. She never rode in the Veterans Day parades on that sad float with all the other mothers in Belmont, Massachusetts (not Mitt Romney’s side of town) who had lost their sons. But Uncle Allan’s name is etched in granite in the town square. Continue reading