Veterans honored 50 years after start of Vietnam War

The murder of a Vietnamese girl by insurgents hours after he had slipped her a candy bar some 50 years ago near Khe Sanh made coming home from the Vietnam War hard for James Oliveri.

The sense that no one cared about the terror and the grief he and other soldiers endured during that troubling war made it even harder.

"When I came home, it was 25 years before anyone thanked us for having served," said Oliveri, a retired bank vice president who divides his time between South Hempstead and Arizona.

Oliveri, 72, was one of 31 Vietnam veterans offered a belated "Welcome Home" during a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the acknowledged start of the Vietnam War, Saturday at the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage.

The ceremony moistened the eyes of more than a few of the men. Each stepped forward and dipped his head slightly, as a medallion suspended from a yellow ribbon striped with green and red was placed around his neck.

Now gray, and with faces lined with time, they had all survived a war that was as bloody in Vietnam's jungles and rice paddies as it was controversial on America's urban streets and suburban college campuses. Many of them had long felt misunderstood -- even reviled -- by an American public that often blamed them for having fought in a war whose goals were unclear and whose successes were murky at best.

It was so for Alfonso Emery, 68, of Hempstead, a retired postal worker who served in the infantry during some of the worst fighting in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969.

In 1968, nearly 17,000 American troops perished there -- almost four times as many American deaths during that single year as during the entire Iraq War. But when Emery came home the next year, a war-divided America was in no mood to welcome him.

"When I came back from Vietnam, there was nobody at the airport to greet us except my wife," said Emery, a Brooklyn native. "It really felt good that someone recognizes us now."

Oliveri said after giving a candy bar to the granddaughter of a Vietnamese village elder, Viet Cong killed her to send a message to villagers not to cooperate with American GIs.

He said his sense of guilt was compounded by isolation, because so many Americans shunned troops returning from the war.

He said he is relieved Americans are more welcoming of returning troops, whether they agree with any given U.S. military involvement overseas.

"Now I go out in my Vietnam veteran cap, and people say, 'Thank you for your service,' " Oliveri said. "They say, 'Welcome home.' "