Honoring veterans
The event takes place Monday- Wednesday, March 27-29. Here’s the lineup:› March 27 Supper and Pinning Ceremony at 5:30 p.m. at First Tennessee Pavilion, 1826 Carter St.› March 28 Showings of the movie “We Were Soldiers,” 10 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m., Tivoli Theatre, 709 Broad St.› March 29 Candlelight memorial event at 6 p.m. at the National Cemetery, 1200 Bailey Ave.
When Chris Linville got out of the Navy in 1969 after serving on the front lines as a Navy corpsman during the Vietnam conflict, he returned to Tennessee and signed up for night classes at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
During one class, a fellow student went around to the other students, asking everyone to show up for an anti-war rally the next day.
"I got quite agitated and went home and dug out my uniform my medals and wore it the next day," Linville says.
He was cursed and shunned by his fellow students for the rest of the semester and didn't touch the uniform again until many years later when he felt a need to reconnect with his past. As part of that reconnection, he got involved in a few veterans organizations.
Just last month, he ran into a guy wearing a Vietnam veteran ballcap and realized it was a dad he had coached youth baseball with years ago.
"Our sons were best friends and neither of us knew the other had served because we never talked about it," Linville says. Even after more than 40 years, "lot of guys don't feel comfortable yet."
His experience returning home after the unpopular war is fairly typical for Vietnam veterans, but the Department of Defense and fellow vets are trying to do something about it. Veterans who served during the conflict, primarily from 1965 to 1975, will be honored during three days of events, including a pinning ceremony and dinner, from Monday-Wednesday, March 27-29.
The U.S. Senate declared March 29 as "Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day" in 2011 and groups around the country have been holding ceremonies since. A small one was held at the National Cemetery in Chattanooga last year, but a local committee has been working all year to put together a bigger event this year.
The committee is working with Chapter 203 of the Vietnam Veterans of America and seven area chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, as well as the city and county mayors offices on this year's events.
Bud Alley is event chairman and says this year's three-day event will include a supper and a ceremony to give veterans a Vietnam War Commemorative Lapel Pin at First Tennessee Pavilion on March 27, three showings at the Tivoli Theatre of the movie "We Were Soldiers Once," starring Mel Gibson and based on the book "We Were Soldiers Once And Young" by Joe Galloway and Lt. Gen (ret.) Hal Moore, on March 28 and a candlelight event at the National Cemetery on March 29.
While here, Galloway will conduct 14 interviews of veterans at Girls Preparatory School and those oral histories will be filmed and sent to the National Archives and the Department of Defense.
Willie Kitchens and Jericho Brass will provide entertainment at the pavilion event, and several local vendors will be providing food.
Galloway was a foreign and war correspondent who covered several wars, including Vietnam, during his career. "We Were Soldiers Once And Young" focuses on the role of the First and Second Battalions of the 7th Cavalry Regiment in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, the United States' first large-unit battle of the war. Alley has written his own account of the fighting in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965 where he stationed as a young soldier.
Alley says the events here in March are designed to finally honor the soldiers who fought and, in some cases, gave their lives during the war. The names of all 124 soldiers from the area who were killed in action will be read during the candlelight service at the National Cemetery. These veterans have mostly been ignored or forgotten over the years because of the political and social hotbed that was the war, he says.
Soldiers, who were often teenagers right out of high school or just entering college, were spit on and called things like "baby killer" upon returning home. Many withdrew into themselves and rarely talk about their experience, much less participate in social activities with other veterans.
Linville, a member of the events committee, says, "It's easier for vets to talk to another veteran."
"We want veterans to come out of the woods," Alley says. "This is a safe perimeter."
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.