Opinion: Fallen soldiers stay young in our memories

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Way back when Harding Hall was a men’s dormitory at South Dakota State, my roommate and I subscribed to a daily newspaper and a weekly newsmagazine.

Guys in at least two other rooms on our floor had newspapers delivered, and at least one other room got a newsmagazine. We used to trade issues around, and during some of the bull sessions in the evenings we’d talk about current events. I lived in Harding my junior year, 1964-65, and more and more often as the year went by, the current events involved a growing United States military presence in Vietnam.

It was a time when the Selective Service System, the military draft, was operational. Most of us in the dorms were of draft age. That means most of us probably were at State on a college deferment, although the fighting hadn’t really escalated yet to the point that there was intense draft pressure.

My senior year, I lived off campus with three other guys. One of them was my roommate, John, from Harding Hall. The other two were guys from Clark. The Clark guys were military veterans. One had been in the Army before he enrolled at State; the other had been in the Navy. They followed the Vietnam buildup in the middle ’60s with much more than a passing interest, and they had a better practical grasp of what was going on and what it might mean for the country and its young men than I did.

My two military veteran roommates paid particularly close attention to events in November of 1965. That’s when American soldiers squared off in a massive, weekslong battle with North Vietnamese regulars in a place called the Ia Drang Valley. A United Press International reporter named Joe Galloway was there. He collaborated with Lt. Gen. Hal Moore on a book about part of the battle. Moore commanded some of the American force in the valley. The book is titled “We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young.”

Several years ago, Galloway’s book became a movie with Mel Gibson as the general and Barry Pepper as the UPI reporter. The book is better than the film, but the film is moving. The book and the movie are just a couple of many accounts available about the people and events of the Vietnam War.

As a kid, I watched the popular war movies of the day, “To Hell and Back,” “The Bridges at Toko-Ri,” “From Here to Eternity,” and others. The scenes and people in those movies were somewhat like the older veterans in my town, fascinating but a bit beyond my world. I was an adult before I developed an interest in histories and novels about the soldiers of World War II and Korea.

Vietnam was the war that hit my generation. I didn’t serve, but my roommate John enlisted after college. Several of my buddies from back home enlisted or were drafted. It was the first time I actually knew soldiers who were fighting for our country. They were no longer heroes on the movie screen or in a book but kids I knew, and they were a generation of our country’s military veterans.

That was a couple of generations ago. The men and women my age in the military gradually were replaced by men and women my kids’ ages. The soldiers these days, some of them, are my grandkids’ ages. Most of the Vietnam soldiers of my generation did their tours and returned. Some — too many — did not. Most of the kids in the military today — this generation’s soldiers — are the same way. They accept their orders, serve their time and come home. Some — always too many — do not return or come back scarred and wounded.

Tomorrow, Veterans Day, I’ll have a good thought for past generations of veterans and for those serving today. I’ll also remember some good times with a couple of college friends who didn’t make it home. They were soldiers once. In my memory, they are still young.

Terry Woster’s columns are published Wednesdays and Saturdays in The Daily Republic.

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