Long Home Closing Thoughts

If ever a modern war demanded the soldier be separated from political and military leadership, Vietnam was it.  However, as the war progressed, and sentiment against both leadership and soldiers on the ground grew increasingly loud, that distinction was lost.  Hence, many of the soldiers I interviewed - the majority of whom were drafted or enlisted ahead of being drafted - were easy fodder for those protesting the war.  To this day, many Americans have tried vainly to box up the Vietnam experience as an awkward reminder of an American wartime failure.  Even World War II Vets (their fathers and uncles) derided these soldiers for not fighting a ‘real war’, often excluding them from various veteran organizations.  During the course of this project, I became increasingly mindful of the fact that these soldiers – many of whom were mere teenagers when sent into combat - had little say on the merits of the war they were asked to fight.   

I took portraits of Vietnam veterans for reason as conflicted as the war itself.  I have no military background, and unlike virtually all the veterans I spoke with, none of my immediate family, including my father, ever served. My memories of the war period are deeply engrained, though colored by the unreliable memory of a child.  During the Tet Offensive, I was a second grader and recall nightly news footage, grainy and distant, of a far-off war.  Five years later, when the last soldier was helicoptered out of Saigon, I was in seventh grade awaiting my first kiss (it came years later). In high school, I wrote a book report about the Kent State tragedy, angered by the treatment of protestors and innocent bystanders.  By college, when walking past decked-out ROTC students, I thought of them skeptically, wondering why. 

One memory that sticks with me, and perhaps nudged my perspective a bit, was a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, about one year after its 1982 unveiling.  At the time, the memorial was not held in universally high esteem.  In fact, many Veterans and political leaders opposed the memorial both for its style and symbolism.  Against convention, the material selected for the memorial was a gloomy black granite rather than white marble. Moreover, the wall itself was partially submerged, eerily buried into the ground, unaccompanied by statues of heroic soldiers. More broadly, some commentators wondered why the Vietnam War deserved a memorial at all, least of all on precious National Mall grounds.  And finally, some war veterans were irritated upon learning the winning design came from a young woman who happened to be of Asian heritage.

Nevertheless, the memorial was built, and today, serves as a revered place of remembrance and healing for most Vietnam Vets.  It also serves as a mecca of sorts, with Veterans visiting from distant places to find the names of lost buddies, perhaps tracing a name, while battling against long boxed up memories and emotions.   

Of course, many veterans have never visited the Vietnam memorial, by choice or otherwise.  This makes the Wall That Heals, a traveling replica of the memorial, a poignant symbol for many aging Veterans.  I made a point to experience this traveling exhibit during the project, including a visit to Kalispell, Montana in the summer of 2023.  I was eager to meet with Veterans and introduce my project, careful to find the right moment to make introduction, knowing these visits to the ‘wall’ - pilgrimages for some - are often solemn or charged with emotion, with little in between. 

Over a long weekend, I had several engaging conversations, but most were polite, and heavily guarded. Not once was I able to schedule a follow up visit at a veterans’ home, or porch, my meeting spot of choice.  One long-bearded veteran, his wife alongside him, spoke briefly but made clear he rarely opened-up about his experience. Still, he shared his phone number for a possible follow up visit.  I later left a voicemail, asking to schedule a quick visit to take  some pictures.  A few days later, while I was preparing to leave town, his wife called to explain that he was not willing to meet.  She hoped otherwise, but said it was too hard for him to unleash his war memories. I was told he rarely talked about his experience, even to her, and inferred that their home was often very quiet.  It seemed she saw me, or anyone in my position, as an opportunity for her husband to slowly unburden himself.  I thanked her for trying and headed home.  

On occasion, a veteran would decline or cancel our scheduled session, unwilling or unable to dust off old memories.  More often though, it seems I served as a non-threatening presence, one who would listen, be empathetic, and most importantly, soon be out of their lives. It didn’t take long for me to learn that many veterans rarely talked about their experience to anyone, including their wives or fellow veterans.  To their credit, some openly shared leaning on the VA for clinical help for PTSD. Nevertheless, there were instances where it appeared I was the first person they openly talked to in decades, and it showed.  

Many veterans were eager to show me things, including awards, pictures or mementos. Others offered gifts or extended offers to stay the night. In a particularly poignant moment, one veteran shared his worn, yet well-organized photo albums, including pictures of himself in uniform, playful or grim looking shots of buddies in his unit, along with Vietnamese women and kids smiling along dirt roads or small villages.  To my surprise, mixed in were pictures he took of Vietnamese soldiers dead on the ground, some quite graphic.  I then came across a page with the word STOP hand-written along the top of the album.  I asked what that meant.  He said his wife placed it there, hoping to stop him from viewing the photo albums, which he had done obsessively for years.  She tossed out many of the more gruesome pictures, which was evident given the empty spaces on many subsequent pages.  He then told me, with distant glistening eyes, the photo albums in front of us hadn’t been opened in a very long time.    

Wives came to play a critical role in my project.  At first, when entering a home, my small recorder and camera in hand, I hoped for candid one on one conversations, believing a spouse or partner listening in would inhibit our time together.  I later dropped that notion.  A spouse or partner was present in perhaps a third of my conversations, sometimes sitting nearby, but just as often walking in and out, casually going about their day. Some were second marriages, or third, but quite often, the couple had been together through it all, married or engaged before or soon after the war.   For combat veterans, many of whom still battle with PTSD (often undiagnosed), having loved ones alongside them helping hold the pieces together requires an enormous amount of patience, resolve, and love. I came to admire these women, many of whom suffered tremendously, yet played an active role in their husbands’ recovery.  Others, largely shut out from their partners’ buried past, remain at a loss to this day, uncertain how to help.  Yet somehow, they haven’t walked away.  

Near the end of my project, I attended a small-town ceremony where visitors gathered to honor fallen veterans and view a replica of the veterans’ wall. One guest speaker, a well-spoken Vietnam Veteran, began his comments by lightly mocking the “flower children” and their ceaseless ‘all we are saying is give peace a chance’ mantra.  He then proclaimed victory, noting these once flower children are “now on our side”.   A few in the sparse audience chuckled, before the speaker proceeded with an otherwise conventional tribute to fallen veterans.   I stood there wondering, what side was he referring to - the side not for peace?  I understood the speaker was addressing a like-minded audience, but his spinning the Vietnam War into sides for and against was a certain miss.  

Talking with these former soldiers, for a period, became habit-forming, pulling me in each day.  I relished tracking down subjects for my project, believing an introductory phone call would turn into a compelling story, and important to me, a face worthy of the style of portraiture I wanted to convey in Long Home.  Like any compulsion, mine was complicated. I fed on the entire process, eager to share my vision, and seek out veterans willing to sit down and reveal fragments of their story.  My reward was the chance for engaged, honest conversations and a few good portraits. Many of these conversations proved disappointing – merely surface level and heavily guarded – revealing my inability to crack into another persons’ distant and often complex past.  Mixed in though were heart-breaking stories, expressing more vulnerability and generosity than I imagined.  

Even so, some of these visits left me feeling off-kilter, oddly bereft of empathy.  In hindsight, I was ill-prepared for the range of stories and perspective shared, as conflicted as they were.   On one trip, I met with a Veteran decades home from war who lost his job because he would never work alongside ”no gook”.  Conversely, another veteran later took in Vietnamese exchange students to help himself heal from some of the troubling things he did in battle.  One veteran suggested that protestors, while often misguided in directing their anger at soldiers, helped saved countless lives thanks to their ceaseless political pressure to get Americans out of the war. Another suggested our political and military leadership was grossly incompetent, and later indifferent, arguing we should have blown the damn place up.  

Americans were told Vietnam was a war against communist expansion, which, even at the height of the Cold War, proved a far murkier purpose than, say, putting a stop to Hitler’s wretchedness.  More than a half-century after the last American helicoptered out of Vietnam, the final reckoning of that war was not defined by ideology, or good versus evil, but rather by it’s questionable purpose and conclusion.  Ultimately, reconciling the Vietnam War remains a difficult proposition.  The Cold War era struggle failed by most measures, and that failure lingers to this day, reflected in the eyes of those doing the fighting. 

Traveling the country and speaking with men and women who fought in Vietnam, I learned a great deal about war, and soldiers.  Along this journey, I’ve also gained a deep empathy.  While Jane Fonda continues to symbolize the aggrieved Vietnam Veteran experience, many of those I spoke with concluded the war was a fruitless effort, but more profoundly, a waste of promising young lives. Others said they would do it all over again.  My experience, like the war and those who fought it, left me perplexed, proud, and powerfully saddened by the wreckage of war.

- Mitch Conlon