Long Home Introduction

What is carried home from time at war?  Does it matter if your side won? Or lost?  Or if you are uncertain what the fighting was for?  

As time pushes forward, those who were soldiers once, and the rest of us really, are left with our own evolving memory - a not always reliable recall of even our most impactful experiences. What remains is recollection shaped and reshaped by time, and living, by our friends, brothers and sisters, and fellow soldiers. A work in progress, always. 

How much remembering, of sculpting our own self-portraits - after a lifetime - from when we were 19, or 22, are fully our own? What role has time, of cultural shifting, played in our own acceptance, rejection, or reinterpretation of the most intense moments of our pasts?    

With most World War II veterans gone, we can only surmise what each soldier carried with them through the decades into old age. A war fought by the young - as are all wars - we can’t reliably know how much of a soldiers’ remembrance was truly their own. How much did they forget, or bury deep?  What, if any, of their most difficult moments were shared with family, other vets, or barstool strangers? While many World War II veterans felt deep pride in their service, even grudgingly heroic, others carried the burden - in their view - of doing nothing remarkable. Collectively though, theirs felt like a just war, a war those soldiers carried forward with purpose.

And then there's the Vietnam War. The place, a minor chess piece in a complicated, muddled Cold War era struggle, barely registered in the minds of most Americans until the war effort escalated in the mid-1960s.  A decade later, with over 58,000 US military dead, a faraway country once politically cut in two, reverted fully to communist rule in what many came to believe was an uncommitted, un-winnable war.  

Vietnam War veterans, many of whom were drafted or enlisted ahead of being drafted, are now well into their 70s and 80s. The candid portraits in this series reflect lives a half century or more removed from time on the ground in Vietnam.  Most of the Vets I spoke with shared stories tinged with pride, of serving their country as best they could, but each carried with them some measure of personal conflict, of leaving part of themselves behind.  

Many of these veterans made clear they were not heroes, deflecting to buddies, some killed or badly injured in battle.  In between were poignant stories recalling the camaraderie and bonhomie unique to wartime.  Others tried in vain to push beyond their experience, sharing expressions of bitterness following unwelcome encounters back home.  There were also words of regret for failing to shed anger, yet a healthy acknowledgement of the ravages of PTSD.  Others shared very little, unwilling or unable to bring themselves back to the most poignant time in their once young lives.  

Carrying memories over five decades old, the veterans who fought in Vietnam – those remaining - are nevertheless among us, long home. 

- Mitch Conlon

Along this journey, I’ve also gained a deep empathy…read more in Long Home Closing Thoughts