OT: With Echoes of Their War, Veterans Greet Iraq Soldiers

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/11colnj.html?ref=nyr\

egionspecial2

May 11, 2008

With Echoes of Their War, Veterans Greet Iraq Soldiers

By KEVIN COYNE

Fort Dix

 

THE old soldiers squared their shoulders and arranged themselves in

line, a dozen strong, as a bus rounded the corner carrying what they

had once been themselves: Americans in uniform, at the end of a long

journey back from a distant war whose burdens have been shared

unequally at home. The Iraq veterans stepped out, and the Vietnam

veterans offered what they wish someone had once offered them.

 

“Welcome home,†Michael Engi said, firmly gripping the hands of the

weary, sunburned soldiers who clattered off the bus in combat

fatigues, M-16s slung over their shoulders, and continued along the line.

 

“Glad to have you back,†said Donald Smieszek, 61, who has two Purple

Hearts, one from Good Friday in 1967, when half his company was killed

on a patrol outside An Hoa.

 

“Welcome home, Sarge,†said George Tosh, 69, who lost both legs on his

second tour of duty in Vietnam in 1968 when he was leading a patrol

back to base camp near Da Nang and stepped on a land mine.

 

For thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan each

year, their first steps back in the United States are on the sandy

soil of this old army base that sprawls across the pines of southern

New Jersey †" the same base that Mr. Engi reported to in 1969 from his

home in nearby Bordentown, when he was 19 and on his way to Vietnam;

and that he returns to several times each week, to welcome home

another flight of soldiers.

 

Sometimes only a handful of members of the group he leads, Vietnam

Veterans of America Chapter 899, can make it, and sometimes as many as

20 do; but since December 2004, he has tried to make sure that no

soldiers come home the way he did in 1970: to no one.

 

“They’ve been doing it long before I was here, and they’ll be doing it

after I’m gone,†said Capt. Ben King, commander for the last year of

Bravo Company, Mobilization Readiness Battalion, which processed 77

returning Army Reserve and National Guard units in 2007, a total of

5,381 soldiers. (Fort Dix has bustled in recent years as the busiest

training, departure and return base for the Reserve and Guard units

the current wars have depended so heavily upon.) “They just talk to

them to make them feel like people again instead of soldiers.â€

 

A second bus unloaded, and then, a few minutes later, the third and

final one of the day †" 60 soldiers in all whose plane had just landed

at adjacent McGuire Air Force Base, most of them members of the 535th

Military Police Battalion who had spent nine months guarding 4,000

detainees at an internment facility near the Baghdad airport. As the

soldiers made their way along the line of Vietnam veterans, a few of

the handshakes became embraces.

 

“If we don’t come out, who’s going to be here?†asked Mr. Engi, 59, a

retired Burlington County sheriff’s officer who enlisted in the Army

after high school and served with the 13th Artillery Battalion in the

central highlands of Vietnam. “Nobody, and we know how that felt.â€

 

Many of his fellow veterans have harsh memories of homecomings similar

to Mr. Engi’s: the long flight across the Pacific; arriving at Fort

Lewis, Wash., to find antiwar protesters at the gate; a steak dinner,

a new Class A uniform and, a few hours later, a ticket home on a

commercial flight loaded with civilians who sometimes glared and

muttered curses.

 

“No matter how unpopular the war might be, you have to recognize that

these soldiers are your next-door neighbors, your brothers and

sisters,†Mr. Engi said. “We’re not here for any political agenda;

we’re not here for anybody’s agenda. We’re here for the soldiers.â€

 

Soldiers travel mostly in units now †" instead of going home by

themselves when their tours ended, as they did during the Vietnam War

†" and after the reception line the new arrivals trooped into the

red-brick auditorium where the U.S.O. was serving hot dogs, and

Captain King’s unit was ready with the first of many briefings. They

would remain at Fort Dix for seven days, demobilizing, before

returning to their unit’s home, in Garner, N.C. They rose as one and

applauded as the Vietnam veterans were introduced, and Mr. Engi stood

before them to speak.

 

“We’re proud of what you guys did, how you stepped up to the plate,

just like we did when it was our turn,†Mr. Engi said, and he gestured

toward his fellow Vietnam veterans. He got another standing ovation

when he finished, and the young soldiers drifted off to turn in their

weapons and find their barracks.

 

“We get more out of it than they do,†Mr. Smieszek said as he helped

clean up. He and the other Vietnam veterans also return two evenings

each week to visit wounded soldiers at the Warrior Transition Unit

here. “It’s better than any parade or anything.â€

 

Among the returning soldiers, one lingered: Command Sgt. Maj. Jim

Parker, 57, who had embraced his fellow Vietnam veterans when he got

off the bus. “It’s getting to be kind of a thing that older soldiers

do now,†he said, and he was grateful for the welcome. “Everybody

wants to know they’re appreciated.â€

 

He was an Army Ranger in Vietnam from 1971 to 1972, and then a

reservist in Afghanistan in 2004 before his deployment to Iraq. He and

Mr. Engi, it turned out, had left for Vietnam from the same base they

had returned to today, and they stood talking for a while in the warm

spring sun, not quite all the way home yet, but closer.

 

Veterans Helping Veterans

 

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is

distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior

interest in receiving the included information for research and

educational purposes. Reference:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

[Guest guest]

ATFE2 , " Butch Owen " <butchowen wrote:

>

> ings similar

> to Mr. Engi’s: the long flight across the Pacific; arriving at Fort

> Lewis, Wash., to find antiwar protesters at the gate;

 

Thank you Butch for posting this, I remember when loved ones and

friends returned from VietNam, they were treated by the " protesters " by

throwing garbage on them, name calling and every type of mental and

sometimes physical harm they could spew.

Sue