Fifty Years Ago

Fifty years ago today, in a small Southeast Asian country, something called the Tet Offensive was launched by North Vietnamese forces.
It hardly registered on my radar. I was living in Cedar Rapids, looking forward to my divorce becoming final and planning a trip to the Virgin Islands.
One's perspective changes after you marry a Vietnam War Veteran.

As we watched CBS Sunday Morning's remembrance of the Tet Offensive, focusing on the Battle for Hue and featuring John Olson's phenomenal photography, I could only wonder about Bud's emotions, knowing how the piece was affecting me.

It would be another three months before he was sent to Vietnam, stationed near Hue.
A year after that, he would return safely home, but without the welcome accorded the vets of previous wars.

One of his classmates wasn't as fortunate. Ron Bunting had only been 'in country' a short time before he was killed February 10 in Quang Ngai Province.



I can watch memorial pieces about the war and read books about it, but I can never imagine what all the young men and women went through there. I know the experience contributed to the man he became because Bud has said he "wouldn't have missed it for the world". That alone tells me a something.