I have never been mindful of veterans.  Military service is a concept so far removed from my plans for the future that I have never considered the cost and the rewards of such devotion.  When I heard about a soldier dying in the line of duty, I simply shuddered, offered a grateful prayer that there is no longer a draft to pull my older brothers into such danger, and moved on.  Not once did I ever think of the reasons a person might have for entering such service, nor did I consider what I owed to the survivors – the veterans.  That all changed after I visited the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial last year.

In keeping with my disregard of veterans, my visit to the Memorial was not exactly voluntary.  I was nearing the end of my high school junior year and my AP United States History II class.  The history department told us about the annual trip to the Memorial, and I agreed to go because I did not want to receive the heavy workload that was the other option.  Even though my friends were going too, I did not anticipate finding anything to enjoy.  I certainly didn’t expect to feel so strongly about it.

At that same time I was struggling with my Girl Scout Gold Award Project.  I have been a Girl Scout for 13 years now, and I really wanted to follow in my older sisters’ footsteps and receive the Gold Award.  I had an idea for a project, involving a writer’s workshop at the local library, but for some reason nothing was really working out.  I had no real motivation for the project and my mother was despairing of my completion of the project.  I considered changing projects, but I could find nothing else that really appealed to me.

As I listened at the Memorial to the recordings of the many soldiers and read the sweet letters home, I felt a bittersweet gratitude tug at my heart.  No longer were the hundreds and thousands of names and gravestones merely numbers.  They were people – fathers, mothers, brother, sons, wives, husbands, sisters and daughters.  They loved and were loved.  They cared about which singer was popular, and which girl was dating which guy, and they missed every detail about their families’ lives.  I had to fight back tears.  So many people had died, and for what?

Then I went outside and looked at the statues and the black wall with the names on it.  I saw the trees and the beautiful sky.  I wondered, why did all those people fight?  Yes, there was a draft, but many of the signed up willingly.  More importantly, they all fought as much as they could before they were killed or allowed to come home.  Did they sign up for the glory?  I hoped not.  They received no glory, no respect, and no gratitude.  The veteran explaining the Memorial told my class that America seemed to hate her soldiers.  He angrily said that they were spit upon, they were reviled, and they were abused.  If the soldiers came to Vietnam looking for glory, they were sorely disappointed.

I continued to wonder what motivation they had, until the veteran told us the reason.  They were patriotic.  The soldiers loved their country and their world.  They loved the trees and the big, blue sky.  They loved their families and their friends.  They loved their freedom and they wanted everyone to have that same freedom.  I realized this, and the threat of tears grew even stronger.  I felt a rush of gratitude and shame.  The veterans deserve so much and were given so little.  Their families deserve so much more than the small bit given them.  When the veteran told us about Gold Star Mothers and begged us to at least honor those women who sacrificed their children, I made my decision.  I changed my Gold Award project right there.  My new focus would no longer be reading or writing; it would be veterans and patriotism.

I discussed this new idea with Mom, and in almost no time at all, I was calling a veteran and asking him how I could publicly show gratitude to the veterans.  I wanted to perhaps do a banquet or a concert, but he told me that both ideas were bad.  So I considered other options.  Finally I hit upon a four-part project.  I assembled about 70 gift bags for a platoon of active soldiers during the winter holidays.  I fringed fleece blankets for those same soldiers to donate to orphanages to create goodwill.  I enlisted my friends’ help to decorate 96 denim squares for an organization, Operation: Quiet Comforts, to work into a denim quilt for a wounded veteran.  Finally, I organized an evening program at my church and asked three veterans to come in and speak about patriotism and their service.  In this way I did indeed have a banquet, for we provided food for the speakers and the audience.

My favorite part of this entire project was the chance it gave me to serve – though through small means – the people that gave everything they had to serve me.  I was able to look at three veterans and firmly say, “thank you for your service.  I appreciate it.”  I understand a little better, now, the great sacrifice that each soldier has made in every war in the history of this world and why he makes it.  I even feel more desirous to serve my country and live up to the veterans’ legacy, though in a fashion different from theirs.  My visit to the Memorial started to change me; the project it led me to continued and made permanent that change.

I want to go back to the Memorial.  I want to look at the names on the black wall again and tell them, I told people.  I reminded people of your patriotism and love, and I have begun serving today’s soldiers, since you are beyond my service.  I want to find that veteran who awoke my grief and guilt and tell him what I did.  I want to show him my Gold Award and tell him that it is all thanks to him.  Maybe I will, one day.  Until I do, though, I’ll simply have to be satisfied with my memory of that field trip, when everything I thought I knew and felt about veterans changed.

Barbara J. Slaugh
Scotch Plains, NJ