Richard
11-08-2011, 17:38
An unbreakable bond.
Over the years, more than 42 million men and women have served in our armed forces. In honor of Veterans Day this Friday, PARADE invited six of them—one each from six of this nation’s wars—to talk about what it means to be an American soldier. The scenes of their service have varied widely, from the Pacific theater of World War II to the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, yet these veterans all share one quality: a powerful sense of duty.
Richard :munchin
Six Wars, Six Vets, Six Stories of Courage
Parade, 6 Nov 2011
Part 1 of 2
PARADE: Tell me about going off to war.
YONAS HAGOS (Iraq): There were about 20 of us. We were picked up, got to base. That’s when you knew it was real. That night, the president announced we were going to war with Iraq. I remember one of the sergeants clearly stating, “Half of you will come back either wounded or in body bags.” There was silence in the room.
TOM COREY (Vietnam): It was hard, knowing that I might not come back whole. I thought that I might lose a limb. I never thought of being paralyzed.
TRACY GARNER (Desert Storm): I shipped out about 3 in the morning, on a very cold, snowy day. It was the first time I ever saw tears in my dad’s eyes.
PARADE: Sarah, what was it like saying goodbye to your kids?
SARAH LETTS-SMITH (Afghanistan, Iraq): How do you tell an 18-month-old, “I’m not going to see you for a year”? And when they’re older, in some ways it’s even harder because they understand. There’s no good way for moms—or dads, for that matter. Leaving your kids is really, really difficult.
PARADE: Give me that moment when you’re in Afghanistan, in a dangerous situation, and you think about your kids at home.
LETTS-SMITH: You don’t think about your kids at home when you’re in a dangerous situation. You think about the dangerous situation.
PARADE: What word would you use to describe what you saw?
VARTKESS TARBASSIAN (Korea): Mayhem. Korea was a country pocked with shell-burst holes. The hills were devoid of trees. They were burnt and completely blasted away. The countryside was desolate. You didn’t run into many civilians. They had all fled southward as we progressed northward towards the front.
COREY: It wasn’t like what I learned in training. You just had to feel it, the heat and the noise and the screaming and somebody’s down and somebody needs help and the fire—everything going on in a battle. And then your friends drop in front of you and behind you, and it was them and not you, and [you think], who is next?
PARADE: What keeps you up at night now?
TARBASSIAN: After I got back, my mother used to come in, shake me and wake me up, because I’d be screaming in my sleep that the Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming. That wasn’t the case, of course. But it took me about a year or two just to get over that experience.
COREY: My problem from the war is the wheelchair, not the PTSD. It’s a constant battle. It’s pain. It never leaves.
HAGOS: When I was hit, my M-16 flew out of my hands, my Kevlar fell off my head, and I was dangling 10 feet above the ground. The guy on the side of the Howitzer grabbed my boots, pulled me inside. I was pronounced dead over the -radio. I was out for 45 seconds to a minute, no pulse. I remember getting up. I looked to my left and saw chunks of my shoulder pretty much missing. I remember coughing up blood. And then the pain kicked in. I was screaming. The medic saved my life: She was getting the IV going and trying to stop the bleeding and calming me down, helping me.
PARADE: Do you see yourself as a hero?
HAGOS: No. I went and served my country. I did my part.
PARADE: What does your Purple Heart mean to you?
HAGOS: This country has done so much for me. I came here as a foreigner, and I felt like I had to pay it back somehow. Having the Purple Heart is a reminder that I’ve paid my debt, for me and my family.
PARADE: Speaking of family, how do your kids feel about having a military mom?
LETTS-SMITH: I hope they’re proud. It’s been tough for them, but I think it’s made them stronger. I got my first deployment orders on Christmas Eve 2001. People then didn’t pay attention to military families, the kids left behind. At one point, I had a child who was really struggling in school. I remember feeling extremely frustrated that the teachers didn’t seem to recognize how difficult it was for this little guy with his mom gone. There wasn’t any safety net. Since that time, they’ve introduced a lot of things.
PARADE: What was it like to come home?
BOB KESSLER (World War II): My brother and my father met me at Penn Station, and my grandfather had put a banner across the top of the house: “Welcome home, Bob!” I had just turned 20.
PARADE: Was it like the famous scene in Times Square? Was every girl running up to you and getting kissed?
KESSLER: Well … there might’ve been a few!
PARADE: Tell me about walking on terra firma again.
KESSLER: The ship I was on had a semi-round bottom, so I got accustomed to walking as the ship rolled. The sidewalks in San Pedro, where I first disembarked, don’t move that way, so at first I must have looked like I was drunk even though I hadn’t had a drink.
PARADE: Vartkess, you had a different experience.
TARBASSIAN: Korea was not a popular war. I was deposited by the railroad at South Station in Boston and took the subway home. I was in my uniform, and it didn’t mean a thing to anybody. The other passengers looked out the windows or went about their business reading the paper. I didn’t exist. And I said, “What’s going on here?” I thought somebody would say, “Welcome home.” But that never happened.
PARADE: How did you feel about that?
TARBASSIAN: Very depressed. I’d think, “This is something you did for all these people riding the train, reading their papers, and they don’t even say hello to you.”
COREY: My arrival was different ’cause I came home on a medical aircraft to an army hospital, so I missed what most veterans went through. We all heard the stories about going through airports, seeing the protests, being called names. No respect for what you did. Nobody wanted to talk to you or congratulate you—sometimes not even your family. So a lotta guys got rid of their uniforms, threw ’em in the -closet and went on with their lives. A lot of ’em are still trying to get their lives together today.
PARADE: How did it make you feel when you saw the protests on TV?
COREY: I was angry. God let me survive, but I had friends back in Vietnam who were trying to get home to their families. I wanted to get out of bed, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even talk.
PARADE: Tracy, was it any different coming home from Iraq?
GARNER: Very different. Coming back to the States, we had a one-night layover at Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts. When we arrived, there were close to 1,000 people, arms open, hugging us.
PARADE: What did that reception mean to you?
GARNER: A lot. I felt that the people who showed up respected what we did over there.
PARADE: Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day, and it was begun after World War I, the so-called “war to end all wars.” The six of you have fought in six wars since that time. What does that say about us and war?
GARNER: I personally believe war is something that we will never get away from. It’s going to go through generation after generation after generation.
COREY: We need to think a lot more before we get involved. I don’t have any good things to say about war.
HAGOS: Three words—war is hell.
LETTS-SMITH: What I find amazing is that years later, you can go back and befriend the people you once considered an enemy. The human condition is the same throughout the world. So I think that while wars will be fought, the beautiful thing is that maybe one day you’ll be able to go back and relate not as a soldier, but as a person.
COREY: They’re the same as us—human beings. They care. When I went back to Vietnam—and I’ve been back a lot—it was so healing for them and for us to know we cared about each other. We were put into war by politicians, and we were only doing our jobs. They were just defending their country.
(cont'd)
Over the years, more than 42 million men and women have served in our armed forces. In honor of Veterans Day this Friday, PARADE invited six of them—one each from six of this nation’s wars—to talk about what it means to be an American soldier. The scenes of their service have varied widely, from the Pacific theater of World War II to the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, yet these veterans all share one quality: a powerful sense of duty.
Richard :munchin
Six Wars, Six Vets, Six Stories of Courage
Parade, 6 Nov 2011
Part 1 of 2
PARADE: Tell me about going off to war.
YONAS HAGOS (Iraq): There were about 20 of us. We were picked up, got to base. That’s when you knew it was real. That night, the president announced we were going to war with Iraq. I remember one of the sergeants clearly stating, “Half of you will come back either wounded or in body bags.” There was silence in the room.
TOM COREY (Vietnam): It was hard, knowing that I might not come back whole. I thought that I might lose a limb. I never thought of being paralyzed.
TRACY GARNER (Desert Storm): I shipped out about 3 in the morning, on a very cold, snowy day. It was the first time I ever saw tears in my dad’s eyes.
PARADE: Sarah, what was it like saying goodbye to your kids?
SARAH LETTS-SMITH (Afghanistan, Iraq): How do you tell an 18-month-old, “I’m not going to see you for a year”? And when they’re older, in some ways it’s even harder because they understand. There’s no good way for moms—or dads, for that matter. Leaving your kids is really, really difficult.
PARADE: Give me that moment when you’re in Afghanistan, in a dangerous situation, and you think about your kids at home.
LETTS-SMITH: You don’t think about your kids at home when you’re in a dangerous situation. You think about the dangerous situation.
PARADE: What word would you use to describe what you saw?
VARTKESS TARBASSIAN (Korea): Mayhem. Korea was a country pocked with shell-burst holes. The hills were devoid of trees. They were burnt and completely blasted away. The countryside was desolate. You didn’t run into many civilians. They had all fled southward as we progressed northward towards the front.
COREY: It wasn’t like what I learned in training. You just had to feel it, the heat and the noise and the screaming and somebody’s down and somebody needs help and the fire—everything going on in a battle. And then your friends drop in front of you and behind you, and it was them and not you, and [you think], who is next?
PARADE: What keeps you up at night now?
TARBASSIAN: After I got back, my mother used to come in, shake me and wake me up, because I’d be screaming in my sleep that the Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming. That wasn’t the case, of course. But it took me about a year or two just to get over that experience.
COREY: My problem from the war is the wheelchair, not the PTSD. It’s a constant battle. It’s pain. It never leaves.
HAGOS: When I was hit, my M-16 flew out of my hands, my Kevlar fell off my head, and I was dangling 10 feet above the ground. The guy on the side of the Howitzer grabbed my boots, pulled me inside. I was pronounced dead over the -radio. I was out for 45 seconds to a minute, no pulse. I remember getting up. I looked to my left and saw chunks of my shoulder pretty much missing. I remember coughing up blood. And then the pain kicked in. I was screaming. The medic saved my life: She was getting the IV going and trying to stop the bleeding and calming me down, helping me.
PARADE: Do you see yourself as a hero?
HAGOS: No. I went and served my country. I did my part.
PARADE: What does your Purple Heart mean to you?
HAGOS: This country has done so much for me. I came here as a foreigner, and I felt like I had to pay it back somehow. Having the Purple Heart is a reminder that I’ve paid my debt, for me and my family.
PARADE: Speaking of family, how do your kids feel about having a military mom?
LETTS-SMITH: I hope they’re proud. It’s been tough for them, but I think it’s made them stronger. I got my first deployment orders on Christmas Eve 2001. People then didn’t pay attention to military families, the kids left behind. At one point, I had a child who was really struggling in school. I remember feeling extremely frustrated that the teachers didn’t seem to recognize how difficult it was for this little guy with his mom gone. There wasn’t any safety net. Since that time, they’ve introduced a lot of things.
PARADE: What was it like to come home?
BOB KESSLER (World War II): My brother and my father met me at Penn Station, and my grandfather had put a banner across the top of the house: “Welcome home, Bob!” I had just turned 20.
PARADE: Was it like the famous scene in Times Square? Was every girl running up to you and getting kissed?
KESSLER: Well … there might’ve been a few!
PARADE: Tell me about walking on terra firma again.
KESSLER: The ship I was on had a semi-round bottom, so I got accustomed to walking as the ship rolled. The sidewalks in San Pedro, where I first disembarked, don’t move that way, so at first I must have looked like I was drunk even though I hadn’t had a drink.
PARADE: Vartkess, you had a different experience.
TARBASSIAN: Korea was not a popular war. I was deposited by the railroad at South Station in Boston and took the subway home. I was in my uniform, and it didn’t mean a thing to anybody. The other passengers looked out the windows or went about their business reading the paper. I didn’t exist. And I said, “What’s going on here?” I thought somebody would say, “Welcome home.” But that never happened.
PARADE: How did you feel about that?
TARBASSIAN: Very depressed. I’d think, “This is something you did for all these people riding the train, reading their papers, and they don’t even say hello to you.”
COREY: My arrival was different ’cause I came home on a medical aircraft to an army hospital, so I missed what most veterans went through. We all heard the stories about going through airports, seeing the protests, being called names. No respect for what you did. Nobody wanted to talk to you or congratulate you—sometimes not even your family. So a lotta guys got rid of their uniforms, threw ’em in the -closet and went on with their lives. A lot of ’em are still trying to get their lives together today.
PARADE: How did it make you feel when you saw the protests on TV?
COREY: I was angry. God let me survive, but I had friends back in Vietnam who were trying to get home to their families. I wanted to get out of bed, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even talk.
PARADE: Tracy, was it any different coming home from Iraq?
GARNER: Very different. Coming back to the States, we had a one-night layover at Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts. When we arrived, there were close to 1,000 people, arms open, hugging us.
PARADE: What did that reception mean to you?
GARNER: A lot. I felt that the people who showed up respected what we did over there.
PARADE: Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day, and it was begun after World War I, the so-called “war to end all wars.” The six of you have fought in six wars since that time. What does that say about us and war?
GARNER: I personally believe war is something that we will never get away from. It’s going to go through generation after generation after generation.
COREY: We need to think a lot more before we get involved. I don’t have any good things to say about war.
HAGOS: Three words—war is hell.
LETTS-SMITH: What I find amazing is that years later, you can go back and befriend the people you once considered an enemy. The human condition is the same throughout the world. So I think that while wars will be fought, the beautiful thing is that maybe one day you’ll be able to go back and relate not as a soldier, but as a person.
COREY: They’re the same as us—human beings. They care. When I went back to Vietnam—and I’ve been back a lot—it was so healing for them and for us to know we cared about each other. We were put into war by politicians, and we were only doing our jobs. They were just defending their country.
(cont'd)