I attended this gala last year. Never in my adult life have I attended such a class act event for Vietnam Veterans.  We had a table of 8 of my combat vet pals. We were awe struck with the level of respect and honor bestowed upon us…most of  us to the point of tears.  I will be back in October.  I like class and respect! It is good for longevity.

To Arizona Vietnam Veterans, families & friends:

The Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services and the Arizona Military Museum in conjunction with the Department of Defense 50^th Commemoration of the Vietnam War is proud to host the 2^nd Annual DINNER IN HONOR OF ARIZONA VIETNAM VETERANS at Wild Horse Pass Hotel and Casino in Chandler, Arizona on October 20, 2012. We are honored to have as Special Guest Speaker, Lieutenant General Claude M. Kicklighter, USA (Ret.), Director of the 50^th Commemoration of the Vietnam War project.

AS WE DID LAST YEAR, WE PRESENT THIS EVENT AND DINNER TO HONOR THE SERVICE OF ARIZONA’S VIETNAM VETERANS. Our intent is that this event be part of the 50^th Commemoration of the Vietnam War activities whose first stated objective is:

To thank and honor veterans who served in the Vietnam War, including personnel who were held as prisoners of war or listed as missing in action, for their service and sacrifice on behalf of the United States and to thank and honor the families of these veterans.

The affair will be a special experience including a Vietnamese Color Guard, a wonderful dinner, good music, some short speeches, some videos, TAPS, and a special presentation to Vietnam veterans. It is open to those who desire to honor Vietnam veterans. Business attire/casual or Army Class A or service equivalent is appropriate.  We look forward to seeing many Vietnam veterans, their families and friends. The dinner cost is $40.00 per person.  Unfortunately, the hotel can only accommodate 400 attendees, so we need your RSVP registration and check ASAP to confirm your attendance at this wonderful experience. Wild Horse Pass Hotel rooms are set aside for your convenience at only $99.00 per night, particularly if you’re travelling from outside the Phoenix area.  Just call the hotel for room reservations at 1-800-946-4452.  For other questions call 520-868-6777.

As a Vietnam veteran proud of your service or as one who desires to participate in honoring those who served in the Vietnam War, just mail your completed RSVP form with payment ASAP.   We hope that you will strongly support this meaningful event.

Colonel Joey Strickland, USA (Ret.), Director         Colonel Joseph E. Abodeely, USA (Ret.)

  Arizona Department of Veteran Services                    Director, Arizona Military Museum

Retired Army Colonel Joe Abodeely is the consummate Vietnam Combat Veteran. A platoon commander in Vietnam with the 1st Air Cav. Not shy to speak his mind, often a spark plug for dialogue, yet one of the most compassionate caring veterans alive. Col. Joe has hosted the gathering of  Veterans, known as Base Camp, the first weekend in April for decades. Veterans from all over collect on his 40 acre property in Maricopa for fellowship and fun and ongoing debate about the War that never seems to end.

God bless you Joe.

THE TRUTH ABOUT VIETNAM     by Joseph E. Abodeely, Colonel USA (Ret.)

Those who served in the Vietnam War should be very proud of the fact that they won the Tet Offensive in 1968, won the Vietnam War in January, 1973 when the Paris Peace Accords were signed, and prevented all of Southeast Asia from succumbing to Communist domination.

The United States made a solemn commitment by the SEATO Treaty in 1955 (ratified by President Eisenhower with almost unanimous advice and consent of the Senate) to come to the aid of any of the “Protocol States” of that treaty–Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), Laos, and Cambodia, requesting assistance in defense of their freedom from Communist aggression.

In the post-war era, Hanoi repeatedly admitted that its leaders made a decision on May 19, 1959, to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and send tens of thousands of soldiers and countless tons of equipment and supplies south to “liberate” South Vietnam by armed force. That was more than 5 years before the U.S. decided to send combat units to Vietnam.  The U.S. purpose to send troops to Vietnam was precisely the same purpose we sent troops to South Korea in 1950–to uphold the non-aggression principles of the UN Charter and oppose the expansion of Communism by force.

John F. Kennedy pledged to the world: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” In August 1964, Congress enacted the Southeast Asian Resolution by a combined vote of 504-2.  That was our mission.

Communist defectors used to laugh and express shock at how successful their campaign had been to portray the “National Liberation Front” to the west as something other than a classic Leninist “front” organization. Hanoi actually published an English-language translation of the proceedings of the 1960 Third Party Congress, including the resolution it approved calling for “our people” in South Vietnam to set up a front under Party leadership three months before the NLF was allegedly formed by non-Communist resistance leaders in Ben Tre.  Scholars, anti-war protesters, and the media who were duped by this deception should be ashamed of themselves.

America’s military actions in Vietnam were portrayed vividly on television, and the public got to see it “up close and personal” and experience vicariously the imperfections, brutality, and fog of war. The American people were horribly misled by the media about what was actually transpiring in Indochina. The 1968 Tet Offensive was a tremendous military defeat for the Communists, and after the May Offensive of that same year the southern “Viet Cong” had ceased to exist as a serious fighting force. Regular North Vietnamese PAVN soldiers took over the fighting, and with only U.S. air support the South Vietnamese successfully blocked their 1972 Spring Offensive. Historians now acknowledge that American counter-insurgency operations in Vietnam were succeeding during the final years of that conflict.  Anti-war protesters were wrong.

In December, 1972, President Nixon ordered the bombing of North Vietnam, and this brought the North Vietnamese to the peace table to sign the Paris Peace Accords in January, 1973.  The U.S. got our POWs returned. South Vietnam got concessions, the right to free elections, and rights including those embodied in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. The U.S. promised to resupply South Vietnam with whatever armaments it needed if North Vietnam renewed its aggression.  U.S. troops were pulled out of Vietnam in 1973, as they won the war then.

In August, 1974, Nixon got embroiled in the Watergate scandal.  In November, 1974, there was a Democratic landslide in Congress.  President Ford implored Congress to keep the U.S. promise to support South Vietnam as the North renewed its aggression.  But Congress had its own political agenda and refused. The Congressional action that truly sounded the death knell for South Vietnam and “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory” was not simply cutting aid, but passing a law (the FY 1973 Dept of State Auth. Act, Pub. L. 93-126, 87 Stat. 451) that provided:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, on or after August 15, 1973, no funds hereto-fore or hereafter appropriated may be obligated or expended to finance the involvement of United States military forces in hostilities in or over or from off the shores of North Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia, unless specifically authorized hereafter by Congress.

This guaranteed Hanoi and its allies that the United States was not going to fulfill its solemn pledge to defend those victims from aggression, and Pham Van Dong (Hanoi’s Premier) announced that the Americans would not come back “even if we offered them candy.” So Moscow and Beijing greatly increased their aid, Hanoi left only the 325th Division to defend the Hanoi area and sent the rest of its Army behind columns of Soviet-made tanks to conquer South Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia, the other Protocol States we had repeatedly pledged to protect) in a conventional military invasion.  North Vietnamese Army tanks rolled into Saigon on April 30, 1975.

The so-called “liberation” of the Protocol States was catastrophic.  An estimated 100,000 South Vietnamese were executed, as many as 250,000 more died in “reeducation camps,” and another 45-50,000 died in the “New Economic Zones”. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated 420,000 “boat people” died at sea fleeing the Communist tyranny in search of freedom. The Yale University Cambodian Genocide Project estimated 1.7 million Cambodians (more than 20% of the entire population) were killed by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. A January 2004 article on the “killing fields” in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TODAY noted that “bullets were too precious to use for executions. Axes, knives and bamboo sticks were far more common. As for children, their murderers simply battered them against trees.”

Those who helped perpetuate the myths and blatant lies distorting truth about the Vietnam War should be ashamed.  Those in Congress who threw away what the Vietnam veterans had won should be ashamed.  Vietnam veterans should be very proud of their service to their country.

[Sources:  Bruce Hershensohn (author, American political commentator, Senior Fellow at Pepperdine University), Robert F. Turner, University of Virginia. professor, author, Vietnam veteran)]

I write you from my next “duty station.” Because it is a most
important event, I want to share with you the impact and penetration
that our work in Soldier’s Heart has achieved, and how we may
continue together to bring hope, healing and positive change to our
suffering nation and world.

I have been chosen, and today begin, to provide the U.S. Army’s
CAST (Chaplaincy Annual Sustainment Training) in Post-traumatic
Stress Disorder for this year. The army annually pulls its chaplains in
from the service to give several days of rest and intensive training in
subjects the Pentagon deems most critical. Over the next 6 months,
I will meet with 2,000 chaplains on 7 different military bases. Each
time I will have a few hours to train them in our model, interpretation
and approach to healing the wound we call PTSD.

This task could not be more daunting or important. Our chaplains
are the only ones responsible for the spiritual care and tending of our
troops. Chaplains may work with up to 5,000 soldiers each. They
are of all ages and persuasions. In our war zones they receive and
tend physically, psychologically and spiritually wounded men and
women, minister to the dying and tend the souls of the slain.

In Soldier’s Heart we have been teaching that PTSD is a soul wound
and a social wound. In contrast to almost all other approaches, we
declare that such invisible devastation is inevitable in war, made
much worse under contemporary conditions, and has its source in our
souls and in our society.

Military culture is changing. Some generals have come out of
the closet admitting their PTSD. Many leaders are saying it takes
courage to admit your pain. Many are accepting military-civilian
partnerships because the wounds are too large and too many for

the military to treat alone, and they lack both resources and warrior
wisdom for bringing healing. It is in this atmosphere that I work.
I seek to carry Warrior Medicine into the Army. I seek to help
our chaplains understand that there is such a thing as spiritual
warriorhood, that military and war wounding is inevitable and must
not be treated as a pathology, weakness or illness to banish. Rather
it must be embraced as initiatory and transformative. PTSD is neither
illness nor failure, but a sacred wound.

Together we in Soldier’s Heart have responded to PTSD as the
soul and social wound it is. We have gathered, taught, supported,
loved, witnessed. We have practiced spirituality in community.
We have invoked the Sacred Warrior Spirit of all times and places.
We have gone into deep old pain together and emerged cleansed,
strengthened, healing, with hope and direction. Together we nurture
elder warriors and communities to practice truth telling, restore honor
and embrace all those who have been wounded by their time in hell.

Today, April 24, is the first of my seven trainings of the military
chaplains. I begin at Ft. Carson, CO and will travel far and wide
through September. As so many of you have, I will go where I am
needed and asked to serve. Today and for this half year, I ask you
to kindly think of me, have patience with my busy schedule and high
demands. Please send good thoughts my way, say prayers on behalf
of this work and its power to reach and teach, enlighten and inspire
our chaplains. Pray that Sacred Warrior Medicine enters our military
through this portal and contributes toward its transformation into a
peace making and healing force.

If this appointment means anything, it affirms that we small people
can, indeed, bring changes to our society and world. We must
continue. We all know how violence pervades our lives and world.
We must and can transform that practice and imbue it with soul and
spirit.

Thank you for your support and bless your healing efforts always.

Ed Tick

>There are times when commentary only interferes with the message. This is one of those times.
>
> THE WARRIOR’S CODE OF HONOR
>
>  As a combat veteran wounded in one of America’s wars, I offer to speak for
> those who cannot. Were the mouths of my fallen front-line friends not
> stopped with dust, they would testify that life revolves around honor.
> In war, it is understood that you give your word of honor to do your duty –
> that is – stand and fight instead of running away and deserting your
> friends.
> When you keep your word despite desperately desiring to flee the screaming
> hell all around, you earn honor.
>
> Earning honor under fire changes who you are.
>             The blast furnace of battle burns away impurities encrusting
> your soul.
>             The white-hot forge of combat hammers you into a hardened,
> purified warrior willing to die    rather than break your word to friends –
> your honor.
>
>  Combat is scary but exciting.
>             You never feel so alive as when being shot at without result
>             You never feel so triumphant as when shooting back – with
> result.
>             You never feel love so pure as that burned into your heart by
> friends willing to die to keep     their word to you.
>             And they do.
>
> The biggest sadness of your life is to see friends falling.
> The biggest surprise of your life is to survive the war.
> Although still alive on the outside, you are dead inside – shot thru the
> heart with nonsensical guilt for living while friends died.
> The biggest lie of your life torments you that you could have done something
> more, different, to save them.
> Their faces are the tombstones in your weeping eyes, their souls shine the
> true camaraderie you search for the rest of your life but never find.
>
> You live a different world now. You always will.
>             Your world is about waking up night after night silently
> screaming, back in battle.
>             Your world is about your best friend bleeding to death in your
> arms, howling in pain for you to kill him.
>             Your world is about shooting so many enemies the gun turns red
> and jams, letting the enemy grab you.
>             Your world is about struggling hand-to-hand for one more breath
> of life.
>
> You never speak of your world.
> Those who have seen combat do not talk about it.
> Those who talk about it have not seen combat.
>
> You come home but a grim ghost of he who so lightheartedly went off to war.
> But home no longer exists
> That world shattered like a mirror the first time you were shot at.
> The splintering glass of everything you knew fell at your feet, revealing
> what was standing behind it – grinning death – and you are face to face,
> nose to nose with it!
> The shock was so great that the boy you were died of fright.
> He was replaced by a stranger who slipped into your body, a MAN from the
> Warrior’s World.
> In that savage place, you give your word of honor to dance with death
> instead of run away from it.
> This suicidal waltz is known as: “doing your duty.”
>
> You did your duty, survived the dance, and returned home. But not all of you
> came back to the civilian world.
> Your heart and mind are still in the Warrior’s World, far beyond the Sun.
> They will always be in the Warrior’s World. They will never leave, they are
> buried there.
> In that hallowed home of honor, life is about keeping your word.
>
> People in the civilian world, however, have no idea that life is about
> keeping your word.
> They think life is about ballgames, backyards, barbecues, babies and
> business.
> The distance between the two worlds is as far as Mars from Earth.
> This is why, when you come home, you fell like an outsider, a visitor from
> another planet.
> You are.
>
> Friends try to bridge the gaping gap.
> It is useless. They may as well look up at the sky and try to talk to a
> Martian as talk to you. Words fall like bricks between you.
> Serving with Warriors who died proving their word has made prewar friends
> seem too un-tested to be trusted – thus they are now mere acquaintances.
> The hard truth is that earning honor under fire makes you a stranger in your
> own home town, an alien visitor from a different world, alone in a crowd.
>
> The only time you are not alone is when with another combat veteran.
>             Only he understands that keeping your word, your honor, whilst
> standing face to face with death gives meaning and purpose to life.
>             Only he understands that your terrifying – but thrilling – dance
> with death has made your old world of backyards, barbecues and ballgames
> seem deadly dull.
>             Only he understands that your way of being due to combat damaged
> emotions is not the un-usual, but the usual, and you are OK.
>
> A common consequence of combat is adrenaline addiction.
> Many combat veterans – including this writer – feel that war was the high
> point of our lives, and emotionally, life has been downhill ever since.
> This is because we came home adrenaline junkies. We got that way doing our
> duty in combat situations such as:
>             crouching in a foxhole waiting for attacking enemy soldiers to
> get close enough for you to start shooting;
>             hugging the ground, waiting for the signal to leap up and attack
> the enemy;
>             sneaking along on a combat patrol out in no man’s land, seeking
> a gunfight;
>             suddenly realizing that you are walking in the middle of a mine
> field.
>
> Circumstances like these skyrocket your feelings of aliveness far, far above
> and beyond anything you experienced in civilian life:
>             never have you felt so terrified – yet so thrilled;
>             never have you seen sky so blue, grass so green, breathed air so
> sweet, etc.; because dancing with death makes you feel stratospheric – nay –
> intergalactic aliveness.
>
> Then you come home, where the addictive, euphoric rush of
> aliveness/adrenaline hardly ever happens – naturally, that is.
> Then what often occurs? “Quick, pass me the motorcycle” (and /or fast car,
> drag race, speedboat, airplane, parachute, big game hunt, extreme sport,
> fist fight, gun fight, etc.)
>
>
> Another reason Warriors may find the rush of adrenaline attractive is
> because it lets them feel something rather than nothing. The dirty little
> secret no one talks about is that many combat veterans come home unable to
> feel their feelings. It works like this.
>             In battle, it is understood that you give your word of honor to
> not let your fear stop you from doing your duty. To keep your word, you must
> numb up/shut down your fear.
>             But the numb-up/shut-down mechanism does not work like a tight,
> narrow rifle shot; it works like a broad, spreading shot gun blast. Thus
> when you numb up your fear, you numb up virtually all your other feelings as
> well.
>             The more combat, the more fear you must “not feel.” You may
> become so numbed up/shut down inside that you cannot feel much of anything.
> You become what is know as “battle-hardened,” meaning that you can feel hard
> feelings like hate and anger, but not soft, tender feelings (which is bad
> news for loved ones).
>             The reason that the rush of adrenaline, alcohol, drugs,
> dangerous life style, etc. is so attractive is because you get to feel
> something, which is a step up from the awful deadness of feeling nothing.
>
>
> Although you walk thru life alone, you are not lonely.
> You have a constant companion from combat – Death.
> It stands close behind, a little to the left.
> Death whispers in your ear; “Nothing matters outside my touch, and I have
> not touched you…YET!”
> Death never leaves you – it is your best friend, your most trusted advisor,
> your wisest teacher.
> Death teaches you that every day above ground is a fine day.
> Death teaches you to feel fortunate on good days, and bad days…well, they do
> not exist.
> Death teaches you that merely seeing one more sunrise is enough to fill your
> cup of life to the
> brim – pressed down and running over!
> Death teaches you that you can postpone its touch by earning serenity.
>
> Serenity is earned by a lot of prayer and acceptance.
> Acceptance is taking one step out of denial and accepting/allowing your
> repressed, painful combat memories to be re-lived/suffered thru/shared with
> other combat vets – and thus de-fused.
> Each time you accomplish this dreaded act of courage/desperation:
>             the pain gets less;
>             more tormenting combat demons hiding in the darkness of your gut
> are thrown out into the
>             healing sunlight of awareness, thereby disappearing them;
>             the less bedeviling combat demons, the more serenity earned.
>
> Serenity is, regretfully, rather an indistinct quality, but it manifests as
> an immense feeling of fulfillment/satisfaction:
>             from having proven your honor under fire;
>             from having demonstrated to be a fact that you did your duty no
> matter what;
>             and from being grateful to Higher Power/your Creator for sparing
> you.
> It is an iron law of nature that such serenity lengthens life span to the
> max.
>
> Down thru the dusty centuries it has always been thus.
> It always will be, for what is seared into a man’s soul who stands face to
> face with death never changes.
>
>
> WRITER’S  NOTE (1)
>
>  This work attempts to describe the world as seen thru the eyes of a combat
> veteran. It is a world virtually unknown to the public because few veterans
> can talk about it.
>             This is unfortunate since people who are trying to understand,
> and make meaningful contact with combat veterans, are kept in the dark.
>             How do you establish a rapport with a combat veteran? It is very
> simple. Demonstrate to him out in the open in front of God and everybody
> that you too have a Code of Honor – that is, you also keep your work – no
> matter what!
>
> Do it and you will forge a bond between you.
> Do it not and you will not.
> End of story. Case closed.
>
> I offer these poor, inadequate words – bought not taught – in the hope that
> they may shed some small light on why combat veterans are like they are, and
> how they can fix it.
>
> It is my life desire that this tortured work, despite its many defects, may
> yet still provide some tiny sliver of understanding which may blossom into
> tolerance – nay, acceptance – of a Warrior’s perhaps unconventional way of
> being due to combat-damaged emotions from doing his duty under fire.
>
>                                      Signed, a Purple Heart Medal recipient
> who wishes to remain anonymous.
>
>
> Dedicated to absent friends in unmarked graves.
>
> Respectfully written and submitted by;
> Pete Oakander [poakander@msn.com]
> Commander of Chief Joseph Chapter 509 of the Military Order of the Purple
> Heart – Boise, Idaho
> Charter Member of American Legion Post 39 – Middleton, Idaho
> Yours in Patriotism