Post Messenger Recorder -

April 2015 marks the end of two horrific blots on American history. April 9th was commemorated as the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, as General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General U. S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.

Today, April 30, marks the end of the Vietnam War, a tragic war that tore America apart at the seams. Vietnam can perhaps be best described as a long and senseless war that tore families and numerous nations apart. The 20-year long war that began in 1955 claimed between 1.5 and 3.6 million people, with fully half of the casualties being civilians.

America's involvement began in 1955, one year after the French were badly beaten at Dien Bien Phu. Depending upon which side of history you like, American involvement was either a great effort, or a fool's journey. By the conclusion of the war on April 30, 1975, over 58,000 Americans died and countless thousands more were injured. Many of those injuries didn't show up until years later, as Agent Orange began taking its toll on soldiers who had been in areas where Operation Ranch Hand, a massive spraying of a defoliant, was employed. The results were thousands of cases of cancer caused by this military operation.

Walking a couple of the cemeteries in the area on April 9th to visit the graves of some of our local Civil War Veterans, many thoughts go through one's mind. What were their first thoughts when Lee's surrender was announced to the troops? Might they have been thankfully this war was finally over? For some of these local veterans, it was four long years of hoping to get back home to their families and farms. There were no doubt many worries, would it be too late to get the spring crops in, how will the family have changed, what does the future hold for us now?

What did those area soldiers who were attached to Sherman's Army on his famed March to the Sea think when they marched in the Grand Review to huge cheering crowds? These tough and battered soldiers who, unlike many of their counterparts, marched, not in new uniforms, but their tattered, battle-worn uniforms. The night before the Grand Review, the quartermasters company arrived at Sherman's camp outside of Washington with wagonloads of new uniforms, which Sherman turned down, telling the quartermasters, "my men will march in Grand Review as they marched to the sea, shoeless and in worn out uniforms."

As the surrender was signed, General Lee made one request to Grant: "my men are hungry, can you help feed them?" General Grant gave his final order, "give them 20,000 rations, and let them take their guns and mules home with them, they'll need them for spring planting."

Nearby, Union General Chamberlain, seeing how beaten and downtrodden Confederate General Gordon's men were, ordered his men to stand at arms as the Confederates passed. They were, once again, all Americans. In return, the Confederates saluted their former enemies as they filed past, beaten and broken of spirit.

The war in Vietnam didn't end quite as well. The month of April 1975 was one of gut wrenching horror. On April 3, 1975, President Ford authorized enough funding to enable Operation Babylift, a planned operation of 30 C5A flights to evacuate 3,300 Vietnamese orphans out of the soon to fall South Vietnam.

On April 4th, the initial flight with over 300 people, including 243 babies, took off from Tan Son Nhut airfield. Shortly after takeoff, one of the doors blew off the plane causing it to crash. The crash took the lives of 78 of the children and 50 adults.

An early Sunday morning NPR Weekend Edition report interviewed one of the survivors, Col. Regina Aune, who at the time of the crash was a fairly new Air Force Lieutenant. She told the story of twenty years after Operation Babylift, receiving a phone call from a young woman, Aryn Lockhart of northern Virginia. "And then she told me who she was, and I was speechless...I remember thinking I must have held Aryn in my arms, because every single baby on that first flight I had held in my arms." One flight crew member talked of a bucket brigade handing the babes down the line to get them safely loaded on the plane.

Kim Tschudy

The babies who will soon board one of the C5 planes for the flight to the United States are being bottle fed by members of the RAAF, Royal Australian Air Force crew. The Red Cross and civilian nurses who were on board with the babies were warned not to get emotionally attached to the babies because they (the nurses) would only be with them for 24 hours, until they were airlifted to their new homes. Many of the nurses said that as soon as they picked up the babies they became attached to them, "how could you not become attached to this children?"

Just this past Saturday, the Operation Babylift children and the flight crew had a reunion at the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans Memorial. One of the medics on the flight that crashed attended the reunion. "I thought about them all the time." And now he was able to meet some of the babies he helped to save.

On this morning, April 30, 1975, as America's long war was ending, this writer gets from the shelf and reads several pages from Robert Waller's book, Border Music, "Saigon, just after dawn on April 30, 1975, eleven Marines left on the roof of the American embassy, the last human pieces of America's great and holy and futile safari into Southeast Asia." This writer sheds a few tears as he reflects on a tech school classmate from 50 years ago who was one of the pilots flying those April 30, 1975, flights off the embassy roof. He survived the war, but not the peace!

The hell of war often brings out the best in people.

On a separate note, Dottie Kuenzi, one of the women they left behind, as their husbands and boyfriends left for WWII, passed away this past Saturday. Dottie will always be remembered as one of the stalwart members of the Stuessy Kuenzi American Legion Post 141. Dottie was always there to sell poppies, work at bloodmobiles, doing anything that needed to be done. Farewell to a very fine person who gave her all to the veterans of the area.