The three million men and women who served in Vietnam have never really gotten their due.
The U.S. Department of Defense is in the process of organizing a series of events to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, but the occasion has received little attention, and even many Vietnam War veterans remain unaware of the effort.
But given the controversy and divisiveness that surrounded the Vietnam War, even setting an anniversary date is difficult. The official start date of the war, according to the Department of Defense, is Nov. 1, 1955, even though it didn't start authorizing service ribbons until 1962.
So, it's an arbitrary anniversary, chosen in part because 1962 was also the year that President John F. Kennedy increased the number of military advisors in Vietnam from a few hundred to a few thousand, setting in motion the escalation of the war still to come.
But for Brattleboro, the anniversary date to commemorate might be 1967, the year the first service member from our town was killed in action in Vietnam.
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Forty-five years ago this month, 400,000 Americans were serving in Vietnam, and the big battles were being fought by the Marines on Hill 861 and 881, in the northwest corner of South Vietnam near a town that would become infamous a year later - Khe Sanh.
More than 1,000 members of the Third Marine Regiment were killed or wounded in 12 days of fighting. One of those killed, on May 3, 1967, was Pfc. Joseph Rhuben LaRose - one of the six names that are inscribed on the Vietnam panel of the war memorial on the Brattleboro common.
LaRose was born in Rutland on Oct. 4, 1947, and grew up in Chippenhook, a village in Clarendon. He later moved to West Brattleboro to live with his aunt and uncle. He worked at the Royal Diner in Brattleboro for a time before enlisting in the Marines. LaRose was one of 14 Marines that died that night in 1967 during an ambush in the Que Son Valley.
Although LaRose is credited to the state of New York in the official database of Vietnam War dead, it was his time growing up in Brattleboro that got his name on the monument.
Ten days later, the first Brattleboro native died in the war. Second Lt. Stanley Martin Baker died on May 20, 1967. He was killed aboard an assault boat in the Mekong Delta in Kien Tuong province which came under enemy attack.
Baker was born in Brattleboro on April 27, 1938. He grew up in Guilford and enlisted in the Army in 1956. He graduated from Officer Candidate School in 1966. He had been in Vietnam for nearly two months and was attached to the Fifth Special Forces Group, more popularly known as the Green Berets.
May 1967 was the bloodiest month of the Vietnam War to that point, but more years of fighting still lay ahead.
On April 18, 1968, First Lt. Jan Alan Ulmer became the first Brattleboro resident to die in the war. He died of wounds suffered from shell fragments from a mortar shell fired by U.S. forces in Tay Ninh province.
Ulmer was born in Brattleboro on May 16, 1943, and lived on Forest Street. He graduated from Brattleboro Union High School in 1961, where he lettered in football, tennis, and skiing, and he was a ski jumper for the Brattleboro Outing Club. He attended the University of Colorado and studied radio at Cambridge School in Boston before he joined the Army in 1965. Like Baker, he also served with the Fifth Special Forces Group.
Seven months later, on Oct. 24, 1968, Spc. Paul Richard Dartt of Brattleboro was killed by a Vietcong sniper in Quang Tri province. He was on his second tour in Vietnam when he died.
Dartt was born in Brattleboro on March 20, 1946, and attended St. Michael's High School. He enlisted in the Army when he was 17 and served with the 5th Air Cavalry in Vietnam.
According to a 1968 story in the Brattleboro Reformer, Dartt had just returned to active duty after spending nearly four weeks in the hospital for treatment of wounds and burns he sustained after rescuing two pilots, two door gunners, and a passenger from a burning helicopter. He was recommended for a Silver Star and a Purple Heart by his commanders.
Just hours after Dartt's parents learned that he had been killed, a letter arrived in the mail from their son describing the dramatic September rescue.
On Aug. 18, 1969, First Lt. William John Bassignani died when the helicopter he was in was hit by enemy fire in Quang Ngai province.
Bassignani was born in Brattleboro on Jan. 21, 1943, and grew up in Newfane. He was a 1961 graduate of St. Michael's High School. He attended the University of Vermont before enlisting in the Army in 1962. He graduated from Officer Candidate School in 1967 and was eventually assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade. It took four days for U.S. forces to recover his remains.
HM3 John Charles Blake, a Naval corpsman assigned to the Marines, was the sixth and final serviceman with Brattleboro ties to perish in Vietnam. He was killed by friendly fire on March 21, 1970.
According to a 1970 Reformer report, Blake was struck by multiple shell fragments after a 155mm artillery shell exploded prematurely. He died in the Naval Hospital in Da Nang, with his brother, Marine SSgt. Andrew Blake, who was with a nearby unit, at his bedside.
John Blake was born in Brattleboro on March 24, 1945, and lived on Western Avenue. He was a paperboy for the Reformer and a 1963 graduate of St. Michael's High School. He joined the Navy in June 1965 and had served in Vietnam since September 1969.
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These six men are among the more than 100 Vermonters who died in Vietnam. As the years pass and the memories fade, the lives of these six, and the 58,000 other Americans who died in the war, are reduced to names chiseled on a chunk of granite.
Today, May 30, is the original date of Memorial Day, a commemoration that started in 1868 as Decoration Day, in the aftermath of another divisive war.
In that spirit of reconciliation and remembrance that created the first Memorial Day, when the pain and loss of the Civil War was still fresh in Americans' minds, it is up to those of us who are still alive to remember these six men, and all the others who died in our wars, on battlefields ranging from Lexington and Concord, to Baghdad and Kandahar.
It is up to us to keep their hopes, and dreams that never got to be fulfilled, alive for future generations.