A Homecoming at Last

Viet Nam veterans converge on Washington in quest of catharsis and respect

One man knelt, cried for a minute and left behind his campaign medals: Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit. Another, like many of the veterans in olive drab, added his name to an ad hoc battalion sheet someone had staked in the ground; he stood back, saluted, saw his reflection in the polished black stone, then let out a kind of agonized whimper before two buddies led him away. An Illinois mother ran her fingers once, twice across the name JERRY DANAY, who was killed by a rocket. "It makes me feel closer," Helen Danay said as she remembered her son.

They came like pilgrims, bigger crowds each day, to Washington's newest and most unorthodox monument: the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial. Its long walls, inscribed with the names of 57,939 killed or missing in America's last war, are simple, elegant and dignified, everything the Viet Nam War was not. By the end of last week the adjacent ground was a fringe of private memorial icons: messages in ink and gold glitter, photographs, candles, tiny flags and hundreds of flowers. Virginian Larry Cox, one of four survivors from a 27-man platoon, found the black granite chilling. Still, he said, "it's a first step to remind America of what we did."

Cox was one of 15,000 veterans who made their way to the capital last week for the National Salute to Viet Nam Veterans, an event organized by the ex-soldiers for themselves. The gathering sometimes seemed conventional: patriotic eulogies, American Legion caps, martial music and maudlin, affectionate reunions of old platoon chums. But the convocation had an edge, a sense of catharsis, mainly because it was large and public. In the end, with a splendidly ragtag march down Constitution Avenue and the dedication of the Veterans Memorial, the spectacle seemed like the national homecoming the country had never offered.

Until recently, acknowledging Viet Nam veterans in such showy fashion would have connoted approval of the nightmarish war. However, "within the soul of each Viet Nam veteran," says Max Cleland, who lost both legs and a forearm in the war and headed the Veterans Administration under Jimmy Carter, "there is probably something that says, 'Bad war, good soldier.' " Their fellow Americans are only now coming to appreciate that distinction and, as Cleland says, "separate the war from the warrior." Mike Mullings of Bethany, Okla., a medic in Viet Nam, agrees that "things are changing. It might sound corny, but people have become a little more caring. It feels pretty good."