The Wall That Donald Built

This is where I put my friend Edward (Ned) York after his mis-reading of the likely outcome of the American Presidential election. Anyway, I have relented and let him out this morning with another rather interesting guest-blog.

Donald Trump, The Vietnam War and Me.

I never miss a Remembrance Day service. This year’s ceremony at the Wren Chapel at the Royal Hospital was especially moving as I was positioned directly across from a row of Chelsea Pensioners in their eighties and nineties smartly dressed in bright scarlet uniforms. We all rose up and stood together as the somber and solemn call of the bugle sounded for two minutes of silence so the assembled could individually remember, yet collectively pay tribute to, all those who had lost their lives fighting for their country. Remembrance Day is not exclusively for fallen British military personnel; rather, the ceremony enables those from other nations to also honor their own country’s armed forces who died in battle. While I was lost in my private thoughts, my mind focused on my own experience in Vietnam and how America has “remembered” its military—the fallen as well as the veterans—who had served in that war.

On the 7th of May 1985, I dug out my well worn jungle fatigues and caught the D train from Manhattan to Brooklyn. I emerged to find masses of Vietnam Veterans, each searching for their units to join up with for the New York City ticker tape parade over the Brooklyn Bridge to The Battery in lower Manhattan. 250,000 local men and women had served in Vietnam and, ten years after the surrender of Saigon to the North Vietnamese, America was finally recognizing the sacrifices of her own warriors. Behind the police barricades, I managed to find remnants of my old division, the First Air Cavalry, the division that during the war had suffered more casualties than any other army division—5,444 killed and 26,592 wounded. We greeted each other with cheers and hugs, waved flags, smoked weed and fell into a rough semblance of a marching formation. Amidst the confetti, we headed over the Brooklyn Bridge and through the concrete canyon of Broadway, past Wall Street to the tip of Manhattan. The precession ended with Mayor Ed Koch addressing the march with a rousing speech. I was very moved and saw many who had tears of gratitude for the new found recognition of their service.

The celebration was organized by the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission and was designed to honor veterans who returned home with no hero’s welcome. In addition to the march, the centerpiece of the commission’s effort was the Vietnam Veterans memorial, a glass-block wall, 70 feet long and 16 feet high, which is etched with excerpts from 83 letters written by and to the soldiers who served in America’s most unpopular war.

At the dedication of the memorial, the New York Times reported:

“It’s not just brick and mortar,” Donald Trump, the real-estate executive who donated $1 million of the $2.5 million raised by the commission. “It’s very much a living monument. I was a very strong opponent of the Vietnam War,” he said, ”but I also recognized that the people who went to fight were great Americans. I always thought they got a bad shake in life and never got their just recognition.”

How times have changed! The moving ceremony of Remembrance Day at the Wren Chapel and the memories of my own participation in the march thirty years ago with the juxtaposition of thoughts of Donald Trump’s contribution honoring the Vietnam Veterans made my head spin. How could Donald Trump have done such a good deed in the mid-eighties when he has today brought such fear, division and anxiety to the forefront of the world’s consciousness? Upon leaving the Royal Hospital, my wife and I made our way through Sloane Square to Café Colbert for a soothing coffee.

Edward (Ned) York, 15th November 2016.