Blogger Jamie Reno, a longtime journalist, reflects on the 1994 day he met with the last American troops to leave Vietnam after the war – and the relationships and causes that have ensued.
I’ll
never forget the first time I visited The
Wall,
the poignant Washington DC memorial that pays tribute to the more
than 58,000 American men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice
during the Vietnam War. It was the summer of 1994. I was a
correspondent with People magazine
at the time and was in DC to meet with the legendary last American
troops to leave Vietnam.
Earlier
that year, I’d proudly become the first
journalist to
identify and interview all of these brave Marines, who were on the
last helicopter to evacuate Vietnam from the roof of the US Embassy
in Saigon on April 30, 1975. The magazine brought them all to San
Diego, where I hosted a reunion for them. It was the first time most
of them had seen each other since that night they left Saigon nearly
20 years before. They told me, among other things, that they waited
hours for that final chopper. They all thought they’d been left
behind.
Read his blog post here.
