Bobby Dease: Yeah, this is the rookie.

I think it was--this was shortly after joining the Army.

David Drummond: Oh, this is my hippie picture in the--this is one of my casual clothes.

Rick Amsterdam: I'd just turned 19 when I went to Vietnam, literally just turned 19.

I could see my fatigues are pretty green here, so I knew I was pretty new up there.

Pat Julian Vellucci: I took a bunch of shots, and this is the one I took with my buddy John.

I called it my 8 by 10 'cause I always wanted to be a movie star.

John "JJ" Minor: I'm the one with the helmet on, the helmet, the scruffy looking one.

[chuckling] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Maj.

Gen.

Clark Martin: I never told anybody at all about my being a Vietnam veteran 'cause it was a-- it was irrelevant to them.

If it's irrelevant to them, why should you even mention it?

Bobby: My wife didn't know I had been to Vietnam for ten years we was together.

She didn't know I was in Vietnam.

I didn't wanna create a fear about me or get her concerned about me.

John: I don't even know how to explain it.

I don't want to go to the dark side.

I'll tell 'em so much.

And then I'll stop.

That just sticks with you.

You try to get rid of it, but you can't.

But it's time to talk.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Bill "Doc" McClung: Hey, guys.

male: Hi, how are you?

male: How's it going?

Bill: Welcome.

My name is Bill McClung.

They call me Doc.

Rick: Welcome.

Bill: Have you guys been to the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans Memorial before?

No, and you're just down the road.

That's good.

We're glad you're here.

We love to have people come and visit.

All of our volunteers are Vietnam boots-on-the-ground veterans.

I got a magic wand here.

I just waved it.

It is now 1968 when we grew up.

We grew up in the '50s, '60s, and '70s.

You were in the New York, New Jersey area, you had sports teams, you had the music scene, Gertie's Folk City, the Purple Onion, the Village Gate.

It was great.

It was exciting.

I loved it, but it was the Vietnam era, which was a tumultuous time.

Louis Vlahakes: I knew the Vietnam War was going on, but it just wasn't part of my consciousness.

I never thought about it.

Bobby: Growing up, I never thought about the military.

The military wasn't even mentioned.

John: I had never picked up a gun in my life, never saw a gun in my life, never, never.

I was so far away down on the shore that I didn't even know where Vietnam was.

Louis: I had finished high school, then I went to college, and, you know, the war is going on.

And I'm figuring, "Jesus, the war's gonna probably be over by the time I graduate," which it wasn't.

male: North Vietnam's President Ho Chi Minh told the world tonight that he's not ready for peace and is ordering the partial mobilization-- Pat: I actually volunteered for Vietnam.

I thought to myself, this is going to be the seminal event of this century, maybe.

It was 1967, and I thought, you know what, I think I'm gonna go to Vietnam.

Louis: At that time, they had the draft and there was a lottery.

male: The draft lottery.

Louis: And the lottery was based on your birthday.

So I listened on the radio, and as they were calling the numbers, I said, "Well, okay, I'm doing well."

And then when he hit 51, that was November 7th on my birthday, so.

male: July 7th, November 7th.

Louis: That was the number.

Bobby: I had no choice but to go to Vietnam.

When Vietnam came up, everyone approaching 18 got concerned because all we could hear about: Vietnam.

About a year later, I got drafted.

My family was--kind of give me a pat on the shoulder for being able to be selected to go into the military.

John: My mother didn't have much money to raise us, so I knew I wasn't gonna go to college.

In June of '66, when I graduated, two months later, they drafted me.

And if it was time to go, it was time to go.

And that was the end of it.

male: Raise your right hand and repeat after me the oath of enlistment.

"I--" Louis: When I was at school, you know, you say, "Well, I'm gonna go and die for my country."

That's okay, all that, but when all of a sudden the spotlight's on you and you gotta carry the water, there was a fear that I had never experienced before, obviously.

male: Good morning, Vietnam.

Louis: When I first got there, they didn't have 9 1/2 shoes.

They had 10 or 9.

9 was too small, 10 was slightly big, and I'm pretty much the same now.

In the monsoon, it rained 17 consecutive days without a break.

Then in the mud, your foot sinks and it sucks when you pull your foot out.

Now, these had a little bit of a rough go.

John Nugent: Before every operation, you would be given a map, okay, which--I'd look at this and I'd say, "Oh my God, this was my life."

If I were fording a river, I would take this map, which was clearly not waterproof, and so you'd have it over here with my rifle and my cigarettes.

Clark: Day one I was just entranced like, wow, look at all these guys.

They were are all flying jets over North Vietnam and I'm going to be one of them too.

Everything you need to know when you fly is in this, in this little bag: your checklists, your emergency procedures, your weapons lists, a calculator, and lots of information about the local area where you're flying, all in one little handy bag.

I was on the 100 Mission program and 100 of them were over North Vietnam, which was a really dangerous place to be flying.

When guys got shot down over North Vietnam, you weren't declared to be a prisoner of war.

You were declared to be missing in action, MIA.

And you could be either alive or dead as MIA.

David: I was a B-52 pilot shot down.

We were shot down on the same night, as a matter of fact.

Peter Camerota: I was the last guy captured in North Vietnam.

I spent 12 days evading capture.

I thought I was going to die if I didn't surrender.

Well, I would have, without question.

David: I lasted about 4 1/2 hours before they captured me, and I was just wondering, you know, whether I was gonna survive this or not.

Then I was whisked off to the Hanoi Hilton.

They gave us clothes.

Peter: The Vietnamese tailors.

David: Yeah, one size fits all.

Little ties, and then it has a pair of pants.

Peter: Again, one size fits all.

David: Right.

Bill: I was a combat medic with a reconnaissance platoon, and as a medic, I treated the wounded out in the field.

Once the shooting started, my gun went down 'cause I had to go get guys and pull them back.

You have two dog tags and some guys would take the dog tags off and tie it in their shoe in their bootlace in case you got into combat and you got a head blown off or a leg blown off, that was your means of identification.

I can remember, carrying guys off the battlefield.

John "JJ" Minor: Everybody was given a Bible over there.

This one I got when I arrived in Vietnam, yeah.

Never thought I would--I would even bother about looking at it because I'm not a religious man, but at times when you're getting them bad firefights and you just drop to the ground, you're shaking, you're saying, "What the hell just happened here?

What the hell?"

You can't believe it.

But this got you over the moments.

John: When I was at Way, that was the the big major battle.

It was the first time I seen a dead person, first time.

I've never seen it.

And I stopped in amazement at it.

And my platoon sergeant came up and backed me, grabbed my frigging neck and pushed me down to his face and said, "Get used to it.

Get used to it.

There's gonna be more of 'em."

And that still bothers me today.

John: As much as you think I went over there and said I'm fighting for the United States, I fought for everybody that was there.

Around me was 130 guys that was with me.

That's all I cared about is them.

I walked Point for a year.

Point's the first person that walks in the column.

Most deadliest job in the world, by the way, 'cause you're gonna--you're the first one's gonna get shot, first one.

But I had nothing to worry about.

I was single in the war.

So I didn't have no wife, I didn't have no kids.

All my family was gone.

My mother died before I went to Vietnam.

So I had nothing to worry about.

I just felt like it's better me than them.

They had something to live for.

Bill Leipold: Mail time was a very special event.

We would get letters from, you know, aunts and uncles, cousins, you know, letters, you know, Christmas cards, birthday cards, you'd get--you'd get those and they were all welcome.

Linda Wright: Mail time you could find the girlfriends waiting for their letters from them at the mailboxes.

And you could tell by their demeanor whether they got one or they didn't receive one that day, you know, we were always there to support them.

Hon.

Nicholas Asselta: My brother Charles C. Asselta was a first lieutenant in charge of the Northern forces of Saigon, protecting the capital city of South Vietnam.

He wrote letters every day to my mom and dad.

He used to save the letters for prosperity purposes for when he came home because he was always thinking he's coming back.

Jean Campbell: My son's name is Randall M. Campbell III.

He wrote constantly, but he would never write anything bad.

So he starts this one letter and it says, "No news from here."

I guess so you wouldn't feel so bad with him away.

Probably made it easier, him not telling you what's going on over there.

Louis: Everybody just did whatever they had to do, collectively and individually, to kind of get through this day so we can get through the next day until we get on that freedom bird to come home.

Jack Jacobs: You know you can rely on everybody else.

Everybody else can rely on you.

You stand shoulder to shoulder.

If something goes wrong, other people will take care of you.

male: Gotta get him out of here.

Jack: If something goes wrong with them, you'll take care of them, we were all in it together.

Bobby: You made plans about what you're gonna do when you get back home from Vietnam.

And just of a second, all those plans was gone.

Nicholas: The letters abruptly turned very not confident.

male: The enemy, very deceitfully, has taken advantage of the truce in order to create maximum consternation.

Nicholas: This was his very last letter, one page with two lines on the back.

This was the end.

"I had sent word since I'm in charge of the Northern forces now, I sent word back to General Westmoreland that we need at least 2000 to 3000 more reinforcements to hold our position here and everybody is getting pretty frustrated and upset about not having anybody here to help.

I later got a message back from General Westmoreland that my request was denied by President Lyndon Johnson," which meant he had to tell the rest of his guys that we're not getting any help.

It's all on us.

So his last sentence was, "I have to go now.

Choppers are coming in.

We gotta move."

Signed Chick, that was it.

So it was dated March 18, 1968, the day he died.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jean: Oh, this is shortly before he got killed, I guess.

♪♪♪ Jean: Anyway.

♪♪♪ John: Every one of them that got killed, I know what they went through over there.

They went through the same thing I did.

But they didn't make it.

Bill: There are 1564 names from New Jersey who gave their lives for us.

Most of them are 18, 19, 20, 21 years old.

I mean, just whole life coming into your life like you guys got ahead of you.

Bill: When I look at that wall, I don't see a 73-year-old man.

I see a 19-year-old kid.

That's how I remember 'em.

Bill: I still sometimes have a hard time in my mind, saying, "Why did he die and I didn't?"

John: The older I get now, we're all getting there, is when I get my whole family together just because of me.

I have 18, people and I always think in 1968, instead of making a left on that trail, I made a right, and I got blown away, I wouldn't have had nothing.

Bill: And they wouldn't be there.

John: And they wouldn't be here.

They wouldn't even be here.

Rick: So in those years when we first came back, my mom said, "What happened to you guys?"

I don't know.

How do I know?

I'm still going through it.

I don't know yet.

all: Bring home, bring our brothers home now!

Bring home, bring our brothers home now!

Bring home.

Rick: There was no definitive day that I would be home, you know, I didn't even call.

They had no clue I was coming home, and when I got in, I see a banner.

My mom and my sister were having tea and they see me, they jump up.

Hug me, run over, hug me, kiss.

It's funny.

They kissed me, and when I saw the banner, you know, meant a lot 'cause we were never welcomed home.

So we--most of us will say we came back.

We did not come home.

We didn't have a home to come to.

America didn't want us.

Clark: I came back in '68.

I like to say I was given a hero's departure and I came back and we started being treated as criminals.

Jim McGinnis: Some of the guys had written to us, "You may want to put that uniform in a bag somewhere and not wear it because the people back then, the protesters, are going to protest, and they're going to blame you for this war."

Ken Gurbisz: Somehow the war got confused with the warrior.

And you know, we didn't want to be there.

I mean, we went because it was our duty and it's the way we were brought up.

President Lyndon Johnson: If this little nation goes down the drain and can't maintain our independence, ask yourself what's going to happen to all the other little nations.

Ken: I came home, my dad took me down to the VFW.

We ordered a couple of beers and he says, "I want to sign my son up as a life member."

And the bartender kind of gave us a funny look.

He says, "I'll be right back."

And then he came back and he said, "I just spoke to the manager.

We're not accepting Vietnam veterans.

They didn't do enough."

That's your homecoming, right?

Louis: It was a difficult place to come back to.

The perception then was that you were either unstable mentally or that you were on some kind of a drug.

And I think that in today's world, people forget that's what the--that's what the perception was then.

Bobby: Coming back from there, oh, I think we wanted just recognition.

That wow, you know, you got-- you made it back, and within 24 hours I'm called a baby killer.

And I felt like I wasn't even welcome to speak.

And that's when the shutdown began and I didn't--I didn't talk about it.

I didn't talk about it.

Jack: You come out of the service, out of uniform, when you've had an experience that's different than the experiences of everybody else around you who can't understand what you've been through because they didn't go through it.

And so it's easy to feel like you're a cork bobbing in the middle of the ocean.

You're all by yourself.

John: I didn't want nothing to do with anything to do with the war.

You become a different person.

John Nugent: I don't wanna remember.

I don't wanna talk about the lives lost or the people wounded, the scenes I saw, the Vietnamese people, how they were abused by both sides.

It was--it's a--click, okay?

Just shut it off, shut it down.

Ken: You leave the military, you get a job, you get married, you raise kids, you're too busy to worry about anything else.

And then as soon as you slow down, it kind of like, creeps back in.

Peter: I'd like to thank everybody for the warm welcome we've gotten all the way across and it's great to be back home with Marj.

Peter: I was a prisoner of war.

I spent 16 days in solitary confinement and 70 days in prison camp with a bunch of guys, and that's when I met Dave.

David: I spent 98 days there.

I spent ten days in solitary confinement and we were the last ones released.

After I did retire, I had a lot of time and I was thinking about it an awful lot, losing sleep, angry, short-tempered, I had nightmares.

And, you know, eventually, my wife, she pointed out the fact that this is not you.

This is somebody else in here, you know, we need to get you back.

It's how you process the trauma and how it stays with you.

Louis: I went to Vietnam and I came out of there without a physical scratch and I always felt that there was a reason for me to be here.

Pat: When the world forgets and they--and they do, it's just natural, we remember and we remember everything.

Nicholas: There's no such thing as closure.

Closure means it's over.

Forget about it.

It's not ever the case.

All you can do is make a difference.

Dedicate yourself to helping other people.

Louis: A lot of things happened during that period, which changed the culture.

We realized that we had to communicate that to the next generation so that they understand how pivotal that period in our history was.

So that became our mission here.

The original thought for the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans Memorial Museum came about back in the late '80s as a result of veterans who had gone to the Vietnam Memorial that was built in Washington, DC.

They said, "Why don't we have one in New Jersey?"

We wanted to create a facility to give us another dimension because the war did not occur in a vacuum.

We summoned Governor Tom Kean and the Senator Ed O'Connor who put together a committee.

So we put a competition together for the design.

And a Vietnamese refugee architect won the design.

Hien Nguyen: When you spend a moment inside a memorial, I want people to experience the spiritual world beyond inside.

male: Right now, it's only a grass covered mound overlooking the Garden State Parkway, but by next year it's hoped the memorial will rise on this spot.

Nicholas: To build something of this magnitude took a whole lot of people to be involved, people raising money, people using their expertise, and partnerships were critical.

It all came together back in the mid and late '90s.

Louis: We had a dedication.

The governor Whitman was here.

General Norman Schwarzkopf was here.

male: A few years later, Senator John McCain dedicated the museum.

John McCain: Every veteran remembers those friends whose sacrifice was eternal.

Their loss taught us everything about duty.

Louis: It took a lot of work to get this thing done, but if the mission is a just one, then you just keep driving through and eventually you're gonna get to where you wanna go.

Nicholas: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is the only memorial and museum in the whole United States of America.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ female: When Vietnam veterans returned, they were scorned.

They were meant to feel as if they'd done something wrong.

And that is something we should never let happen again.

Our men and women who serve us in uniform deserve our praise.

Clark: If we have one legacy at all in this place and in this country, our legacy is you can be against the war, but don't be against the warrior.

That's the lasting legacy of the Vietnam veterans.

Pat: A lot of guys were quiet before they got here, for half a century, 'cause we came home, people didn't want to hear it.

Here we're into a welcome-home, thank-you-for-your-service era.

Rick: This is the home that we never had.

This is the home that we come to that we were not able to come to when we got back.

John: There's this mutual respect and I'd do anything for you because you did--it's shared trauma.

You went through what I went through and we don't want anyone else to go through that again.

Rick: You can have the worst day of your life, and then when you come up here and you walk in through the doors, you're like, you know, you get that, okay, I'm relaxed now.

This is why this place is so important to us.

And the men on the wall who we honor, their story is not forgotten.

Bill: You know, when we got out, we then finally settled down, got married, bought a house, had kids, and a lot of other things, and you're pretty good.

Vietnam went to the back of your head.

Now kids are married, mortgage paid, everything's good, and things are starting to come back.

And if I didn't have you guys and some of the other guys, I don't know what I would have done.

I really don't.

So you mean everything to me, all of you.

John "JJ" Minor: Not only just us three guys right here.

There's hundreds of thousands out there that have stories that's never gonna be told, never.

We go backwards for these guys, that's all we do.

Jim: The tour guide that we have down here, we're veterans, so we have a lot of stories and only stories that could be told by a veteran.

David: I'm beginning to look at myself as a historical artifact.

I'm going out.

I know it's hard to accept.

It's hard to accept, but I look at myself as a historical artifact, and when I speak, I speak from a position of experience, not second or thirdhand stories that you heard somewhere.

This is what actually happened and what we experienced.

Bill: I believe what's the old cliche, whoever doesn't learn, you know, from history is bound to repeat it.

So through our stories, people know about the history and the experiences of the men and women who served in the Vietnam War.

Bill: And so you're walking out into a world that even though it was only a year ago, was very, very different than when you went in.

female: Do you find talking about it as much as you do to help you?

Bill: Absolutely, yes, you keep it in and that's when you, you know, eventually you're gonna explode.

male: If you don't tell anybody or nobody even asks, then it's gone forever and you don't get those stories to the future generations.

Nicholas: A democracy survives through emotion and through passion.

And that's what these volunteers do here.

John Nugent: There are the lessons learned that we have to pass on to not only the next generation but three generations down, okay?

We can tell them these stories that we learned the hard way, 12,000 miles away in a rice paddy.

Nicholas: These people that fought in that war are 75 years-plus now.

They have so many stories to tell, so many letters, so many artifacts that we have on display here.

Hon.

Aura Kenny Dunn: Veterans who got this off the ground, they're not gonna be here forever.

So we need to be part of making sure that this museum stays alive, is thriving, and actually grows.

♪♪♪ Neil Kenny: It's important to have this because it makes the human connection.

It's not honoring war, but it's understanding what war is.

Jack: If we don't teach people what has happened, everything that's gonna happen is gonna be an enormous surprise.

That's why we have to continue doing that.

Otherwise we will forsake all the service and sacrifice of the people who came before us.

Pat: You know, there's half a million people had served honorably and 58,701 of them didn't come home, and our brothers, 1564 from New Jersey, are on the wall down there.

And we remind this year, 25,000 kids, teachers, historians, authors, we run through here, that these people, here they live.

Here they live, we bring them back to life here.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪