In July of 1965 I came home from the Navy. It was a big shock. Suddenly some of my former high school classmates and total strangers wanted to argue and fight with me. They hated me just because I was a veteran and that made me part of a war they did not like. Then our government deserted our South Vietnamese allies and left them to be slaughtered by the tens of thousands or put into prison camps called re-education camps.

After a while it seemed as if the whole world wished to forget me. I put up with that as long as I could. Then I just got angry. For a few years now I have been going to a South Portland cemetery every year with Harold T. Andrews Post 17 American Legion and putting out flags on the veterans’ graves and marching in the Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades. I go to the cemetery three days every year because I know what it feels like to be forgotten and I want to make sure none of those veterans there are forgotten. Giving them a flag is not much but it’s something that shows they are not forgotten.

And I march in the parades because I know there are those who can never march again and I want to be there for them to remind the world that freedom is not free. It cost a whole lot of people a great deal.

Nobody hates war more than veterans. Veterans didn’t have the chance to decide whether they would go to war or not. That decision is made by old men and women in Washington and then paid for in blood by young men and women. The very least we can do for those people who served, whether it was willingly or kicking and screaming about a draft notice, is to remember them. Our country would not exist without them.

Thomas O’Connor

Falmouth