To the Editor:
I can only speak for myself, but I know that this pertains to most all of us as veterans. As kids, the holidays were full of anticipation and excitement. Going shopping with mom and friends, wrapping presents and writing out cards, decorating the Christmas tree, going to midnight mass with friends and family, spending Christmas day with the family and gathering at the house and mom cooking up a feast was all a part of the excitement. This went on throughout our teenage years, and then we grew up. Wow, to be 17 or 18 years old and joining the military or being drafted. I joined because my dad, who was in the Navy, told me, “Son, if you want to learn a trade, join the Navy.” So here I was right out of high school in boot camp. What was I thinking?
Well, boot camp was long over and I was shipped out. My first holiday away from home, I’m not afraid to admit it, I cried. I felt I was all alone. There were the letters, but they were not the same as being there. There was the Christmas tree in the mess hall, but it wasn’t the Christmas tree we had at home.
It was then at this low point I found my family of brothers. We were in the berthing compartment about a week before Christmas. The helo delivered the mail, and one of the guys got a care package from home. Well, he passed it around, and now everyone got a care package from his mom. This went on all through the holidays as the care packages and cards arrived. After the holidays were over, I realized this was the best Christmas I ever had, and there isn’t a Christmas that goes by when I don’t think of those guys, and the good times we had. Thank God for them.
When I came home and the holidays came, I found they weren’t the same. The guys weren’t around; neither was the laughter, the jokes, the cards, or the care packages. I found myself reaching for the phone to call some of them up just to talk about the old times. My family said that I was not the same anymore, and I was not.
Some 20 years ago, I joined a veterans organization called the Vietnam Veterans of America North Jersey Chapter 151, and made some real good friends there. For the past 15 years, we have held a ceremony at the Vietnam Memorial in Bayonne. The monument in Bayonne is located on a grassy knoll in a part overlooking the Kill Van Kull, a body of water separating New Jersey from Staten Island, N.Y. This park extends approximately one mile along Bayonne’s southern terminus. Also located in this park is a memorial to the Korean War veterans and the W.W.II veterans. Each Christmas Eve, Chapter 151 gathers to read the names of the 30 from Bayonne who never returned. Also included is the only remaining POW/MIA from Hudson County, Douglas Lee O’Neill. This solemn ceremony draws supporters from other veterans organizations, several relatives of the deceased, and local families who just want to show their respect. After the colors are posted, greetings are made and prayers are said, the names inscribed on the monument are each read. As each name is read, a member of the audience places a candle at the base of the monument. When this is being done, there is a profound silence broken only by the wind, if any, fanning the garrison size American flag that stands above the monument, as a symbol of the great loss to the city. Bayonne has the greatest number of Vietnam casualties for size of the population.
That ceremony has helped me celebrate Christmas and to share this care package in my heart that I shared many years ago with my brothers, and now share with my brothers who never came home; to let them know that they are not forgotten, that they live every day in my heart and the hearts of all my fellow veterans and that we will be back very year to celebrate Christmas with them.
MIKE WILSON