Happy Birthday to our United States of America!
A celebration sure, but we didn’t get here without the sacrifices of millions who took these words to heart — “The land of the free, and the home of the brave.”
We baby-boomer folks grew up amidst lots of “the brave.” Most didn’t tell stories about what they did and what they saw.
It was only after years of sitting in history classes reading volume after volume, not all about wars but also some trending along the lines of “The Grapes of Wrath,” it was clear our parents struggled for most of their young lives.
The Great Depression then World War II meant that anyone under 30 years old by 1945’s end had spent half of their lives in perilous circumstances.
As it turned out, those days, those hardships, those years of facing an unknown future meant there was a discipline in most post-war homes, including, and most noticeably, the ones when one or both parents donned uniforms to serve our country. Yes, both: June 6, 1944 found my parents off the beaches of Normandy, my Dad a weapons platoon leader in the 83rd Infantry and my Mom a triage nurse with the 110th Evac Hospital.
The home front folks came through the depression and found wartime jobs but faced daily rationing – everything from meat and butter to gasoline and tires — so the men and women in the armed services could do their jobs, too.
All those years shaped their lives, and our lives, too.
Vietnam
How could we boomers know we’d face our own trials?
The reaction of some of our brothers and sisters hacked out a dividing line in our country, a schism which continues to this day.
Robert Barham faced that first hand.
So did a lot of us, guys like John Scavona, Jay Huner and David Simmons. These four outdoorsmen were Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy, respectively, during what we know as “The Vietnam Era.”
“I was at LSU when ROTC was compulsory, and when I graduated my lottery number came up and I knew I was going to get an all-expenses-paid trip to Southeast Asia,” Barham said.
If you know his name, then think back a decade or so ago and remember he served our state as the head of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. That came after his “time in country” as an Army medic followed by years in farming then being elected to the Louisiana Senate.
“I know I still believed our greatest generation were those World War II veterans. They were our treasures,” Barham said. “I think that’s why I served. I went because it was an obligation. It was an honor to serve.
“At home, we were not treated very well, and when we left to come home we were urged to not wear our uniform. I wore mine, not trying to pick a fight, but I was glad I got to serve, not in a heroic sense because I was fortunate to come home unscathed.”
Going back
Barham said he spent time near Vietnam’s coast before being shipped to the always volatile Mekong River Delta, where he worked in a hospital before an assignment to a civic action team to bring medical aid to the locals in an “…effort to win the hearts and minds of the people.”
He flew the always dangerous medevac helicopter missions and departed country from Tan Son Nhut Air Base, now an international airport near Ho Chi Minh City (once Saigon).
“I had the opportunity to go back to Vietnam and flew into Tan Son Nhut, and as fate has it landed at that airport,” Barham said. “I was surprised how little had changed. The old hangars were still there. The silos, too. And, like years ago, there is still only one route to the Mekong.
“On the trip, we got to a bridge, a roadblock where we were involved in a hot engagement. It was a surreal experience to try to explain something like that to my wife while we were in an air-conditioned van passing to a place I vividly remembered. There was no way to tell her or anyone with us what it was like to be there.”
A military family
Like most of us, Barham grew up in a family studded with military service. His uncle being wounded twice, first after he survived jumping into Normandy with the 101st Airborne and later during the harsh wintry days at Bastogne during The Battle of the Bulge.
“I grew up hearing stories about World War II from some veterans, and now that time has gone by so fast there are so few of them left,” he said. “And now learning that there is less than 30% served in Vietnam who are still alive.”
Now living in Baton Rouge to be close to his grandchildren, Barham said he and his wife kept their home in Oak Ridge and he continues to hunt and fish from a camp near his hometown.
“Hunting and fishing has always been a part of my life,” he said. “It still is from the opening of dove season through the end of January. I can’t wait to get back there in the late summer and enjoy those cool fall mornings.”
