Pinning ceremony honors Vietnam veterans

At 22 years old, Tim Grattan of Kalispell made his way through the jungles of Vietnam alongside the 600 South Vietnamese soldiers he helped advise. It was 1960.

For the next seven years, he slept, ate, fought and prayed with the soldiers.

Grattan didn’t know that as he worked with the South Vietnamese Army, the tone of his nation was shifting as Americans were introduced to the war from within their living rooms.

“I was in the jungle when JFK was shot. We had no way of knowing the whole mood of the country by the late ’60s had changed,” Grattan said. “I had friends spit on in the airport as they returned — I missed that because I took a medevac home.”

On Thursday, Grattan was one of roughly 200 Vietnam veterans who received lapel pins for their service in that war.

The ceremony was part of a Congress-led effort to work with local governments, private organizations and communities across the nation for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War.

The program aims to honor a generation of soldiers that were once pushed to the side.

“We survived a war that most people in America would want to forget about,” Grattan told the more than 300 people who attended the event at Flathead Valley Community College.

For more than a decade, U.S. service members flowed into the escalating conflict in Vietnam. The names of the more than 58,000 Americans who did not return alive are etched in black granite in the nation’s capital. More than 1,600 names remain among the missing.

U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., distributed pins to the veterans Thursday.

Zinke said he started passing out pins last week. He said so far, more than 1,300 Montanans have stepped forward to receive them, either for themselves or a family member who served.

Zinke addressed the crowd as a former Navy SEAL who served for 23 years.

“I was too young to serve in Vietnam, but I remember Vietnam because it came into every living room with Walter Cronkite,” he said.

Zinke said Vietnam soldiers had to wait too long to receive recognition for their service. Now, he said, they’re waiting too long for the physical support they need as a result of that service.

The ceremony came a month after a bipartisan bill was unveiled in Congress that aims to fix Veterans Choice, or the Choice Act — a troubled attempt to streamline access to health care for veterans.

“The Choice Act was a noble idea, poor execution,” Zinke said. “From a commander’s point of view — I get a lot of questions about the VA — I think at the end of the day, we need to push more resources to the front and give our front commanders and managers more flexibility.”

He said a veteran has a military service record, a name and a rank. But when the bureaucracy gets too large, those service members become numbers, he said.

Robert Little of Kalispell described the day his mom received notice his dad had been killed in Vietnam. It was the early years of the war and Little was a senior in high school.

“She said she wouldn’t believe it until she saw the body,” Little said. “She was right: He was hurt but not dead. His notice and a neighbor’s had been switched on accident. Dad came home, but the neighbor never did.”

Little enlisted to serve in Vietnam before his mom ever found his draft notice in the mail. He was 20.

“Mom kept saying, ‘Why you? Your dad went to Korea, he went to Vietnam, why you, too?’” Little said.

Little entered the Army in 1971. He had been recently married and was working toward a job on the police force when he deployed. The next year, he was flown home on a stretcher after being shot in the arm.

“This type of ceremony is new to us,” he said. “The first time I ever heard a thank-you for what we did was in a gas station in 2000, and that about knocked me over. It took a while, but it feels good today.”

Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.