David Colburn

This Saturday, March 29 is National Vietnam War Veterans Day, a day set aside to honor the millions of Americans who served during the Vietnam War. It’s more than a line on the calendar. It’s a reminder — a long-overdue one — of the service, sacrifice, and complexity carried by a generation of veterans who were often met with indifference or hostility when they returned to a country in tumult over the mission they performed.
From 1955 to 1975, the start and end of U.S. engagement in the Southeast Asian conflict, more than nine million Americans served in the nation’s military, and 2.7 million of them were shipped to Vietnam. Over 58,000 lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands more came home with wounds — some visible, many not. Unlike veterans from other conflicts, those who served in Vietnam did not return to parades or public praise. The war’s unpopularity at home created a divide between those who fought and the country they fought for.
Thankfully, I was too young to have been asked to fight in the war, but as a first-year student at the University of Kansas in the fall of 1976, I witnessed the ongoing divisions firsthand. Dubbed by many as the “Berkeley of the Midwest,” anti-war sentiment ran strong and deep at KU, and the hundreds of veterans just looking to get on with their lives through their studies were often subjected to ridicule and insensitivity. The history of the war was still being written, and much of what appeared in the press at the time was none too kind to those who served.
Though tempered by time, echoes of that legacy still linger. For many Vietnam veterans, the war did not end with a flight home. It lingered in the silence that greeted them, in the questions that cast suspicion rather than support, and in the cultural memory that often reduced their experiences to movie tropes or political debate. National Vietnam War Veterans Day offers a chance to correct that — to acknowledge not only the service of those who wore the uniform, but the complicated burden they were asked to carry.
This observance matters in communities like ours, where neighbors know one another, where veterans live not as statistics but as familiar faces — coaches, grandfathers, businesspeople, volunteers. They are part of the fabric of our lives. Recognizing their service isn’t a symbolic gesture. It’s a necessary act of respect.
In 2012, the Department of Defense began a 13-year commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, a national effort to honor those who served and those who never came home. But with the program set to conclude in 2025, the effort seems to be ending the same way many veterans returned — quietly. There’s been no major national conversation, little visibility, and limited public engagement. Many Americans never heard of the commemoration at all, including myself, until just this week. Some veterans didn’t even know it existed.
I don’t intend to suggest that the efforts of thousands across the country who were in some way involved with the commemoration all these years weren’t without impact – the activities had meaning, purpose. In 2024, nearly 1,500 events thanked and honored about 300,000 Vietnam veterans, including a resource fair at the Mall of America that attracted 2,000 Vietnam veterans and their families. Yet, there are over five million living military veterans from the Vietnam War era, over 97,000 in Minnesota, so the commemoration in part feels like a missed opportunity to me.
National Vietnam War Veterans Day is not about fanfare. Most veterans will tell you that medals and monuments were never the point. What matters is recognition — genuine, meaningful acknowledgment of what they endured and what they gave. Not only for themselves, but for the friends they lost, and the families who waited through long deployments and longer silences and endured their post-war challenges with them.
National Vietnam War Veterans Day gives us the chance to pause, to listen, and to remember that the Vietnam War was not just a political event — it was a human one. Those who lived it deserve to have their stories heard on their own terms. They deserve more than passing references in history books or background roles in movies. They deserve a place in the national memory.
This day also helps build bridges. Observances like this one remind us that veterans are not distant figures. They are part of our communities. Their experiences deserve to be known, not just as a matter of history, but as a way to better understand who we are — and who we want to be.
And this day should also be a recognition of the role Vietnam veterans have played in shaping today’s U.S. military. In 2021, U.S. Army Lt. General Flem Walker noted that 11 of the past 13 chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were Vietnam veterans, and said, “there is not a General Officer or Command Sergeant Major in today’s Army who doesn’t point to a Vietnam-era veteran as their mentor and role model.” If you’re someone who’s thankful for today’s military, thank Vietnam vets.
So let March 29 be more than a date, both Saturday and into the future. Let it be a prompt. Fly a flag. Attend a ceremony. Ask a question. Have a conversation. Let it be a moment when we look someone in the eye and say, simply and sincerely: We remember. We’re listening. You mattered then, and you matter now.
Because National Vietnam War Veterans Day isn’t just about the past. It’s about how we choose to show respect in the present — and how we pass that respect on to the future.