https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/obituaries/obits/4825048-William-Ebeltoft
the link above is to the actual obituary, and there are no ads there if you use the Brave browser with Shields up.
I’d like for you to read the obit, so your eyes get as scratchy and wet as mine. I enlisted in 1973, and volunteered for Vietnam. Didn’t get to go, didn’t know how lucky I’d been for a decade after, when I thought about how damaged all the Nam vets I’d worked with were. I did go to Desert Shield/Desert Storm, as an REMF. The difference in the welcome we got, coming back, was seriously striking, too. We were called heroes, and greeted as such, instead of criminals. I’d gotten called a baby killer and spat at, about 17 years earlier, when I was visiting my mom. That was what I was expecting, and what this guy probably got, too, when he went home.
WRM, MSgt, USAF(Ret.)
I, too, was in the military during the Vietnam War. Luckily for me, I was in a reserve outfit that was assigned to the 101st Airborne but we were never activated. I am thankful to this day I never had to go.
But the reaction to vets back in the day was significantly different then that today. I remember trying to catch a flight out of Atlanta to Detroit. There was a Delta flight crew (2-stews and a pilot) walking through the terminal and the one stew said “I have something for you, hold out your hand” Being young and stupid, I did. She proceeded to deposit a cigarette butt in my outstretched hand and the three of them laughed as they walked away.
I never flew Delta again and haven’t to this day.
I am grateful the young men and women of today’s military never have been subjected to abuse. They are the best of the best and deserve our respect. We weren’t as fortunate.