PHOTO ESSAY: A glimpse into the Vietnam War from combat veteran Lee Webber

Lee Webber – the guy most of us grew up knowing as the longtime publisher of the Pacific Daily News during its hay day – is a Vietnam veteran, having served in the late 1960s in the 3rd Marine Division. He was a Navy Corpsman and then went to Fleet Marine Forces.

Mr. Webber shared pictures from his years in service with Kandit. We jumped at the opportunity to share these jewels of history.

The Vietnam War has been portrayed in mainstream media and Hollywood as a blight on American history; the mark of an imperial America that picked fights where it wasn’t wanted.

“Vietnam was the first war that was ever brought live in people’s households,” Mr. Webber said. The images raised a post-World War II generation of anti-American sentiment that yielded hostility toward soldiers who returned from the horrors of war, not as heroes, but as symbols of what the Flower Power generation believed was wrong with the country.

That sentiment would carry forward to nearly every conflict and war American presidents would enter the country into. But not on Guam.

“I went back to the states for a little less than a month, and turned around and came back to Guam,” Mr. Webber said, explaining that his stateside reception as a veteran of combat in Vietnam was hostile. “People were hostile toward the veterans. And on Guam, people were patriotic.”

The American memory of Vietnam – however conflated by a Hollywood narrative and a mainstream media script – would affect both American government policy and American sentiment toward foreign policy and conflict to this day.

“When the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, Congress said they would support the South Vietnamese,” Mr. Webber said of the reason for the political failures following the conflict. He prefaced the statement by saying what the soldiers did was not a mistake at all. The politicians in Washington, D.C., however, made a promise to the South Vietnamese to support them after the pull out of American forces. “They didn’t do that. They turned their backs on them.”

Saigon fell shortly after.

If the story sounds familiar, it’s because something similar happened in Afghanistan, when – following promises by the American government to support the anti-Taliban forces – the Biden administration pulled forces out. It didn’t take long for the Taliban to return to power.

“Vietnam was the beginning of that type of behavior in Washington,” Mr. Webber said. “That’s how the politicians are. The vast majority have never served in the military. They don’t know how it is. Your perspective totally changes when you serve in combat.”

“History is being rewritten,” Mr. Webber lamented. “People don’t learn the same things in school when I went to school. The history and social studies… it’s not there. I think it’s detrimental to young people. And people are trying to rewrite history.”

That’s why pictures such as these, with context from combat veterans like Mr. Webber, are gems of citizenship and for the character of a nation. And when you consider how many of these men died in Vietnam, and how many more have perished since, these photos and their first hand accounts are ever more valuable to society.

“There were 27 of us, and 19 did not make it out alive,” he said of his group in combat. Of the eight who survived the war, he believes only five, including himself, still are alive.

As for the dog in one of the pictures, Mr. Webber cannot remember his name, or what happened to him. He was a scout dog, one of several the U.S. military used during the war. “They would go on patrol with us,” he said.

Thank you, Mr. Webber, for your service. Thank you for the freedoms we, the 99 percent of Americans who don’t serve this country in combat, enjoy because of you and all our country’s veterans.

Thank you, veterans, and current servicemen and women for our freedom. Thank you for the America we know today. Perhaps, as citizens, we can do better to honor your sacrifice.