Op-Ed: We've learned to thank those who serve, whether it’s in war or during a pandemic (via latimesopinion)
If COVID-19 disproportionately strikes the elderly and the vulnerable, the Vietnam War disproportionately killed the young and the vital. More than 60% of the names on the Vietnam Memorial belong to those who were 22 or younger when they died.
Members of that once-young baby boomer generation are now senior citizens., the last two U.S. servicemen died in the Vietnam War. Two Marines, Charles McMahon of Woburn, Mass., and Darwin Judge of Marshalltown, Iowa, were killed in a rocket attack. Darwin Judge was 19. He had been an Eagle Scout; a high school teacher described him as “rock stable.” Judge had arrived in Vietnam the month before he died. Charles McMahon had been active in the Boys Club in Woburn where he excelled as a swimmer and taught and mentored young boys. In 1971, he was named the Woburn “Boy of the Year.” He was 21 and died 11 days after arriving in Vietnam. Twelve Marshalltown natives, from age 19 to 39, died in Vietnam. Ten Woburn residents between the ages of 18 and 29 also died in the war. Had they lived, these 22 men would be among the most vulnerable to COVID-19.The McMahon and Judge families had to delay saying farewell to their young sons. In the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal, the bodies of the two Marines were left behind. Their remains would not be repatriated for nearly a year. Many observers have described the struggle against the pandemic as a “war.” The COVID-19 fight is not a war but a public health crisis, striking randomly. The Vietnam War was not random; it was the result of calculated choices. The COVID-19 and Vietnam eras do share unfortunate similarities, including officials ignoring reports and warnings, and confidently insisting on their capacity to control events. Leaders in the 1960s also assured that we could wage the war without economic sacrifice, and today many insist that we can remain safe while enjoying economic and social freedom. That war and this pandemic have each been marked by a pronounced inequitable sharing of the burden and the cost by the poor and by racial minorities. And in neither was there official national recognition of this or a pause for national mourning.In both crises, unspoken politics, personal ambition and arrogance too often have framed public statements as well as military and public health strategy. Then and now we have seen official optimism and an absence of candor regarding projections of what was to come: “It is over; we have won” echoes from Vietnam to 2020. In April, President Trump said there was “
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