Vietnam interview

Alex Bollas
Reidenbaugh
Period 6/7
5/28/08
Vietnam Memorial Interview: A Bitter Yet Sweet Experience


Dennis J. Stauffer is a Vietnam veteran. Unfortunately, I do not know this man but I did find an article on the internet that he wrote called The Bitter Homecoming. I used direct quotes from this article to conduct a mock interview. He had three brothers. His father died a young man so Stauffer was alone with his mother and siblings. Out of the four brothers, Stauffer and one other brother left to fight in Vietnam. The war had a large impact on Stauffer and his family, and the same was true for many families of that generation.





Alex: “How were you involved with the Vietnam conflict?”
Stauffer: “A senior radar operator for field artillery”.
Alex: “When were you in Vietnam?”
Stauffer: “I was in Vietnam during the late 1960s.”
Alex: “Why don’t Vietnam veterans like yourself speak of your experiences?”
Stauffer: “I kept my experiences quiet, as did many veterans, to avoid pain of the war. I also kept it quiet because the war was not a welcome topic outside walls of veterans clubs. We faced rejection and verbal, sometimes physical assault.”
Alex “Did you have any friends or family fighting in the war?”
Stauffer: “Yes, my brother and I had tours of duty.”
Alex: “Could you describe his experience?”
Stauffer: “He died in battle.”
Alex: “I understand you went to see the memorial. What was that like?”
Stauffer: “It was a bittersweet experience viewing the memorial for the first time.”
Alex: “What was bitter about it?”
Stauffer: “The bitter part was remembering my friends and family who were killed in the war.”
Alex: “What was the sweet part?”
Stauffer: “The sweet part came because we were honoring those boys-turned-men, our Vietnam War dead, in our nation’s capital.”
Alex: “Were all the Veterans happy with the memorial?”
Stauffer: “No, I heard a few veterans grumble; they did not feel its silent tribute and looked upon it as still another slap in the face.”
Alex: “Were there only Vietnam veterans at the memorial?”
Stuffer: “No, there were also veterans from other wars and some who had lost children in the Vietnamese conflict.”



Stauffer was greatly affected by the war. One of the greatest effects at the time for him may have been his brother’s death (besides his own involvement in the war). After his return, he and fellow veterans were treated very poorly. The creation of the Vietnam Memorial was the first time when Vietnam veterans could be looked at as heroes rather than the villains they were thought of as before.



During the “interview,” I managed to gain a good amount of knowledge about the Vietnam era. I did not realize how poorly the veterans were treated. I was previously knowledgeable that one of the reasons veterans did not speak of their experiences was to avoid the painful memories, but I didn’t know that another reason that they kept these memories to themselves was that they were often humiliated by fellow Americans. They received poor treatment instead of a welcomed home because many people thought the war was wrong and were against soldiers accepting the draft and fighting in an immoral war.

The article The Bitter Homecoming originally appeared in the Sunday, December 5, 1982 edition of the Grand Rapids Press