Barron Buchunas started tearing up as he heard the first notes of taps.
Fifty years after the Vietnam War ended, the 75-year-old Carol Stream resident can’t help it: “I know what that means.”
He was one of the 60 Vietnam veterans, along with family and supporters, who gathered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Chicago’s Riverwalk Saturday morning to commemorate National Vietnam War Veterans Day.
The gathering, as well as others, have served as a way for the veterans to come together and heal, according to Charles Padilla, an Army corporal who served in Vietnam between 1969 and 1970. Padilla, who grew up with Buchunas on the Southwest Side, said he still gets together with other veterans once a week.
They often don’t talk about what they’ve been through, but being together can help them heal nonetheless.
“It’s good for the mental health of veterans,” Padilla said. “We take care of each other.”
As the ceremony ended, organizer Carlos Saladino — who served as an infantry “grunt” during his 22-month stint in Vietnam, which was broken up by an injury — wished his fellow veterans well.
“God willing, we’ll see you all next year,” Saladino said.
The theme of the Chicago Riverwalk memorial is “Chicago Remembers,” which many of the veterans were quick to point out included those who survived the war — those who had suffered PTSD or the devastating effects of Agent Orange, a chemical used by the U.S. military during the war that has been tied to harmful health effects.
Buchunas has faced his own health struggles because of exposure to the chemical, and he took a moment during the ceremony to nod to others who have as well.
He criticized recent budget cuts to the Veterans Affairs offices, which he said hurts veterans like him and goes against the promise to remember the impacts of the war waged by the U.S.
“When we talk about remembering, we have to talk about taking care of the veterans,” Buchunas said. “They need to go down to the VA hospital and see the condition of people going in there.”
Those veterans also serve as a stark warning for politicians not to follow in the steps of their predecessors, who Buchunas said just continued hundreds of years of invasions in Vietnam.
John Andres, a former sergeant in the 173rd Airborne Brigade who served alongside Saladino, said the takeaway from the war should be to stop it from ever happening again. He didn’t want anyone else to have to hold their friends as they died.
“It should never happen again,” Andres said. “In the infantry, all [the politicians] wanted was a body count to make themselves look good. It was a waste. Look at all these guys whose lives were wasted,” he said, pointing at the memorial behind him.
