1. END OF VIETNAM WAR: 40 YEARS LATER VETERANS LOOK BACK WITH PRIDE, HEARTBREAK
Record, The (Hackensack, NJ) - April 30, 2015
Author/Byline: TODD SOUTH, STAFF WRITER
Edition: AE
Section: NEWS
Page: A01
Seared in the minds of a generation of Americans are the pictures of helicopters laden with refugees lifting off from Saigon rooftops as
that city was about to fall to Communist forces at the bitter end of the Vietnam War.
It was a signal moment, 40 years ago today, that touched every segment of society across the nation, but it struck the deepest blow for
the people who fought that complex, wrenching, bloody conflict.
Frank Crotty, 68, of Mahwah, who returned from the conflict in 1971, said it was "heartbreaking" to watch broadcasts of Saigon's fall in
April 1975. "We felt that it was an awful waste, all those lives lost on both sides," Crotty said.
Vietnam was the first modern defeat for the U.S. military, and the war has influenced the nation's foreign policy and military interventions
to this day, experts say. The public's negative view of the war turned to indifference toward the troops and the problems they brought
back home, veterans and scholars say.
The war dragged on for more than a decade and claimed 58,220 U.S. troops, and between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese
troops. An estimated 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops were killed, and an estimated 2 million civilians died.
The war's end also saw the mass evacuation of 175,000 South Vietnamese refugees in the final months along with another wave of
Vietnamese immigrants that arrived in United States from refugee camps across Southeast Asia in the late 1970s.
Because of their experiences, or in spite of them, four veterans of the Vietnam War, all North Jersey residents, say they are proud of their
service in Vietnam, and they believe the U.S. could have won the war with more public support and clearer strategic goals.
They remain angry, however, about the treatment of veterans on their return, although they said they had been thanked for their sacrifices
since the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
Crotty was a Fordham law student when he was drafted in 1968. He worked in Vietnam as an Army interrogator, befriending several
Vietnamese interpreters, visiting their homes and having meals with their families. As the war neared its end and the North Vietnamese
marched toward Saigon, they passed through his former outposts, killing many of his South Vietnamese colleagues along the way.
In Iraq, in particular, Crotty said, he saw some of Vietnam's mistakes repeated.
"We were too quick to want to become involved, the public got war weary and we don't extract ourselves as intelligently as we might,"
said Crotty, who is a lawyer.
Remembers anger
Ben Cascio, 73, of Oakland enlisted in the Marines in 1960 and became an officer and helicopter pilot. He can still feel the thwack of
bullets striking his Sikorsky UH-34 helicopter in April 1968 as he maneuvered out of a hot zone near the Marine base at Dong Ha. The
helicopter was weighed down with injured American troops, and shrapnel struck him in the face, blinding him in one eye. His co-pilot was
knocked unconscious, and another Marine had to guide him out of the hail of enemy fire.
He clearly remembers his anger as he watched on television as the final days of the war unfolded.
"What an absolute crime, what an absolute shame to see something like that going on," said Cascio, who is a lawyer.
He rejects any portrayal of the war as misguided from the start. "I believed then as I believe now that we were there to accomplish an
overall, worldwide mission: to halt the spread of communism," Cascio said.
Tony Vancheri, 66, was drafted in 1968 and went to boot camp with his pal Louis J. CoFrancesco Jr.; both were from Paterson. After
basic training, Vancheri went to medic training, and CoFrancesco was sent into combat. He was killed that September, shortly after
arriving.
Vancheri, who came home from the war in 1970, takes time to clean the Vietnam War Memorial that bears his friend's name at the
Veterans Memorial Park on McBride Avenue in Paterson. He said he was despondent his first year after returning, waking from
nightmares of mangled bodies and the stench of burnt flesh of soldiers he treated in the medical tents.

2. Like the others, he closely tracked the war on TV news, but when the last U.S. soldier returned home in 1975, "that's when I was happy. I
felt a sense of relief that I didn't have to watch this anymore," Vancheri said.
Bill Johnson, 71, a Franklin Lakes native, entered the war as an officer with the Army's 4th Infantry Division. He served multiple combat
tours from 1967 to 1970 but resigned his commission, disgusted with how the war was being conducted.
Unlike in World War II and Korea, where armies battled for territory and fought to hold it, soldiers in Vietnam would drop down in an area,
fight, count enemy dead, then board helicopters to fly back to their bases.
"We would just go and have a battle and just leave," said Johnson, a retired police officer, remembering how he thought, "This just doesn't
make any sense."
Haunting conflict
As the war dragged on and nightly news broadcasts showed rising body counts, the dark side of war loomed in the imaginations of people
back home, experts said.
"The way the Vietnam War ended had a big impact on how it's being subsequently remembered," said Edward Miller, a Dartmouth
College history professor who heads the Dartmouth Vietnam Project, an archive of oral histories on the Vietnam era.
Miller credits Vietnam vets for their "leadership role" in improving veteran health care and engendering greater support for troops
beginning with the Persian Gulf War, support they themselves were denied.
But the Vietnam War still haunts American history, he said, and if how it was fought is subject to debate, its outcome fell far short of the
goal of preserving a democratic South Vietnam. There was no clear victory, he said.
Howard Jones, a retired University of Alabama history professor who has written multiple books on the Vietnam War, said that since press
coverage first brought the brutalities of the conflict into American households, it's been difficult for governments to sanitize warfare.
He is working on a book about the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which American troops slaughtered hundreds of non-combatant South
Vietnamese villagers. It was an event that turned public opinion against the war, he said.
Volunteer work
Many veterans distanced themselves from their service immediately after the war, but others such as Vancheri, Crotty, Cascio and
Johnson are actively involved with veterans organizations. They speak at schools and organize care-package drives and welcome-home
ceremonies for troops in more recent conflicts.
Crotty said he and the other Vietnam veterans he knows don't focus on the anniversary of the war's end but instead look to Memorial Day
to honor the fallen and Veterans Day to honor all veterans.
"When you think of the end of the Vietnam conflict, you can't celebrate it," Crotty said. "You can remember it, but you can't celebrate it."
Email: south@northjersey.com
Caption: Ben Cascio of Oakland was a Marine pilot in Vietnam and is now a lawyer in Franklin Lakes. Cascio, left, in Khe Sanh, South
Vietnam, on Christmas Day 1967 with the crew of his Sikorsky UH-34 helicopter. Tony Vancheri, a Vietnam War combat medic from
Paterson, next to the Vietnam War Memorial at Veterans Memorial Park. VIETNAM PHOTO - CHRIS PEDOTA/STAFF
PHOTOGRAPHER PHOTO PHOTO - CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER GRAPHIC- R.L. REBACH/STAFF ARTIST
043015_A_cascioNowRST65p.TIF 043015_A_cascioThenRST65p.TIF 043015_A_VietnamHN_sm_70p_PM_5.TIF 043015_A_NJ
Vietnam fatalities_PM_5.EPS
Record: 15043047818063
Copyright: Copyright (c) 2015 North Jersey Media Group Inc.