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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

A long-due welcome home

Vietnam vets honored at Fort Campbell ceremony

Vietnam veterans enter a hangar at Fort Campbell, Ky., during a welcome-home ceremony Sunday.  (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Kristin M. Hall Associated Press

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. – Tears filled the eyes of some Vietnam veterans who were warmly greeted with cheers from their family and friends Sunday in an re-enactment of their original return from the war, when they were often met with angry demonstrators and harsh headlines.

The ceremony was a first for the 101st Airborne Division and the Army, said Maj. Patrick Seiber, an Army spokesman based at Fort Campbell.

“Our hope is that other units and other posts will follow our lead in having this type of ceremony,” he said.

Mickey Leighton, a 72-year-old Army veteran from Naples, Fla., said listening to the applause and praise from the community was very emotional.

Leighton, who started his military career at Fort Campbell in 1956, served two tours in Vietnam including the Tet Offensive. He returned in 1972 in the midst of angry anti-war protests that often placed blame on the individual soldiers.

“We were treated very shabbily,” he said. “In some cases they would throw eggs at us, they would throw empty beer bottles at us and they would call us baby-killers.”

He said many soldiers would immediately change clothes because they didn’t want to wear their uniforms in public in the late 1960s and early ’70s while traveling home after returning from war.

Army leaders and the community around Fort Campbell collaborated for the Vietnam ceremony, Seiber said. The 101st Airborne Division Association, a group for former soldiers from the division, helped to organize and get the word out.

“I can’t think of a better community to do this in than the Fort Campbell community,” Seiber said.