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As Marge Barker sees it, a local homage to Vietnam veterans is overdue.
The Bayou Lafourche Folklife and Heritage Museum has staged exhibits representing local involvement in global conflict before, but Barker, secretary of the museum’s board, said Vietnam had loomed as less approachable due to its controversial nature. Unveiling the new temporary exhibit that illustrates the region’s involvement is in some ways an apology for the way America treated veterans of that conflict after the war concluded, she said.
“I’ve learned that (the war and the American public’s response) does matter to them, still, after all these years,” Barker said. “Some of them have gotten over the really bad feelings about it, but some still carry that.”
The Vietnam War was synchronized with the rise of American counterculture, as millions became disillusioned with the nation’s direction and began voicing opposition to the state of affairs, often with an irreverence that may have contributed to the polarization. Hordes saw the U.S. engagement in the atrocities of war – and beyond in the case of the My Lai Massacre – despite an imminent threat to the homeland as unconscionable.
In a sense, Barker said, returning servicemen were a tangible proxy for angry protestors to levy their feelings upon. To her and many others, the general public’s treating the troops – millions of whom served involuntarily – with scorn because they followed orders was equally outrageous.
“I can remember them talking about marching down the street in a military parade and people spitting on them, or getting off the airplane or the troop train and people actually throwing things at them, screaming at them or spitting on them,” said Barker, who was in her 30s when the war ended. “That’s the worst insult in the world, being spit on. That made me feel like that was a shameful part of our history.”
Vietnam Veteran Gary Acosta, one of the exhibit’s organizers, said the local reaction to returning servicemen wasn’t as rancid as the national response but that the welcome was still lacking.
“Down here, it might not have been as bad,” Acosta said. “People around here, they really appreciate it. I guess we didn’t get the welcome we wanted, the one we thought we’d get.”
A Lockport native, Acosta was drafted into the conflict. He trained as a medic, but volunteered for a long-range reconnaissance team after hearing first-hand of how brutal the front lines could be.
“It was like working offshore, you went out five days and you came back in,” he said. “You go out and look, not go out and seek.”
And it was going back to work offshore that helped transition Acosta into a post-war reality. He referenced the famous quote, “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” and admitted that his Vietnam experience has stuck with him, even if it hasn’t been as vibrant as others. He hopes the exhibit’s reverence will resonate with his contemporary soldiers and their families.
“One thing in particular is you’re recognizing the people who sacrificed for the country,” he said. “A lot of people made the ultimate sacrifice – they didn’t come back.”
As in many instances of deep despair, great art was born in the jungles; consider as one Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” a novel read locally as part of The Big Read program earlier this year. But the mark of humanity is just as vibrant in the artifacts that survived the war.
Although modest in size, the Folklife and Heritage Museum’s collection is poignant. An AK-47 rests next to a rusted mortar round and beneath a grenade launcher, and a “Charlie” mannequin stands on a patch of grass surrounded by U.S. Army “booby traps.” To-and-from handwritten correspondence between a local serviceman and a class of ninth-grade girls can be parsed. Scuffed jungle boots and helmets are on display, as is a genuine, time-weathered map, its folds almost seared and notations faded but visible.
“One man who came to our opening brought in some artifacts and said, ‘Be sure you don’t open that vial,’ because there’s soil in there, but he said it might have (the toxic herbicide) Agent Orange in it,” Barker said.
These relics were donated to the exhibit from veterans throughout the area. The Houma Regional Military Museum assisted with collections, and solicitations were made at American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars events. All hammer home the reality of a war that ended nearly 40 years ago, but, overall, organizers feel the exhibit is lacking.
“I was afraid we wouldn’t have an exhibit,” because even the items that were loaned came at the last moment, Acosta said. He and the museum’s board will continue to accept artifacts until all available space is filled, he said.
The exhibit is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays through summer 2014 at the Bayou Lafourche Folklife and Heritage Museum, 110 Main St., Lockport. Admission is $2 for adults and $1 for children. For more information, call (985) 532-5902.
–editor@gumboguide.com
Boots and other gear that survived the Vietnam War are pictured as part of the Bayou Lafourche Folklife and Heritage Museum’s exhibit.
An AK-47, mortar round and crossbow are exhibited as some of the weaponry used during the Vietnam conflict.
