Vietnam War

The voice of the Rev. Marion Curtis Bascom, the Baltimore civil rights leader, confidante of Martin Luther King Jr. and anti-war foe, who stepped down in 1995 after leading Douglas Memorial Community Church for 45 years, has lost none of its powerful resonance or purposefulness. Bascom, who will turn 82 in March, shows no signs of slowing down as he continues embracing new projects while caring for his ailing wife of 28 years. "I'm on the board of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, where I like promoting the story of how black and white Americans are inextricably tied together," Bascom said in an interview the other day from his Park Avenue home.

In response to the article about the Defend Life protesters and their signs (""Law, order, free speech," March 25), I can't believe the reaction of the people who are "victims" of having to look at such horrible images. Did people say that about the images we saw during the Vietnam war? Didn't that help to bring the war to an end? What about images of the starving children and refugees in Africa and Haiti? How do you think the world is able to respond to those kinds of crisis if they don't see the truth?

Sweltering and gripped with fear, 19-year-old Marine Rob Coughlin slithered on his belly with a flashlight and semi-automatic pistol through one of Vietnam's underground tunnels when he came face to face with his worst nightmare - a deadly bamboo viper. "I was afraid to move a muscle but I was shaking so," said Coughlin, a member of an earlier generation of American "tunnel rats" - troops with the mission of scouring subterranean labyrinths in Vietnam for the enemy. When he made it back above ground, Coughlin slammed his tunnel gear to the ground and told his sergeant that this unnerving crawl was his last.

An Anne Arundel County councilman used an ethnic slur during a council meeting held Thursday night to appoint a replacement for a vacant seat on the body. Councilman Richard B. "Dick" Ladd, a Broadneck Republican, referred to "gooks" from his seat on the dais when speaking about his time serving in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. While questioning a candidate for the vacant seat on the council, Ladd remarked on their similar Army service. When another councilman teased Ladd, 71, about which war he may have served during, Ladd said: "I was in the Vietnam War. It wasn't the Revolutionary War. I was there chasing down the gooks.

Nearly 40 years ago, a haunting photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running in anguish after being severely burned in a napalm bomb attack on her village became an iconic image of the Vietnam War. But most who have seen the Pulitzer Prize-winning shot probably haven't heard the obscure song it inspired more than three decades later, says Hugo Keesing, a self-taught music historian. "The Girl in the Picture (Napalm Girl)," released by Yanah in 2004, is one of more than 300 famous and not-so-famous songs and spoken-word tracks about the war that are included in a 13-CD anthology assembled by Keesing, a Columbia resident.

A replica of the Vietnam War Memorial will be in Baltimore this weekend at Meadowridge Memorial Park, 7250 Washington Blvd.The 240-foot replica of the Washington, D.C. monument will be the centerpiece of the "Vietnam War Experience" Friday through Sunday, which will include honor guards, memorial ceremonies and a reading of the names of soldiers killed in Vietnam. For more information, call 796-1144.

"SOG," by John L. Plaster. Simon and Schuster. 365 pages. $25.This is the saddest story I've ever heard. It's about a generation of American Special Forces soldiers - senior NCOs, mostly, and ex-NCOs field-commissioned as junior officers - who gave themselves over to the Vietnam War without a whimper or a twitch of hesitation. They were like Housman's mercenaries: They took their wages and are -mostly - dead.Under the administratively banal code name "Studies and Observations Group," they served primarily as small unit reconnaissance teams operating from forward outposts.

There is no date when this nation's war in Vietnam began. It escalated during the 1960s from a few advisers to a massive engagement. Some would say March 8, 1965, when U.S. combatants arrived in unit strength. Similarly there is no date for the war's end, which evolved starting with the cease-fire agreement of Jan. 27, 1973. Many will say it ended -- emotionally -- on Feb. 3, 1994, when President Clinton announced an end to the economic boycott of Vietnam and an agreement to establish liaison offices in Hanoi and Washington.

NEW YORK - During the Vietnam War, I knew young men who scrambled for a 4F draft deferment, who ran to grad school while it still meant deferral, who lucked out with a high draft number, who enlisted in ROTC, who fled to Canada. But I knew nobody who served in that heart of darkness. Among my male contemporaries, the goal of avoiding Vietnam overshadowed all else. As college students in Chicago, we joined pickets in front of the business school when a corporation said to have made napalm for U.S. Army use in Vietnam came to interview on campus.

Bernard "Butch" Edgar Stickell Jr., a Vietnam War veteran who was awarded the Purple Heart, died of heart failure Aug. 17 at Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Baltimore. The Pasadena resident was 60. After graduating from Glen Burnie High School, Mr. Stickell served in the Army as a combat medic, achieving the rank of specialist fifth class. In addition to the Purple Heart, he received the National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Combat Infantryman's Badge, Vietnam Campaign Medal and Army Commendation Medal.

Nearly 40 years ago, a haunting photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running in anguish after being severely burned in a napalm bomb attack on her village became an iconic image of the Vietnam War. But most who have seen the Pulitzer Prize-winning shot probably haven't heard the obscure song it inspired more than three decades later, says Hugo Keesing, a self-taught music historian. "The Girl in the Picture (Napalm Girl)," released by Yanah in 2004, is one of more than 300 famous and not-so-famous songs and spoken-word tracks about the war that are included in a 13-CD anthology assembled by Keesing, a Columbia resident.

- When President Barack Obama went to Fort Bragg the other day to proclaim the end of the nearly nine-year war in Iraq, it was hardly what you would call a traditional victory lap. There was no wild V-I Day to match the V-E and V-J Days that kicked off nationwide jubilation at the end of World War II. The most Mr. Obama could proclaim was that America wished a "welcome home" to the last of the 1.5 million American troops who had served in...

Etna A. Weinhold, a former combat nurse who served with the Army in Vietnam and later spent four decades at Greater Baltimore Medical Center as clinical manager of its postpartum units, died Nov. 10 of cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. She was 67 and had lived in Towson. "She will forever be the needle, which for 40 years wove the tapestry of who GBMC is to our community, proclaiming by her very breath: in all we do the patient always comes first," wrote chaplain J. Joseph Hart, executive director of spiritual support services and executive director of GBMC's Center for Spiritual Support Training.

Brig. Gen. Raymond J. Winkel Jr., a retired career Army officer and a Vietnam War veteran who was chairman of the physics department at West Point for more than two decades, died Aug. 30 of cancer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. He was 65. The son of a civil engineer and a homemaker, General Winkel was born in Baltimore and raised in Gardenville. He attended Polytechnic Institute and was 17 when appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

George Gilbert Ganjon, a retired Carroll County farmer who was a founder of the Downtown Farmers Market, died of kidney failure Aug. 1 at Dove House in Westminster. He was 82. Born in Baltimore, he grew up near the Hollins Market in the southwestern section of the city. He was a 1947 Catonsville High School graduate. He met his future wife, Alvina "Sis" Jackson, at the Cross Street Market in South Baltimore, where she, her parents and brothers ran produce and flower stalls.

Edward M. "Mike" Miller, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who later worked in real estate sales and was a flea market manager, died Feb. 14 of a brain tumor at his Fallston home. He was 62. The son of a clothing cutter and a homemaker, Mr. Miller was born and raised in East Baltimore. He graduated in 1968 from Northern High School and was drafted into the Army the next year. Mr. Miller served as a radioman with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. "He was with a small group, and they thought the enemy was a small group at the top of a hill.

A decorated Vietnam War veteran and former Maryland state trooper was to be honored last night as Howard County's Officer of the Year for 2003 at a police awards ceremony in Ellicott City. Pfc. William E. Vogel, a 10-year veteran of the department, received the award during a ceremony for police officers and civilian police employees. Vogel is a day-shift patrol officer who works in the rural, western end of the county. Last year, Vogel left his mark on the department on several fronts, according to a department newsletter that announced his award last month.

IT'S ONLY been 25 years, but the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, like the whole Vietnam War that preceded it, feels as if it happened in a galaxy long ago and far away. Maybe that's because, though it was a big war that killed lots of people, it wasn't really about anything important. The strategic context now seems ludicrous. Not only has the entire Cold War come to seem distant and strange, but the vision of Asian dominoes falling one by one that fueled the American intervention in Vietnam -- if Vietnam falls, then so must Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines -- was manifest nonsense.