I was in Saigon for the Tet Offensive in 1968 and Dak To for the devastating NVA attacks of late 1967
By Steve Sprague, Bath NY
I spent 35 years of my life in federal service before retiring recently and a total of 46 years in the Washington, D.C., Capital region. I’m back in my hometown of Bath now but I’m proud to declare that every minute of those years were in performance of honorable and necessary work with honorable, dedicated colleagues.
But of late, I’m living again with the chill left by my first federal job.
I entered federal service in 1965 in the uniform of America’s military. As a “Baby Boomer,” born just a year after the end of World War II, I was brought up in a nation grateful for the sacrifices of those who saved the world from evil. Veterans were respected. My immediate relatives – father, uncles – all served and I was led to believe I, also, owed time answering my country’s call for help.
I spent 18-months in uniform in Vietnam. Like an estimated 2+ million American brothers and sisters who served there, I was shot at in the air, in the jungles and in the villages. I was in Saigon for the Tet Offensive in 1968 and Dak To for the devastating NVA attacks of late 1967.
I tried to “serve with honor,” and despite traveling the entire country, I never witnessed or even heard stories of American atrocities like the events at My Lai.
Yet when I returned home, there was no parade or “Thank you for your service.” The welcome for tired and scarred servicemen were chants of “baby killer” and obvious disgust. Apparently, I was supposed to be ashamed for my service.
I was lucky. No Purple Heart and no PTSD. Thousands of my colleagues, however, personalized that induced guilt and denial of their honorable service in uniform. Many never lost the scars of that time.
Today, I see it happening again. I’m deeply saddened watching as my former co-workers and colleagues, still in honorable and dedicated federal service, are being broad-brushed as lazy, useless “deep-state” conspirators worthy only of summary dismissal and public derision.
In the mid-60’s, I and my fellow veterans were the victims of bad national policy and politically-motivated decisions. It’s no surprise, that’s where today’s blame lays, as well.
You hear no “thank you” from the White House for the people who are working daily to keep food on the table in American homes; who keep airplanes from wholesale destruction or those who keep terrorists from your door. Rather, you hear a convicted felon telling his cult that federal workers are useless moochers.
You see a billionaire immigrant wielding a chainsaw under the delighted smile of his elected enabler, asking two million people what they did last week. At his own workplace, Tesla recalled 376,000 vehicles for problems with power steering and rained debris on population centers from a faulty SpaceX rocket. This is our “expert?”
It was unfair and un-American treatment when I returned from Vietnam. It’s worse now. Every American will feel the pain being maliciously inflicted in the lives of the people who keep this Nation alive and working. Waste, fraud and abuse are program and policy problems, not people.
And please, at least consider a “Thank You” once in a while.
