When two dozen Colorado veterans gathered for lunch on a national holiday honoring their military service, they recounted experiences that ranged from combat action in some of the Vietnam War’s most notorious battles, to mundane tours on Army and air bases in the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest and the Deep South. 

But although one Korean War vet was now age 96, as with most Veterans Day celebrations now, this one marked a changing of the guard, with no one present from World War II — a sole war that Americans now overwhelmingly view as having been worth fighting.

Rather, the tours of these vets were in less popular conflicts from Korea, through the long Cold War, and the enduringly unpopular Vietnam War. The Denver Gazette spoke with 10 of the men as they leaned over burgers and onion rings at Freddy’s in Littleton on Tuesday. Several of those who served in Vietnam recalled the poor reception they had when they set foot back in the states.

RECEPTION AFTER VIETNAM

Anthony Michael Marquez was a courier in the Army Signal Corps from 1968 to 1970 at the peak of the war, where he received an Air Medal and a Bronze Star.

“When we came home,” Marquez said, “they were all telling us, ‘You’re baby killers’.”

“Now, those same people are telling us, ‘Thank you for your service’,” Marquez recounted. “I would want them to say, ‘Thank you for your freedom,’ and leave it at that.”

Noel Lane, Navy vet with four tours in Vietnam, served on three destroyers. Those included as a petty officer torpedoman on the USS Turner Joy, the ship that fired what his shipmates regard as the last shot of the war, just as President Nixon’s envoy Henry Kissinger was wrapping up a Paris Peace Agreement to end the fighting. (War broke out again after the peace, and the end of the war is generally considered to have been in 1975.)

Lane told The Denver Gazette that as word of the peace was arriving from Paris on January 27, 1973, the ship fought a 90-minute battle against vastly superior artillery, while protecting other U.S. ships leaving the shore area. Then, he recalls, they heard the radio pleas from two Navy pilots who had been shot down on a river island, begging for a rescue that would never come.

“How bad is it to die 10 minutes before the end of the war?” Lane said. “But what about the 58,000 that died during the 12 years before that?”

POSITIVELY CHANNELED

Fifty years later, Lane and all of the other vets interviewed said that despite the intensity, they have no doubt today that their lives were positively channeled through their military experiences.

“My success in life is because of the four years I served in the military,” Lane said. “I learned what real value is, morality and spirituality, but more importantly, l learned never to give up.”

Lane followed with a career in homebuilding and served as president of Colorado’s Melody Homes, one of Denver’s largest builders, before going on to international ventures in Japan and South America.

“It had its moments,” said Sid Wilson with the Army’s 54^th Signal Battalion.

Seemingly, he was modestly summing up a tour as a combat radio operator in battles with names like Pleiku and Quy Nhon that had become household names on nightly television news back in the U.S.

“I wouldn’t have volunteered for the draft,” Wilson said. “But in retrospect, I wouldn’t have exchanged the experience. It was the highlight reel for the rest of your life.”

Wilson went on from an Army field radio to a career in communications, including at Lockheed Martin in Jefferson County. He then launched a venture as a mountain tour guide for companies bringing their conventions to Colorado. Along with famed Denver concert promoter Barry Fey and performer/singer John Denver, he is now listed in the Colorado Tourism Hall of Fame.

Air Force veteran Don Godi recalls struggling at the University of Arizona, when the campus ROTC unit gave him a chance for a warrant commission. He went on to serve as a lieutenant at a Strategic Air Command base in Washington state.

“It was a chance to go back to school when it was over, and for a VA loan for my house,” he recalled.  “I enjoyed my tour and made great friends.”

What would you tell a young generation now about whether they ought to consider military service?

“I’d tell them it’s a good lifestyle, that may be better than what you have now,” Godi said. “It’s been very beneficial and offered excellent training.”

Homebuilder John Kurowski, a long supporter of veterans’ causes, organized the lunch and picked up twenty-odd checks at the counter.