Every morning at 8 a.m., retired Navy Capt. Eric Jensen raises a large American flag on a tall pole secured with an anchor in front of his Laguna Beach home. When Old Glory unfurls, so does the Navy flag.
“I raise the flags in memory of my best friend, Robin Pearce, and all the other veterans that didn’t come home,” Jensen said. “Some gave some, some gave it all, but everybody did their part.”
The daily ritual is cathartic for Jensen, who said he spent 23 years internalizing his emotions after coming home from Vietnam, where he was a combat pilot with Attack Squadron 82 aboard the USS Coral Sea aircraft carrier.
It took him decades, he said, to learn “there is a life.” He now proudly puts his Navy service out there, and with therapy, he’s realized his time in the Vietnam War is “nothing to be ashamed of.”
The 80-year-old flew 113 combat missions over Laos and Vietnam in 1969 and 1970 after joining the Navy Reserves and then going into active duty for 11 years, he said. “When I came back to San Francisco, they said don’t wear your uniform if you go ashore. I came home to my country, and they didn’t give a (expletive) for me defending their freedom.”
“I self-isolated,” he added. “No one understood what happened with me. I carried the war’s expenses with me and had no place to dump it.”
Now, nearing the 50th anniversary on Wednesday, March 29, of the last American troops withdrawing from the Vietnam War, Jensen and other veterans look back across the decades and reflect on what the divisive war meant to them personally and to their country.
More than 3 million Americans served in Vietnam – 58,000 died and 150,000 were wounded – and today, more than 1,500 are still listed as missing.
A lack of respect at home for many of those returning caused them to hide their pain by, as Jensen called it, “bunkering up.” Few discussed their service with family and friends. Instead, they tried to get on with life, many going quickly…
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