One of my favorite movies was shown on TCM last night. John Ford's, "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," with John Wayne staring in the role of Captian Brittles. For some reason, I connect this movie with the yellow ribbons that we hang in rememberance of missing people or Prisoners of War. I'm not sure if the yellow ribbon phenomenon grew out of the habit young women had of wearing a yellow ribbon when they had a beau in the calvary, but it may have.
I think that being able to do something, anything at all really, when a loved one is missing, is important for the family. Vietnam Era POW and MIA families were ordered to do NOTHING. What was worse than not being allowed to talk about it, or to try and effect the POWs' or MIAs' release, was the horrible fact that the government didn't seem to care about them. If officials or the military were doing anything, they didn't keep the famlies informed.
See below the break for my personal experiences.
My father is Col. Dewey L. Smith USAF Ret. He was a Prisoner of War in Vietnam throughout much of my childhood. My younger brother and sister barely remembered him by the time he returned home in 1973. My father is a highly decorated American hero.
After we were informed that he had been shot down, and that his status was being listed as Missing in Action, the government told us not to discuss this with anyone outside our immediate family. I was in Junior High at that time. The kids I went to school with were aware that I did not have a father living at home. The only physical fight I ever had was with a girl in my class who told everyone that my father had run off with some woman. I called her a liar, and she hit me. This was in class, so I did not hit her back there. I arranged to meet her after school. I made her hit me first again, but then I beat on her until my arms were too tired for me to continue. No one ever teased me again, especially about my dad being gone.
To this day, I don't understand why the stupid things my classmate said upset me so badly, but they did. Maybe it was because I knew my father was being heroic, wherever he was, and I wouldn't allow him to be slandered. Maybe this was my way of hanging a yellow ribbon for him.
Many years later, tired of standing by and doing nothing, I joined the National League of Families. This coalation was comprised of the families of POWs and MIAs who wanted to help bring about the release of their men. Through that organization, the work to free the POWs and MIAs became more focused and effective. Their plight was no longer a secret, and suddenly the government discovered that there was political currency in their release.
The American public has never heard the true stories of what the families of these men endured, both while they were gone, and after they came home. Over the next few months, I will be writing about my own experiences, and about the experiences of some of the other families.