When the Town of Marion holds Veterans Day ceremonies at 11:00 am on Thursday, November 11, at Old Landing, Joe Napoli’s face may be among those in the crowd, right under his black Vietnam ball cap.
“My daughter found this for me, she bought it some time ago, and I’m still drying off,” said the 89-year-old Marion resident, alluding to his scars from life after combat. “When I came back from Vietnam, my second tour, I got spit on everywhere from California to Boston, and people would just run up to you, spit at you and run like hell.
“That generation that revolted against us, they’re in their mid to late 70s now. They were the baby boomers.”
For decades, Vietnam veterans were the black sheep of the VFW and have largely walked in the shadows, but much younger veterans are now home after serving amidst similarly widespread criticism of U.S. involvements.
In discussing his recent appointment as Tri-Town Veterans service officer, Chris Gerrior identified a challenge to draw the youngest generation of veterans out of the woodwork so they, too, can embrace their status and begin to access available benefits and programs.
“Our living veteran population is a snapshot of our country’s demographics, world events and public policy,” said Gerrior. “We still have a few veterans who fought in World War II, and they are all over 90 years old. We have many veterans from the Vietnam era, some who joined and some who were drafted, and they are all over 60. And we are now seeing more and more veterans who joined since 2001, saw sustained deployments over the past two decades, some born after (September 11, 2001).”
If the youngest veterans are to receive their proper welcome back to American life, they’ll need to be treated with more respect than Napoli got.
Born in Brockton but raised in Worcester after his father’s shoe-factory job changed, Napoli was drafted toward the tail end of the Korean War.
“That was the first time somebody called me by my name and not have any reference to my ethnic background. (Prior to) it was either ‘wop,’ ‘dago’ or ‘guinea,'” he said. “I thought (the Army) was a pretty good deal, and I went to get a commission (and) stayed on active duty for 25 years.”
There was a hint of laughter in Napoli’s voice discussing the ethnic slang that blew around like autumn leaves in his youth, but he saw no reason and could never make sense out of the hostility that greeted him upon his return from active duty in 1971.
“They took issue with us, the general public. But they picked on the wrong people,” he said. “We had nothing to do with going to Vietnam, and I’ll tell you, it was a long, long trip coming home from Vietnam, landing in California and then making your way back here. … That spitting continued for a good five, six, seven years or more.”
What should have been the happiest, most-respectful 10 years of Napoli’s life were plagued with abuse and alienation by people who could not or would not separate out his duty from their opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s foreign policy.
“War is hell and it doesn’t prove a … thing other than just kill people, and it kills the wrong people, not those in power who get us involved. … I lost a lot of kids in Vietnam,” said Napoli of those under his command. “Vietnam was terrible, we just lost 58,000 GI’s, kids. We had no … business in Vietnam, okay? There was no strategic value. … Not only that, we had nothing to say about it. We were sent there, we were in the military, we were following orders. If we didn’t, we’d go to jail.”
A Marion resident since 1977, Napoli peacefully ran the ROTC program at New Bedford High School and, at age 89, is at peace with his life and his community.
But the torment of war is forever only a memory away, and Thursday’s Veterans Day events in Marion and Mattapoisett are all-too-rare opportunities for people like himself or a much younger veteran to hear positive words about the time they served their country.
Marion’s ceremony at Old Landing Veteran’s Park on Front Street will feature words from Professor James R. Holmes, Ph.D. of the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and music from the Sippican School Band led by Hannah Moore.
The Town of Mattapoisett has asked Veterans Day attendees to gather at 10:45 am in Shipyard Park to be ready for the 11:00 am ringing of the Center School bell and words from members of the local American Legion. The Bells of Peace will simultaneously ring out at Mattapoisett Congregational Church, 27 Church Street, where the public is also invited to assemble on the church lawn.
By Mick Colageo