AREA VIETNAM VETERANS REMEMBER THE DAY OF TREATY

Saturday marked the 25th anniversary of the agreement that ended American involvement in the Vietnam War, but several area veterans said the date was not a memorable one for them.

Four local Vietnam veterans said the symbolic signing of a peace agreement by embassy leaders in 1973 which led to a cease-fire was important but essentially a non-event. Dates marking more visual events, including the final withdrawal of troops in 1975, were much more memorable, they said.

"This was an agreement that they made; there wasn't really an event," said Burt Lehman of Cape Girardeau. "The Saigon evacuation was more hard-hitting."

Probably the most striking event of all was the date each of them returned home. That's definitely the case for John Blackwell and Morris Owens of Cape Girardeau.

Blackwell, a Marine Corps corporal who was serving in South Vietnam when the cease-fire was announced, said his only thought at the time was to return home to his wife and an eight-month old daughter he had never seen.

"It just seemed like I kept getting farther away from home," he said. "I'd left a pregnant wife at home and my first child was born in December of '72. I didn't get to see her until August of '73. My Vietnam Baby, I call her."

Owens had completed a two-year tour in the Army and was back home in Cape Girardeau when the cease-fire was announced. He said he had mixed feelings about the timing of the event but knows there is no greater feeling for a soldier than the day he returns to American soil after fighting in a foreign country.

"Every year when Feb. 6 comes around I'm always thankful," he said. "Stepping back home on American soil makes you appreciate America, believe me."

Roy Rhodes of Scott City had also returned home by January 1973. The Army vet said he best remembers when the first wave of soldiers listed as Prisoners Of War and Missing In Action returned home. That day was and still is important because there are still many American soldiers who have not been returned, he said.

"This anniversary doesn't really stand out that much," he said. "Knowing that only about a fourth of those who were captured ever came back is more important to me. That still is my main concern about the whole thing. It's a bad feeling knowing you have fellow vets who never came back."

Lehman had also completed his Army tour of duty and was working at home when the cease-fire was announced. He said he wishes more had been done by politicians to retrieve other POWs.

"I felt glad it was over but kind of pained knowing that I'd been there and a lot of my friends had died over there," he said. "You want to feel like you can take the ground and hold it where your friends had died.

"My unit never, ever left a single man dead or alive; we never left a man unaccounted for. We were risking our lives to bring back bodies. If we did that, how can our government do any less?"