Vietnam vet ensures others never forgotten

  • Published
  • By Capt. Paula Kurtz
  • 47th Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
LAUGHLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) --  As a young boy, Roberto Barrera remembers looking through stacks of pictures his father had taken while stationed in Italy as an Army infantry private during World War II. The images stirred his curiosity and interest in the military and, shortly after high school, he decided to enlist in the Marine Corps.

Little did he know then how that decision would forever change his life.

Barrera is one of many disabled American veterans who was lucky just to return from Vietnam alive. He suffered extensive injuries while there when the vehicle he was traveling in as a young private first class ran over a buried land mine. Burned on a large portion of his body, Barrera also lost his left arm at the shoulder and his right hand at the wrist.

Today, besides serving as the 47th Mission Support Squadron family support center flight chief here, he is on a personal mission to ensure the nation does not forget those veterans who did not come home.

One such opportunity presented itself when the Vietnam Moving Wall Memorial -- a half-size replica of the original -- arrived in Kerrville, Texas, on July 12. Organizers of the event invited Barrera to serve as the keynote speaker for the opening ceremony at the Kerrville Division Veterans Affairs Hospital, and he gladly accepted.

Recalling his first visit to the original Vietnam Memorial in Washington, Barrera confessed to feeling an overwhelming wave of emotion.

“I thought, ‘I’m a Marine. I’m tough. I can handle it,’” Barrera said. “I broke down when I walked by it, and I found that this Marine wasn’t as tough as he thought.”

Barrera made that first visit to The Wall, as it is popularly known, in 1998 and now visits every November on Veteran’s Day.

“It’s a healing experience,” he told the 400-person audience.

“The Wall was built to reconcile the differences, to bring us together as one nation, one country,” Barrera said, referring to the harsh criticism America’s fighting forces endured upon their return from battle in Vietnam. “Today, even though we share political differences, The Wall has given us the ability to separate that from support of the troops.”

Lt. Col. Jennifer Graham, the 47th Mission Support Squadron commander here, accompanied Barrera to Kerrville. She said she agrees that The Wall has the power to heal. Her father, Marine Corps Capt. James A. Graham, died in Vietnam while protecting one of his injured men during a firefight.

“His outstanding courage, superb leadership and indomitable fighting spirit undoubtedly saved the second platoon from annihilation,” reads the citation on the Medal of Honor, which was presented to the colonel’s mother three years after her father’s death.

“We were very fortunate that our mother made him an active part of our lives,” said Graham, recalling the stories and photos that her mother shared. “So many families handled it differently, and many children grew up in homes where they didn’t talk about it.”

Although she has visited The Wall many times, Graham once again put charcoal to paper at the Moving Wall to take an impression of her father’s name, which appears on Panel 21E, amid a sea of names that bear no outward distinction from one another.

“Everyone’s memorialized equally here,” Graham said. “There are no ranks, ages, or races. Every life is equal.”