Workshop for Warriors is a San Diego-based, non-profit organization that provides free job training, certification and placement services to veterans. "We are ecstatic that Kurt stepped in and saved the day by donating the industry leading Kurt D688 vises," said Hernán Luis y Prado, the President of Workshops for Warriors. The Kurt vises will be used to convert machining center spindles into functioning workstations to train veterans in precision machining operations. In popular culture, the stereotype of the broken, homeless Vietnam vet began to take hold thanks to films like The Deer Hunter (1978), Coming Home (1978) and First Blood (1982).Kurt Manufacturing donated eight new vises to Workshops for Warriors, an organization that helps veterans transition into civilian life through training, certification, and placement. And as more and more wartime atrocities came to light, there was a national implication of guilt and shame placed on Vietnam veterans as participants in and avatars of a brutal, unsuccessful war. While the economy after World War II was one of the most robust in American history, during and after Vietnam the nation was in a death spiral of stagflation and economic malaise. “They were not necessarily looking for a parade, but they were certainly looking for basic human support and help in readjusting to civilian life after this really brutal war.” “The society really was ill-prepared to give these guys what they deserved,” says Christian Appy, professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of three books on Vietnam. Jerry Engel/New York Post Archives/NYP Holdings, Inc./Getty Images
Protestors demonstrate for full benefits for all US veterans, including Vietnam War veterans in July, 1974. “At a time when I was paying $300 a credit, my entire educational benefit was $126.” And when it came to finding a job, he was met with thinly veiled disgust and discrimination from law firms upon learning he was a Vietnam infantry veteran. He graduated from Notre Dame prior to being commissioned, and after his service returned to law school to cash in his educational benefits. None of that,” he says, “prepared me for the reception at home upon our return.”īack in the States, Langenus quickly discovered the GI benefits available for Vietnam veterans “were almost nonexistent.” While living in New York, he developed symptoms of malaria-a tropical disease fairly uncommon in the concrete jungle-yet he was denied VA health care because he didn’t display those symptoms in Vietnam. He led his men on operations that lasted 30 days or more in some of Vietnam’s most inhospitable conditions, “without shaving, bathing or changing clothing. Peter Langenus, today the Commander of VFW Post 653 in New Canaan, Connecticut, commanded Delta Company, 3rd Battalion/7th Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade from 1969-70. Veterans returning from Vietnam were met with an institutional response marked by indifference. 6 Scandals That Rocked the Winter Olympics GI benefits were lacking.Ĭelebrations aside, the government also failed to make good on its promises to those who served.