On the Fourth of July, three comrades with
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To anyone watching, it would seem like nothing more than three old pals on an outing in the capital.
The broad smiles, vigorous handshakes and warm backslaps of the trio of 70- somethings in Princes Street Gardens give no indication of their shared and rare service – Scots who fought in the Vietnam War.
Incredibly, despite serving at the same time, and sometimes only a few miles apart, they had never met until Monday. The Fourth of July.
Last month The Sunday Post told how teenage runaway John Keaveney, who left Scotland for America and then to Vietnam, was coming home.
In Southeast Asia he was one of an elite band of Tunnel Rats, pursuing Viet Cong insurgents into subterranean labyrinths stretching for miles, danger and death lurking just beyond a torch beam. We told how, at 72, Keaveney, who plunged into addiction and prison after leaving the Army but turned his life around with charity work helping other veterans, was returning to the country of his birth.
His story touched former artillery gunner, Brian Mcangus, 77, from Fraserburgh, and infantryman Brian Thomson, 78, of Dunfermline, who also served in Vietnam’s Quang Tri region along the DMZ – the wartime dividing line between North and South Vietnam. They contacted Keaveney via The Sunday Post, and after the Tunnel Rat finally touched down on home soil, took the opportunity to meet him.
As the trio talked of bravery below ground which earned Keaveney the US Bronze Star for Valour and the then-republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross and swapped old photos and documents from their time there, dad- of- three Keaveney said: “It is wonderful. What are the chances of meeting two Scottish veterans of the war in Vietnam here at home in Scotland; soldiers who were so close to where I was in Vietnam, and especially on such a milestone in the history of what Scottish veterans did for America?
“Scots fought in the War of Independence that led to the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July 1776. And here we are, on the Fourth of July! It must be destiny.”
Mcangus, also a former merchant mariner who went to the same sea school as Keaveney – Vindicatrix, at Sharpness in Gloucestershire – said: “We were both ‘ Vindi Boys’, we went to sea, ended up living with family in America and fighting in Vietnam. The coincidence is amazing despite the fact we never met before. It means a great deal to be able to finally shake hands.”
Thomson, who was attached to the 101st Airborne Division, or Screaming Eagles, a light infantry division specialising in air assault, was the only one among them married when he got the draft. Thomson, who later joined the Los Angeles Police Department before retiring and returning home to Scotland, added: “It’s good to see they made it back too and are still fit and healthy.”
It almost was not the case for Keaveney who says his war began after leaving Vietnam and facing the controversy and criticism that surrounded the conflict. The 10- year
war saw South Vietnam fall to the communist North in 1975.
Suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and angered by “the terrible treatment” of many veterans, he fell into a life of homelessness and drug and alcohol-induced violent crime. But he turned his life around and in 2011 he was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal – America’s second- highest civilian honour – by Barack Obama for his work breathing life into the New Directions charity that went on to help thousands of struggling veterans find homes, overcome addiction, get into education and work, and rebuild their broken families.
On Monday, with his new- found former comrades, Keaveney led a pilgrimage to Edinburgh’s Old Calton Cemetery and the 1893 memorial statue of 16th US President Abraham Lincoln that commemorates Scots who fought on behalf of the Union in the American Civil War and for an end to slavery. At its foot are the words: “To preserve the jewel of liberty in the framework of freedom.”
He said: “After the war in Vietnam veterans were not really welcome so a lot of us hid the fact that we served there. But we put our lives on the line for all the right reasons, like the Scots that this statue commemorates. We were there to fight for freedom and democracy. And of that we must be proud.”