One family, three contrasting returns from serving in wars
“We were told not to wear our uniforms when returning to California,” he said.
He had heard from other soldiers — and seen on TV — people spitting at soldiers in uniform returning to their bases.
Fahey recalled there were no parades, no brass bands, no welcoming committees. And very few choruses of “Thank you for your service.”
His experience jibed with many of his fellow veterans. Many Americans came to see the Vietnam conflict as an unjust war, and the number of US combat deaths — approximately 58,220 — was far too high, and the war’s unpopularity just grew over time.
In a 2019 essay on the History.com website, Dante A. Ciampaglia cited other possible reasons Vietnam vets didn’t return to open arms.
One was the sheer length of the conflict: from 1964 to 1973, the longest war until Afghanistan overtook it (2001–2021). That meant servicemen — usually on one-year tours — were constantly coming and going, instead of being demobilized en masse as at the end of World Wars I and II.
Because they came to be identified with the first American war abroad that was lost, Ciampaglia found Vietnam vets who said they were discriminated against when it came to hiring, and others who found their veterans’ benefits woefully lacking.
Vietnam vet and author Jerry Lembke also noted, “You don’t have parades for soldiers coming home from a war they lost.”
In his essay, Ciampaglia also cited popular culture, the stereotype of the broken, homeless Vietnam vet that began to take hold thanks to films like “The Deer Hunter” (1978), “Coming Home” (1978), and “First Blood” (1982).
After leaving the service, Thomas J. Fahey Jr. returned to Stoughton, earned a college degree, went to work at the MBTA, and helped raise four children. He and his wife Gale later divorced.
He realized a dream later in life when he purchased a 31-foot sailboat named Andante in 2005. A skilled sailor, in 2006 — along with partner Kathy Mayne and their dog Sasha — he completed a 4,000-mile round trip on the Intracoastal Waterway between Englewood, Fla., and Plymouth.
Thomas’s daughter, Mikaela (Fahey) Felcher, 43, who grew up in Stoughton, enlisted in the Army in 1998, became a helicopter mechanic, and was stationed in Iraq and Kuwait in 2003 as part of a crew supporting the Boeing CH-47 Chinook. It was a time when women could only serve supporting roles in combat areas.
In January 2004, she returned from a base in Germany and joined the Massachusetts National Guard. In 2005, she assumed full-time duties with the Guard, as a technical inspector supporting the Black Hawk helicopter. Her stint included deployments to Kuwait in 2005-06 and 2010-11.
Her first deployment, when she started in Kuwait and moved up through Iraq during the invasion, was the toughest.
“There was nothing there,” she said. “We were living in tents and we built our own showers. It
was hard living.”
Felcher still has a photo of her standing next to a thermometer in the sun that read 140 degrees.
“It was like opening up an oven and sticking your head in it,” she recalled. “It was a great place to lose weight, especially if the food didn’t agree with you.”
In 2012, after her marriage to fellow Guardsman Michael Felcher, she moved to Little Rock and served in the Arkansas National Guard in several capacities, retiring as a master sergeant in 2021.
There were no parades for vets returning from the Gulf, but I have seen the appreciation for her service firsthand. On a Saturday night in November 2008, she was part of a group of Massachusetts veterans honored for their service at a Boston Bruins game. The next day, she and her crew were cheered on the field at a Patriots game at Gillette Stadium. They then made a flyover that was shown on national TV.
Felcher said that 2008 weekend typified the attitude of much
of the public. “It was generally positive,” she said. “I can’t say there were many negative responses. Even if people didn’t agree with the war itself, I think they tried to support us.
“I know it was different for my father [the Vietnam era vet]. I’m grateful we had support from family members, friends, and the public, who all pretty much thanked me for my service.”
Felcher said she also believes that as a group, today’s veterans are better supported than their predecessors. “There’s a lot of organizations for veterans and a lot of resources out there.”
My family members all came home. On this Veterans Day, we especially remember those soldiers who never did.
They were never far from the mind of my late father. Thomas J. Fahey Jr., the World War II vet. He dedicated his book “to those who never had the chance to come home and tell their story.”