Vietnam Veterans Club rolls into Lincoln

BY LISA MUNGER / Lincoln Journal Star
Saturday, Mar 15, 2008 - 07:35:00 pm CDT
The Vietnam-era veteran wore a matching belt buckle and hat emblazoned with a familiar black and white image.

“I wear this hat and belt buckle to raise awareness of the thousands of prisoners of war and missing in action not accounted for in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Young’un, who would divulge only his “road” name. “Someone asks me what it stands for, and I educate them.”

He was one of hundreds of members of the Vietnam Veterans Club at the Holiday Inn Downtown this weekend for their twice-annual meeting. Members are motorcycle riders — mostly Harley-Davidsons — although the cold forced most of them to travel by car instead, and they came from all over the country for the group’s first Lincoln gathering.

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The vets’ biker club gets together for fellowship and to remember POW/MIAs, several club members said. This year, with the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq looming, some of them reflected on the way they were treated compared with their Iraq war brethren. One vet said the chilly reception he and fellow soldiers got from Americans who didn’t support the war in the 1970s drove them to join one of the few groups that did support them. “When we returned, the motorcycle community accepted us, said Emery Troxel of Iowa, who goes by Mufasa. “We fit in because of our experiences.” Over the years, he said, vets who liked to ride came together to form the Vietnam vets biker club. Not long after the group coalesced, its members began to push their agenda. “We try to raise awareness about POW/MIAs that never made it home,” Troxel said. “We ask people to call their congressmen. “Some of us even tattoo it to ourselves,” he said, revealing a large tattoo on his forearm of two intertwining dog tags, one with the letters POW, the other MIA.

Troxel said he was 18 when he fought in Vietnam in 1975. He said he fought to preserve Americans’ freedoms, even after the war became unpopular.

In fact, he said, he still sees himself as his brothers’ caretaker. Not just for Vietnam vets, but anyone who has served the United States.

“Everyone here is a hero,” Troxel said, his large arm sweeping the crowded room. “We all signed our name on the dotted line to serve our country.”

Paul Jape of Arizona signed on that dotted line more than 30 years ago, too.

On Saturday, he was seated behind a table selling T-shirts touting support for POW/MIAs.

Jape said he was stationed stateside during Vietnam, training Vietnamese soldiers in Arizona to fly American planes. The idea, he said, was to get them prepared to run their own country.

This, too, is the task in Iraq, he said.

Jape said soldiers returning from Iraq are treated differently than he was during Vietnam.

“The soldiers are supported, even if the public doesn’t support the war,” Jape said.

Young’un agreed.

“No one wants shame on them,” he said.

“Conditions are better for Iraq too. Vietnam soldiers were out there with green cotton uniforms. In Iraq, they have body armor.

“The reason (for the war) still sucks as much as it did then.”

Reach Lisa Munger at lmunger@journalstar.com.