Four Islanders who are Vietnam War veterans spoke frankly and movingly in the Gazette newsroom last week about their experiences in an unpopular war that divided the country.

On Tuesday, Nov. 14, the Gazette's Tuesdays in the Newsroom series will feature a discussion with various Island veterans of the Viet Nam War.

In an epic 18-hour documentary series, filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick explore the Viet Nam War.

The Marthas’s Vineyard Seacoast Defence Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), sponsored the wreath-laying ceremony in front of the Edgartown courthouse Monday.

Jack O'Callaghan and Choey Ray were together for eight months in 1968, into 1969, in Thailand during the Viet Nam war. But when deployment orders came down they lost touch for nearly half a century.

Since last we celebrated a Memorial Day, Douglas E. Vanderhoop has become one of the highest decorated veterans in the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). In the annual Ute Tribe’s Fourth of July Pow Wow, Mr. Vanderhoop was initiated into the Red Feather Society, the highest military honor that can be bestowed upon indigenous tribal members in the United States and Canada.

With Memorial Day ap proaching, I am recalling a visit to Viet Nam last fall on which two U.S. Navy veterans of the war in Viet Nam were among my companions. As we visited city and countryside, we met Vietnamese veterans on street corners and in rice fields. Amazingly, bygones seemed to be bygones among veterans on both sides. Though the war is keenly remembered — particularly by those who have been affected by the Agent Orange that we dropped in the war — stoic acceptance appeared to be the norm.

In the nearly 10 years that one Island war memorial has been mothballed in the artist’s backyard, tens of thousands of American soldiers have been killed or wounded in controversial wars being fought far away. Veterans hospitals have been overrun, new names have been given to the traumas of those returning from foreign fronts, protest groups have formed, a President was elected promising to bring troops home, promising hope and healing. And still the memorial has stayed away from the Vineyard public.

Having been a female reporter in Vietnam, Denby Fawcett said, "We belong to an exclusive club that can accept no new members. Vietnam made me braver, it made me more skeptical. I went thinking it was all always going to be all right. I left knowing that was not always so."

"Every day was different, and there was always a wild card in the deck," reporter Laura Palmer said. "The truism was that nothing was ever as it seemed. Just when you thought you understood, everything shifted."