NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas – About 100 vets on motorcycles escorted a Vietnam replica wall to the Tree of Life Church in New Braunfels Wednesday.
The wall is smaller than the wall in Washington D.C., but it still draws out the memories of vets and their families for the aftermath of a war that had a notorious reputation of flat-out abusing those who fought when they returned home.
Stubbie Leisure, a U.S. Army veteran, said whether its the D.C. wall or a traveling replica wall, it is still indescribably difficult.
"It's hard going to the wall," Leisure said. "It really is. It's just hard."
Leisure, who said he joined "because my brother was killed in Vietnam," said first re-enlistment was because of terrible treatment of soldiers back in the states when they returned from Vietnam.
"I re-enlisted because I was scared of how soldiers were being treated back at home," he said.
He spent 22 years in the Army and later fighting in Operation Desert Storm. Leisure described an entirely different welcome from Middle East wars compared to his earlier service in Southeast Asia.
"The people (were) lined up for 15 miles on the side of the interstate, and it was hard," Leisure said.
Another vet there for Wednesday's ride, Jimmy Sea, fought in Vietnam as a U.S. Army infantryman from 1970 to 1971.
"It'll be a part of me until the day that they put me out at Fort Sam," Sea said of the Vietnam War.
Sea, a disabled veteran, tried to play down the significance of his purple heart.
"Something blew up and I went that way," Sea said.
Like so many of his era, he wasn't even old enough to buy a beer at the time.
"I was 17 years old," Sea said. "That's all. I was just a kid. Thank you God I made it home."
Sea said coming home was brutal.
"We remember what they said: "Baby killer, war monger," trying to spit at us through the fence," Sea said.
Another one of the vets there to partake in Wednesday's wall escort was Tom Byczymski, who fought as a member of the U.S. Army artillery from 1964 to 1967. Just like Sea, he was just a kid when he arrived in Vietnam.
"I was 17 years old and a day," Byczymski said.
On what was just Byczymski's 31st day as a soldier in Vietnam, while on a night mission, there was an explosion. The now grizzled old vet's voice cracked as he struggled to find the words to describe his introduction to the horrors of war.
Although somewhat softened by time, he said war forever re-defined so many of the men of his generation and did so in a way words simply can't capture.
"(We) lost three good guys," Byczymski said. "That's about all I can say. It's heavy. Took a long time before most people could even talk about it."
The wall will be on display at Tree of Life Church in New Braunfels for 10 days, including Memorial Day.
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