The National Vietnam War Museum began with a garden, a stark contrast to the story it tells inside a 20,000-square-foot chamber that will open Saturday in a 10 a.m. public ceremony.
“We didn’t know how to build a museum,” 24-year Army veteran Jim Messinger said of himself and fellow helicopter pilots who formed a nonprofit board and bought 12 acres off Mineral Wells’ eastern edge.
Not much was accomplished for nine years, when Messinger reminded the board in 2006 that their sale agreement said the land would go back to the property owner in 10 years if nothing had been done.
“I was the only one that knew that nine years later,” he said last week. “And they said, ‘Jim, why don’t you build a garden?'”
As it happens, the Mineral Wells beauty Messinger had met at the DQ on a pass while training at Fort Wolters Air Force Base, the former Iola Glover, is a Texas Master Gardener.
“And sure enough, we built a garden,” her 55-year husband recalled, sitting in a double-wide trailer headquarters that’s a former office for George W. Bush’s staff. “It turned out pretty good.”
Exhibits, including a Huey helicopter, followed that groundbreaking garden. The Marines soon landed with the Semper Fi Garden, and a Navy Garden is anchored on the grounds.
One day, some Vietnam veterans showed up and wanted to build a Wall replica in memory of the memorial to fallen comrades they’d built at Camp Holloway that had been destroyed when the North Vietnamese overran the abandoned camp.
The long monument, with white and gold inscriptions, resulted, shielded by evergreens.
“Some of those guys like to come out at 2 o’clock in the morning and have some privacy,” Messinger explained.
Vietnam veterans share many traits with vets who fought in other wars, and with veterans who served during peacetime.
But this war’s band of brothers and sisters share a unique bond, forged in the inept way many believe Washington conducted the campaign and the outright shameful way many were greeted by the citizens for whom they had risked their lives.
Having a museum to call their own makes sense, even if the things the soldiers, sailors and airmen saw in Asia often did not.
Messinger said it was Vietnam veterans who started the Welcome Home Soldier movement during America’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Welcome Home drew balloon-carrying, sign-waving veterans, of all wars, to airports nationwide to applaud their younger comrades returning from deployment — for good or only on leave.
On Saturday, they’ll welcome fellow Vietnam vet Troy Evans as keynote speaker for the morning ceremony. Evans, a TV and movie actor, is perhaps best known as Frank Martin, the desk clerk in the NBC series, ER, and as Detective Johnson on the Amazon series, Bosch.
Messinger said several speakers are lined up for the program.
“But they are only listed at about five minutes on there,” he said, in a nod to the Texas summer. Once the ribbon is cut, the public will be free to inspect the two-story tribute.
The first floor of the museum walks visitors through a history of the war — from its precedent French involvement to the hurried, disorganized evacuation by the Americans.
John F. Kennedy, who as a senator returned from touring Vietnam and told Congress the country must avoid involvement there, is recalled as flip-flopping on that when he sent American Special Forces there as president.
“I don’t know what happens to people when they become president,” Messinger said. “But they change. You see it every day.”
That last exhibit, in the shadow of an OH-23 Raven training helicopter from Fort Wolters, is depicted in a display with overturned desks in an abandoned office.
Fastened next to it are the official evacuation orders, which include two clauses Messinger pointed out: “All indigenous security authorizations and passes are revoked immediately,” and, “Indigenous operatives will be paid immediately without explanation or warning of final evacuation.”
And it isn’t lost on Messinger that a young Sen. Joe Biden voted for that wording.
“This is what they did in Vietnam,” he said of abandoning those allies. “And what did they do in Afghanistan?”
Exhibits in between range from a sublime mockup of the Oval Office, complete with a $10,000 replica of the Resolute Desk and a $5,000 replica seat.
“That’s the most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in,” he said.
Other exhibits are unsettling, particularly replicated booby traps on the second floor that a vet named Tom Bright fashioned.
Messinger acknowledged some exhibits could trigger the post-traumatic stress disorder his generation of fighters has faced since Vietnam. It had already happened long before the ground was broken for the museum in 2017, he said, recalling a veteran who opened up to his wife for the first time after 50 years upon visiting an exhibit.
“We see this happening at the Wall, possibly hundreds of times,” Messinger said. “The best thing is for them to talk to somebody. Some of us never stop talking, and some of us never started. Talking to another vet is relatively easy. Family members try, and they are not successful. Once they talk to that first vet, they talk to another and another.”
Unlike the horseshoe shape of the timeline described by the first floor, the second story is a large, open room.
Aside from the duplicated booby traps, distinctive art includes the famous image of a South Vietnamese soldier murdering a spy.
“This is gunpowder art,” Messinger said, describing how the artist arranged the explosive and lit it to leave the image behind.
A painting by imbedded combat artist Jim Nelson immortalizes troops moving through the non-human hazards of leech-filled muck, huge mosquitoes, venomous spiders and snakes.
“They called it the two-step snake,” Messinger said. “Because if he bites you, you move two steps and you’re dead.”
A row of tables covered with silver-canned C rations on the second floor should conjure some conversation, including little four-packs of cigarettes in the packages — Kent, Viceroy, Winston and Salem.
It’s not a long way to the National Vietnam War Museum.
From Mineral Wells, watch for the sign and driveway on the right at the top of the curving hill just outside of town. From Weatherford, take the first U-turn after driving under the rails-to-trails overpass.
___
(c) 2022 Weatherford Democrat
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
