I grieve today for many reasons; but I particularly grieve today with the good and honorable people of South Vietnam who lost their nation forty-nine years ago today to a communist takeover at the hands of their North Vietnamese countrymen and betrayal by American leadership who forgot our promise to preserve them from the growing communist aggression. Great freedom loving Americans fought and died with the South Vietnamese patriots and our faithful allies to stop the communist takeover of Southeast Asia, but a growing American pro-communism movement in American education, and a sick uncommitted political leadership in Washington that took over the Pentagon and our civilian government brought about a collusion with the communists to sell out the South Vietnamese people’s hope of freedom and the sacrifices of multiplied thousands of the Americans who paid mightily believing our post-World War II nation was still committed to freedom for all oppressed people.
We sent the best of America to fight the slavery of communism in Vietnam as we had likewise fought the National Socialism that threatenened the world in World War II; and so many of the best Americans never came home, never got married, never had children or raised those children with the great love of country and commitment to the great American values the world so desperately needs again today. Perhaps we lost America, too, forty-nine years ago today, as so many deceived Americans foolishly embrace the cancer of communism. I and my brothers and sisters came home, we thought, to the America we loved; but America had already suffered more loss than we could have known—and that loss is becoming horribly clear to us today.
While I grieve for the truly terrible loss suffered by the people of South Vietnam to the brutality of enslaving communism (the full grown product of all forms of Marxist Socialism), I rejoice that so many freedom loving South Vietnamese people risked everything to escape by any means available, often dying at sea, to escape communist slavery at home to come to the United States of America and have their own shot at the American dream.
In spite of all of our problems, the United States of America is far better today because in spite of the tragic loss of their homeland and families left behind in communist Vietnam, our Vietnamese brothers and sisters brought their fine values and culture to make all of America so much stronger and better.
Maybe America can come back, but if we do, it will have to be because we stand together, from whatever slavery we have fled, and to forever reject the Marxist Socialist pathway to communist slavery and restore the American and Christian values America was founded upon originally.
Whatever comes next, I want my South Vietnamese fellow American countrymen to know that I never sold you out to the communists in Vietnam when I was there fifty-two years ago, and I will not sell you out to the communism that threatens your new found freedom in America today. You are a blessing to me and to this nation that you have made to be your new home. I thank God for you and I am committed with you to keep our home free for all as long as God allows.
Welcome home. Let us together keep the United States of America truly free.
Your forever fellow patriot.
Captain Terry Michael Hestilow
United States Army, Retired
April 30, 2024
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