Remembering Our Troops

It was 34 years ago, just about this time of the year, when I was a hotshot young reporter for the Fort Worth Star Telegram and was two weeks away from completing an assignment in Vietnam.

Because my job had been to track down Texas kids and write stories about them, I'd spent most of my time in the field. But I didn't want to risk getting killed in those final days, so I stayed closer to headquarters, which is why I went one day to a military hospital.

As it is when you're young, I had somehow come to believe that I was bulletproof, but as I was led into that amputee ward, I suddenly realized just how permanent the scars of war can be. The war had become controversial by then, but as I talked with those men, boys, really, who had lost arms and legs and hands and feet, I realized that no matter who proved to be right about whether we should be in Vietnam, those arms and legs would never grow back.

I was never quite as brave after that, but the war would prove a turning point in my life, because it led to my job here at CBS News. But I've never forgotten those young men who also went back to the world as they called it, not as nature made them, but as war left them.

On this Memorial Day, we honor those who gave their lives for our country, but we should also remember so many who also gave so much.