The eleventh hour: Manhattan Beach rebuilds its Veterans Day
Bob Holmes came home from Vietnam in July 1970. There had not been much to spend money on over there, so he had some saved, and he did not go to work for six months. He surfed. He read. He drove down to Baja. And at beach parties that summer, he kept ending up in the same corner, with the same guys. “I remember a couple of girls said, ‘Oh God, there’s the guys over there again talking about Vietnam,'” Holmes said. “There’s a common bond, and you were able to share some thoughts, share some experiences. And part of the decompression and transition back to — tongue-in-cheek — civilized society was that fellowship, that tribe of veterans.” It was not how an earlier generation had come home. “In World War II, the troops came home, most of them on ships, and they came home as a unit. They had a chance to decompress,” Holmes said. “Now you come home as an individual replacement. You say goodbye to the guys, and you hop on a Freedom Bird with a bunch of other guys from all over, and then you’re dumped home, and there’s no transition. The people at home are happy to have you home, but they don’t know what to do or say.” Nobody throws a parade. Tom Allard, a Manhattan Beach Parks and…
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