Eunice honors 'the fallen six'

The City of Eunice and citizens on Saturday honored and remembered its fallen six soldiers in the nation’s longest war.
Sgt. Charles Ray Williams, of the US Army, was killed in action in Vietnam on February 8, 1966.
Lance Corporal James Donald Feucht, of the US Marine Corps, was killed in action in Vietnam on May 7, 1968.
PFC Jimmy Williams, of the US Marine Corps, was killed in action in Vietnam on August 30, 1968.
Lance Corporal Alvin Monday, of the US Marine Corps, was killed in action on September 9, 1968.
Staff Sgt. Donald Wayne Sistrunk, of the US Army, was killed in action in Vietnam on April 10, 1970.
PFC Andrus Floyd Duplechain, of the US Army, was killed in action in Vietnam on September 28, 1970.
Those soldiers’ families found some peace in a ceremony at the VFW Post 8971. It honored the families who had lost their loved ones during the conflict. A folding of flags – which were flags that once waved over the nation’s capitol and were contributed by US Senator David Vitter – and a presentation to the families marked the occasion.
The closing ceremony was a rare sight. Veterans honored their brothers-in-arms with a ceremony that was done in Vietnam, during the war, complete with boots, rifle, helmet and dog tags of fallen infantrymen.
“The main thing was to honor the families of the six killed in Vietnam,” said Jim Adkins, a Vietnam veteran and master of ceremonies at the Saturday event. “It was also called a remembrance because we wanted to remember that the Vietnam vets never got a welcome home. And this was their welcome home from a war that was 48 years ago.”
As the City of Eunice made a proclamation with all of the Eunice city council members present, memories were brought back from Vietnam.
The memories were on display during the ceremony in the form of Robert Duran’s private collection of patches, medals, helmets and jackets among other items from the war. While he was stationed in Vietnam, Duran was sending back artifacts by mail one piece at a time.
A 30-plus year resident of Eunice, Duran, 66, said that he was 19 when he was sent to Vietnam.
“Some of it was given to me and some I purchased, but I’ve been accumulating this collection over the years,” said Duran. “Some of it is incredibly rare. A lot of the patches were one of a kind.”
Among his collection are South Vietnamese Ranger helmet, a North Vietnamese black jacket that he found in an Viet Cong base camp, a National Defense medal and a Vietnam Service medal. Within the collection of uniform patches, some of the more novel ones were ones that incorporated the 1960s peace symbol and marijuana leaves.
“They were a lot more lenient back then as far as what you could put on your hat or jacket or something like that,” said Duran. “You couldn’t put something like that on a current uniform today. But back then, it was just different.”
Though Duran said that many of the items in his collection are worth a lot of money, he places a different value on them.
“I’m thinking of donating everything like this to a museum in Abbeville,” said Duran. “I’m not going to sell it just to sell it. I’d like to share it with the public. It’s a variety of patches, miscellaneous memorabilia that a lot of the veterans here like to look at. And it brings back memories for them as to what it was like there.”
Duran said that Hollywood just couldn’t capture the skin of the Vietnam War. Duran said that the most accurate film about Vietnam would have to be one that is a documentary. Even then, Duran said, most of the general public has only had a two-dimensional experience of the Vietnam War.
“There’s only like one percent of the population ends up serving in the military and we just tend to forget about that,” said Duran. “We just continue on with everyday life”.