\f0\fs24 \cf0 At the time. it was the most watched television broadcast ever.\
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In December 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 successfully completed 10 orbits of the Moon . Aboard that spacecraft were William Anders,  James Lovell and Frank Borman. commander.\
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The mission offered many milestones..\
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It marked the first time that mankind had gone to the moon, not on it, but to it.\
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It marked the first time that humans had seen, and consequently photographed,  an Earthrise, an indelible image which even to this day serves as a living symbol for the Ecology Movement.\
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It marked the first time that mankind could actually witness the Far Side of the Moon, that side which over the eons, has hid its face from its earthly neighbors.\
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But the mission was probably best remembered for a Christmas Eve broadcast.\
Each astronaut took a turn reading  the first ten verses from the Bible's Book of Genesis. The Creation. \
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Commander Borman , ending the broadcast  concluded,  "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, Merry Christmas, and God Bless all of you- all of you on the Good Earth."\
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The broadcast struck obvious religious overtones, but in a year which was marked by race riots, assassinations of national leaders, college campus revolutions, generational gaps and the most divisive war Americans  had witnessed since the Civil War, perhaps the space crew merits some slack.\
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In fact, not long after the mission, a single anonymous telegram (Who here remembers Telegrams?)   was opened by Borman..\
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It simply read, "Thank You, Apollo 8. You saved 1968.\
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Almost exactly one year after that mission, the same Frank Borman was conducting a good will tour in Vietnam, and he arrived  by helicopter near Kontum in  the Central Highlands, urged to those remote mountains in part by a battalion commander who was a fellow West Pointer.\
Borman visited the soldiers at their bunkers, most who were trying to celebrate Christmas the best way they could, usually by sharing packages from home with each other:  no Bob Hope show for these scraggly guys in this forlorn place.\
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Here is a story by one of those scraggly soldiers:\
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As the government-chartered  DC-8 touched down at Ft. Lewis, near Seattle on a January afternoon in 1970, a spontaneous but tired burst of applause erupted through the passenger compartment  as the thud of the  landing gear tires  upon the runway signaled a return to the United States.\
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Most of that plane's weary passengers were now veterans of the Vietnam War.\
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I was home.\
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Only about a year before, four days after reaching my 20th birthday, I was enroute  to Vietnam and the war which shapes me even now. Through a somewhat  roundabout  route, I had become a combat rifleman with the Army's Fourth Infantry Division which operated throughout  those Central Highlands.\
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I had joined the Army in 1968 for, I guess, a lot of reasons.  In one, I had witnessed on television the infamous January Tet Offensive which turned many firmly against the war .  But I felt a kinship and an obligation to those soldiers who were suffering  and serving in places like Saigon and Hue and Dak To. I didn't know their names, but I knew who they were, and I felt a need to join them..\
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I joined in part out of patriotism.  I never wore a flag on my sleeve, and probably never will, but  I learned early in life,  that  honest patriotism is simply loving where you live, and doing what you can.  Nationalism, on the other hand, is more sinister , for that speaks of forced arrogance toward others. The two are related, but distinctly different, and best left to another conversation and time.\
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I joined in part because I was a naive  young man anxious to make his mark on the world and I joined in part because it was something of a family tradition- my\
 grandfather, like me an infantryman,  had suffered in the trenches of France and Belgium in World War I.  My father, in the Navy in World War  II, operated one of the amphibious  LCI  craft which landed troops on the beaches in Normandy, at D-Day. My older brother, serving in the Cold War, had completed a tour in Korea. \
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Guess I believed it was my turn.\
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So I spent most of 1969 in the mountain jungles of Vietnam. There was horror and hardship. There was, even in combat conditions, kindness and compassion. All experiences focused on surviving and getting on that big silver bird home at the end of the one year tour of duty.  Through no particular skill of my own, I made it back.  Many, including friends from my own platoon, didn't.    Reality became my mentor.\
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My  eventual return home was mixed. When  we  landed near Seattle,  we were generally well received.  A few hours later, at Chicago's O'Hare field, we were booed and jeered by people of our own generation.  Over  time, it became my observation , and with some exceptions,  to conclude  that most Americans treated Vietnam veterans with disinterest and indifference.\
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I'm glad those days are over. Our nation now typically and warmly welcomes home its veterans.\
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 "What a long, strange trip it's been", sang Jerry Garcia, one of the late oracles of my generation,  and I echo that:  As it turned out, Frank Borman and I had at least  two things in common:  \'85We met, if only for a few moments, in a part of the world\
 neither could have planned or envisioned . And each, in his own way, had unconsciously worked to save 1968.\
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Veterans are like that.\
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