Frankly, any man that doesn't cry scares me a little bit. I don't think I would like a man who was incapable of enough emotion to get tears in his ey… - Norman Schwarzkopf Jr.

The exact words from the citation of a Medal of Honor recipient state: "For conspicious gallantry and intrepidity, at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty." Those last words are particularly meaningful: "above and beyond the call of duty." Duty. Robert E. Lee used that word in explaining why he had to leave the Union Army and go into the Confederate Army. He said, "Duty is the sublimest word of them all." Lee was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, the institution I also attended. Its motto is "Duty, Honor, Country."

At Newark airport, I climbed into a taxi. Wearing my uniform with all my ribbons and my Vietnamese airborne beret, I kept waiting for the driving to make a big fuss and exclaim "Hey! You're just back from Vietnam, aren't you!" Nothing. So I fed him hints like, "Gee, I haven't seen Newark for a while." But he dropped me at my mother's place with scarcely a word... I was pretty disoriented. I couldn't think about anything but Vietnam. The war was all over the newspapers, but people seemed not to care. Even when Mom introduced me to a few of her friends, they only said things like, "Well, I guess now you'll be able to get on with your life." No one wanted to know about Vietnam: the public wasn't caught up in the war, not at all like the spirit I remembered from my boyhood, during World War II. After two days I wanted to run through the streets yelling, "Hey! In Vietnam people are dying! Americans are dying! How can you act like nothing is happening?"

My view of the Vietcong never changed. I saw them as opportunistic brigands who with guns and encouragement from the North Vietnamese oppressed the peasants, stole their money and crops, and bullied them into cooperation. I'd have loved to fight a full-scale battle against the Phantom 48th. We had a competent battalion staff and I was quite confident we could have outmaneuvered and destroyed them. But the war had degenerated by then into piecemeal engagements that played to our weaknesses: our shortage of capable junior officers and NCOS, and our draftees' reluctance to fight.