Parades are an essential rite of passage to the returning veteran in the same way that bar mitzvahs, confirmations, graduations, weddings, and other public ceremonies are to other individuals at key periods of their lives. Memorials and monuments mean to the grieving veteran what funerals and tombstones do to any bereaved loved one. But rather than parades and memorials the Vietnam veteran, who had only done what society had trained and ordered him to do, was greeted by a hostile environment in which he was ashamed to even wear the uniform and decorations that became such a vital part of who
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