On April 30, a Vietnam veteran of the United States Marine Corp died in a Little Rock veterans hospital.
Just like the staff at the Pine Hill Health and Rehab Center in Camden, where he had spent the last several months of his life before going to the Little Rock facility, the hospital knew very little about the past and less about the surviving family of Randal G. Seiffert who served two tours in the rice fields of Vietnam during the height of the United State’s least popular war.
Seiffert, who died at thee age of 68, came home to an America that had been changed by the face of the conflict.
Television chronicled the daily casualties, protesters decried the war at draft card burning rallies and men like Seiffert returned home to be spit on, cast as pariahs and called “baby killers” when they got off the transport planes in their home country.
“When I got out in 1968 it was easier to get a job if you say you just got out of prison then to say I just served four years in the Marine Corps,” Cpl. Vic Eizenga of Sherman, Texas, posted on a tribute page to Seiffert. “I left Vietnam in 1966 but it has never left me. Those who served deserve respect.”
On Wednesday, corpsman Seiffert got back a little of the respect and tribute he was owed for his service, and he also found in death a family that he didn’t even know he had when he was alive.
Seiffert was interred in the Fort Smith National Cemetery on Wednesday with full military honors.
Thanks to a Facebook campaign that wouldn’t allow a veteran to go home alone nearly 200 people, none of whom knew Seiffert personally, showed up to pay their last respects to the man and the solider on Wednesday
“I kept my youngest son out of school so he could attend the funeral,” said Darren Scott of Fort Smith. “I talked to several people at the cemetery … there were people there from as far away as Broken Arrow, I was really proud that people took the time to show up and pay their respects to this man who fought for this country.
“A soldier was surrounded be friends he never knew he had today. It was just a great tribute to his memory.”
Because of the chaotic nature of the War in Vietnam, the records of troop movements, theaters served in and information about the individual platoons designations are among the least organized despite the mid-1950’s-1975 time frame of the second Indochina War.
The records for Seiffert are no exception. Searches on the National Archive Military Records site and VetFriends produced no positive results and a similar search on Ancestry.com produced 205,672 hits, none of which seems to be a match for the fallen soldier.
According to Rally Point, the international website for the Professional Military Network, 390 Vietnam era veterans die per day. Many, like Seiffert, do so without family and friends who recognize their sacrifice.
Today in Fort Smith, one soldier was honored in death by a different kind of family.
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