YORBA LINDA, Calif.—Over 100 people gathered at the Nixon Library March 29 to celebrate National Vietnam War Veterans Day including the installation of a life-sized bronze statue of a Vietnam War era Marine trudging forward into battle.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, which brought an end to American involvement on the ground in Vietnam under then-President Richard Nixon.
“We have a United States Marine slogging through one of the numberless rice paddies of Vietnam, but he could just as easily be the young American at Gettysburg, or one of the 41 million Americans who put on the uniform,” Robert Wilkie, who served as the U.S. Secretary of Veteran Affairs during the Trump Administration, told the audience of mostly Vietnam War veterans. “It is fitting and proper that this magnificent monument is on the grounds of President Nixon’s birthplace. … When Richard Nixon left office, my father was home because [he] deeply believed in building a generation of peace.”…