Vietnam

The end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in 1975 was a study in panic and tragedy. Thousands of civilians caught up in the war scrambled to get aboard the American helicopters to escape as North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon on April 30. The American military accommodated as many as they could in those days of desperation and despair. But what about the children? They couldn't get on the helicopters by themselves. It took a number of dedicated humanitarians to help them get away.

WASHINGTON — It's the rarest and most prestigious military honor, made rarer still by a 42-year delay attributed to lost paperwork. But Wednesday, Army Spec. Leslie H. Sabo Jr. finally was recognized for an act of wartime heroism that took his life at age 22 as he saved comrades when his platoon was ambushed in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. "Along with Les, seven other soldiers gave their lives that day," President Obama said as he presented the Medal of Honor to Sabo's widow, Rose Mary Sabo-Brown.

WASHINGTON - Support for the war in Afghanistan has hit a new low and is on par with support for the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, a bad sign for President Obama as he argues that to end the war responsibly the United States must remain in Afghanistan another two years. Only 27 percent of Americans say they back the war effort, and 66 percent oppose the war, according to an AP-GfK poll released Wednesday. A November 1971 Harris poll showed a record-high 65 percent of Americans said that continued fighting in Vietnam was "morally wrong.

What happened to a Philadelphia-born Army captain who disappeared in Vietnam in 1969 is a mystery no more. The remains of Charles R. Barnes have been identified, the Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced Monday. He will be buried with full military honors Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery. On March 16, 1969, Barnes and four other service members were flying toward Da Nang and Phu Bai when communications contact with their aircraft was lost.

Joseph Alsop and his brother, Stewart, were kingpins of the opinion pages after World War II, when syndicated columnists meant fear and respect in an era before the Internet empowered everyone to be a publisher. David Auburn's new historical drama "The Columnist" illuminates the different sides of Joseph Alsop, who went on to write the column alone _ and in about 200 newspapers — after Stewart became a reporter for The Saturday Evening Post. In "The Columnist," which packs a tidy punch in a down-to-earth telling, Alsop is a mercurial know-it-all who was a curmudgeon long before he reached the age when such crankiness is tolerable, if not excusable.

HANOI, Vietnam - Nguyen Huong Giang loves to party but loathes hangovers, so she ends her whiskey benders by tossing back shots of rhino horn ground with water on a special ceramic plate. Her father gave her the 4-inch brown horn as a gift, claiming it cures everything from headaches to cancer. Vietnam has become so obsessed with the fingernail-like substance that it now sells for more than cocaine. "I don't know how much it costs," said Giang, 24, after showing off the horn in her high-rise apartment overlooking the capital, Hanoi.

AS A Vietnam veteran, I used to feel that we did not accomplish anything in Vietnam. To all veterans, I feel that we did accomplish something, from what I can see now. At least in Vietnam today it is a peaceful nation and people are not killing each other, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan. We accomplished nothing in Iraq, and we are going to accomplish nothing in Afghanistan. We lost a lot of lives for nothing. We are not wanted in Afghanistan. President Obama, please bring our troops home.

YOU HAD CAR trouble, and you had to get somewhere fast. Rudyard Duane Jackson was your man. So it was raining. Didn't matter, Raya was there. "Raya was a very giving person who was known to help family and friends with car trouble in all kinds of weather," his family said. Rudyard Jackson, known as "Raya," who learned auto mechanics at Simon Gratz High School, a labor leader at Bally's Casino in Atlantic City, and an Army combat veteran of Vietnam, died March 6. He was 64 and lived in Pleasantville, N.J. Raya was also a devoted uncle, who helped raise several nieces and nephews while living in Pleasantville.

WASHINGTON - It took almost 60 years for World War II veterans to get a monument in Washington. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial opened less than a decade after that war ended. Now with the Iraq war just over, and Afghanistan continuing, there are already plans to honor those veterans in a National Mall tribute in the works. It would not be a full-scale Iraq and Afghanistan war memorial. But the group that built the Vietnam memorial wall of names told the Associated Press it would expand the scope of a planned education center nearby to include service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Henry McPherson Jr., 82, who was an adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Thursday. He had cancer. Mr. McPherson served as special assistant and special counsel to Johnson. He influenced the president on a range of policies from civil rights to bombing in Vietnam. He helped write Johnson's 1968 speech announcing a halt to bombing in Vietnam and that Johnson would not run for reelection. After working for Johnson, Mr. McPherson worked as a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington.