Military Edit - FORT McCOY, Wisconsin -- A strong desire to set a good example not only for his children but for those around him, says Sgt. 1st grader James Williams to accept his cousin's request for a virtual work day at a New Jersey elementary school.
Williams, who serves as the liaison officer for the medical evaluation program for the 88th Airlift Wing, recorded a video in which he answered several questions and shared it with his cousin, April Middleton, a school counselor in Camden. Street Elementary School. He works in Newark. N.J., which will be played during the event
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"Because I'm a father, I think it's important to be a good example for children when we're doing something good in our lives, we show them what we're doing," he said. "That way it might reach some of them and give them something good to aspire to." It will make them a good influence or want to be a good person."
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During his nearly 23-year military career, Williams served in the Marine Corps and Army, both active duty and reserve, as a transporter, or 88M.
"I'm using my daughter [as an example] because as far as explaining my work, explaining things to elementary school is a little different than explaining things to adults," Williams said of his preparation for the video. "They don't want to hear the management part, they want to hear the interesting stuff."
Labor Day will bring people from all walks of life together for work, Middleton said. These include a news anchor, an airplane mechanic, a chemical engineer, a police officer, a therapist, a fashion freelancer, a nurse and a pilot. She said she wanted to add a military perspective "to show students one of the possible paths to a successful adult life when college is not an option."
Help is something Williams said he finds most in his military service. He said his happiest moments were helping others.
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"Teaching new soldiers how to drive new cars that they thought they couldn't drive," Williams responded to his favorite mission. "I've trained two or three thousand soldiers in my career."
With students ages 7 to 14 participating in Art Career Day, Middleton wants students to be able to see themselves in each of the participating careers.
"I hope the students know what they learn in school today that will help them in the future," she said. A young Vietnamese boy who fled Saigon with his family. Today he is the first Vietnamese-American general in the US Army and helps train Afghan forces.
Brig. General Viet Luong, who served in the 1st Cavalry Division, came to the United States in the 1970s after his family fled Vietnam in the dying days of the war there. He is now leading efforts to train Afghan soldiers to fight the Taliban. David Gilkey/ hide text
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Brig. General Viet Luong, who served in the 1st Cavalry Division, came to the United States in the 1970s after his family fled Vietnam in the dying days of the war there. He is now leading efforts to train Afghan soldiers to fight the Taliban.
Brig. General Viet Luong sits down to a case of MREs, the soldiers' daily meals. It is located in the trenches of an Afghan army base outside the southern city of Kandahar.
A dozen American and Australian soldiers rested on green couches outside. Posters of US military units hang on the walls. Between the troops is a 6ft tall batch of Girl Scout cookies.
Luong's job is to train the Afghan army to fight against the Taliban insurgents. But he is ready to talk about another guerrilla war in the past.
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Forty years ago this week, Luong's father, a senior naval officer in South Vietnam, called an impromptu family reunion at their home in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. The city, his father told him, would soon fall to North Vietnam - the communist forces he was helping the United States fight.
"My brothers actually had very strong opinions — like, 'We have to stay until we find a way out as a family,'" he recalls.
His father was worried that they could not escape together. He suggested that Luong, the only son and one of his sisters flee the country in hopes of saving the family.
"I was disappointed! I didn't want to - you know, be sent to the States. I didn't want to go to my father's place in the woods," he said, his voice catching in his throat. "It was very difficult as a child."
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He was supported by an American journalist friend. Luong still remembers the night he came to give the whole family official government papers to take them to Tan Son Nhut Air Base in northern Saigon. From there it would be extracted from Vietnam.
"It's like, 'Okay, your stuff — don't talk to your friends, just get dressed,' and his driver took us out at night," Luong said.
"I was lying on my stomach at the time," he said. "We're Catholics, so I said Hail Marys, you know. And, uh ... and we were scared, so my dad looked up and said, 'Look - don't be scared.' He said, 'You "need to see what's going on." That gave us some hope, but it was really hopeless until they got to sea."
On April 29, 1975, the family boarded a Navy helicopter and departed for the South China Sea. When they landed on an American plane, Luong was disappointed.
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"I still remember that moment to this day because as soon as we landed I looked at my dad and I said, yeah, I said, 'Dad, where are we?' And he looked at me and said, 'Hey, we're on the USS Hancock.' And I said, "Well, what does that mean?" And he looked at me and said, "That means that nothing in the world can touch you now."
"People may not believe it, but I knew even then that I wanted to serve our country," he said.
Other family members were less fortunate. That left two cousins, each of whom spent nearly a dozen years in a communist re-education camp before crossing to the United States.
Luong and his family spent weeks in refugee camps in the Philippines and Guam before arriving at Fort Chaffee, Ark. Eventually they moved to California.
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Luong attended the University of Southern California and joined the ROTC, fulfilling a pledge he made on the flight deck of an airplane. He would join the army.
"My dad told me — half joking, I think — that he was disappointed that I wasn't going to be a Marine," Luong said. But he says, 'As long as you're an airman, that's fine.' "
Luong rose through the ranks and is now second in command of the First Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas.
In January, he made his second deployment to Afghanistan, where he leads training efforts at Kandahar Air Base.
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Luong knows that his presence here is ironic: a boy who fled America's longest war, only to grow up advising foreign forces in America's longest new war. Like many at home, he draws comparisons between the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
"I would call it mud," he said. "I think there's a lot of similarities. You know, there's corruption, there's insurgency... You know there's corruption. But I think there's hope, right? Me and [Afghan President Ashraf] Ghani, I think, and the new government, I see hope."
He is here warning the American people not to focus on the death toll, the sad numbers similar to the Vietnam experience. It brings to mind a famous quote from North Vietnamese commander General Vo Nguyen Giap.
"He was talking to one of his American friends after the war, and the American general said, ``Hey, we've won every tactical battle about you,'' he said. "And Giap looked at him and said, 'That's not relevant either.' "
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Luong expects a different outcome in Afghanistan. He said that the Afghan forces are improving and improving.
Luong and his family never returned to Vietnam. His father said he would never visit the country unless he respected human rights. Elder Luong died in 1997 and lived long enough to see his son promoted to captain.
"I think I have to, to a degree," he said. "I think at some point I'll go back and find my roots." Why are three Sikh scouts serving in the US Army?
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