Word: muller
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...joined the Marines in 1967, while a student at Hofstra University on New York's Long Island. Muller, whose family had emigrated from Switzerland when he was one, became convinced of the "inevitability" of America's struggle in Indochina and wanted to play a part. Recalling his graduation from Quantico, he says: "I stood there in my dress whites and cried like a baby when they played The Star-Spangled Banner. I cried out of pride...
...Muller saw combat the day he arrived in Viet Nam. "I got off the chopper, walked down the trail, and immediately saw bodies," he recalls. "Suddenly, the reality of war was driven home." Less than a year later, while trying to lead a company of reluctant Vietnamese soldiers up a hill near Con Thien, he was struck in the chest by a Viet Cong bullet that severed his spine...
...Muller was airlifted to a U.S. hospital ship, where he awoke in the intensive care unit to learn that he would be paralyzed for life. "The sheer joy of waking up, of being alive, overwhelmed any possible sorrow," he says. It was only after he was brought home to New York, trussed in a Stryker frame like a roasting turkey, and eventually transferred to a Veterans Administration hospital, that his long-pent-up emotions overcame...
...Muller became active in the 25,000-member Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. He eventually became disillusioned about the movement, fell into depression, and turned to drugs. But on a visit to the family of a Viet Nam veteran who had killed himself, he met his future wife, Virginia. "She turned my life around, and gave it meaning and purpose," he says. Muller graduated from Hofstra Law School in 1974, and three years later founded what became the Viet Nam Veterans of America (current membership: 8,000), to lobby for the rights of all those who had served...
...group has fought for extension of G.I. Bill benefits, a targeted employment program, and improved counseling services. But Bobby Muller also has a broader vision: "What we need to do is put the war in proper perspective and understand the reasons for our failure...