Medal of Honor recipient James E. Livingston honors Vietnam veterans at Beaufort County ceremony

Neil Pugliese, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel, opened the Vietnam War Veterans Day ceremony in Beaufort County by welcoming dignitaries and veterans and introducing the keynote speaker.

"It is my great honor to introduce our keynote speaker today," Pugliese said, listing local officials and veterans-group representatives in attendance.

Maj. Gen. James E. Livingston, a Medal of Honor recipient who served in Vietnam, thanked veterans and their families and emphasized the lasting contributions of Vietnam-era service members to American life. "All you guys and gals, thank you very much," Livingston said, calling Vietnam veterans "the most active in their communities doing charity work, educating young people, and giving back."

Livingston cited figures for Beaufort National Cemetery and the Vietnam conflict, saying the cemetery contains roughly 16,448 interments and noting that about 6,201 of those interred are Vietnam veterans. He also highlighted Medal of Honor recipients buried locally, including PFC Ralph H. Johnson, and invited attendees to visit the gravesites.

Turning to medical lessons from the war, Livingston said medevac helicopters conducted hundreds of thousands of missions and that rapid evacuation cut fatalities. "The average time from being seriously wounded to being hospitalized was 47 minutes," he said, describing battlefield medical improvements that, he argued, informed later care.

He disputed several widely held narratives about Vietnam veterans, saying most were volunteers rather than draftees and rejecting portrayals of widespread drug use among veterans. "In fact, 85 percent of our Vietnam veterans successfully reintegrated back into civilian life," Livingston said, while also acknowledging a "sad truth" about historically high suicide rates among Vietnam veterans.

On the war's outcome, Livingston expressed a contested view that U.S. forces won battles in theater but that political decisions in Washington led to withdrawal and South Vietnam's collapse. He recounted his role in Operation Frequent Wind and the evacuation of Vietnamese refugees in 1975.

The ceremony also included an invocation by Reverend Moore, the posting and retirement of colors by a color guard and a wreath-laying at PFC Ralph H. Johnson's gravesite by his sister. Pugliese invited veterans who served during the Vietnam War to the front to receive commemorative pins from the Beaufort County veterans office.

The program closed with appreciation for the Marine Corps band, the color guard and U.S. Navy escorts. "This concludes the ceremony," Pugliese said.

The event was ceremonial; no formal votes or official policy actions were taken. Organizers said the pin presentations were handled by the veterans office and the wreath-laying honored the memory of PFC Ralph H. Johnson.