‘Remember Some of the Guys’: New Canaan Marks Veterans Day in God’s Acre Ceremony

Rich Mercado can still feel the hug that his mom gave him on returning from Vietnam.

Raised in Spanish Harlem as the son of a cab driver, Mercado was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965 at age 18.

“I went to basic training, I went to advanced training, and five months later, I’m in Vietnam,” Mercado recalled Monday morning, addressing more than 200 people gathered at God’s Acre for VFW Post 653’s annual Veterans Day ceremony. “It was so hot, I couldn’t believe it. And boy, did I miss my mom.”

A helicopter crew chief, Mercado and the 10 other young men in the squad were charged with protecting 30 local farms in the Mekong Delta, each of them worked by 10 to 12 family members.

“They grew vegetables,” Mercado recalled from a podium near the Wayside Cross on an unseasonably warm, sunny morning. “They grew rice, which was their main crop. And they’re also extremely poor. We learned right away that the NVA—North Vietnamese Army—and the VC, the Viet Cong Army, were doing everything they could to take everything they had, and they didn’t have too much. Our farmers were wonderful people. They were not armed. They were peaceful. They were family people, and they were very religious. They were kind and treated us like family. It was difficult sometimes because of the language barriers… They would give us food and items that they made and we couldn’t take the food but we didn’t want to disrespect them, so we were very careful about that. Now remember we’re barely 18 years old—the 11 of us, barely. I was just 18 and so were the other guys. What did we know? We set up a no-fighting zone and posted information in Vietnamese to tell them to leave our farmers alone. They didn’t take our advice. They threatened the Vietnamese. What they wanted to do was take their freedom away. We didn’t know too much about that. We were still very young. We learned that terror was what they used to get their way. Our captain came up with a plan and it was called ‘Freedom Now.’ Our farmers, again, were fine people and treated us like family. Our Freedom Now campaign worked. I won’t give you the details of what we did, but we saved our lives and we saved their lives.”

Yet 60% of Mercado’s unit would die in the yearlong mission, including a friend he remembered as Pedro from Bridgeport. 

Mercado came back to the United States “not in the best condition,” he recalled.

“It took 10 years with a lot of help from a lot of people to learn what ‘freedom’ means,” he said. “I never thought that it would make a difference in my life when I was 19, when I was 18. But I want to tell you that you don’t realize what freedom is like, what freedom means [until] you lose the guys that you served with. Pedro in Bridgeport, Connecticut was one of my best friends. I lived in New York City then, so I didn’t know where Bridgeport was. I didn’t even know where Connecticut was. And New Canaan? Are you kidding? The fact that I live here? I pinch myself a lot. Pedro didn’t come home. He did, in a way. He helped us. He helped me understand later what freedom means. And I know we all use that term. We like freedom. We love freedom. And I want to tell you, the Vietnamese people, when I came home, they showed me the love. They gave me the love. They treated me like family. And without them, 10 years after I came home, I wouldn’t have learned what freedom is. A thing somebody was trying to take away from me. So when anybody asks you about freedom, remember some of the guys that I served with, and how we kind of didn’t know, and it took us a long time to learn.”

Today, Mercado said, he counts himself as “lucky that I’m home.”

“I’m so lucky that I got here,” he said. “I’m so lucky that when I walked through the door, my mom gave me a hug that I can still feel. She prayed for me every day. She wasn’t a religious woman. My sisters told me that she prayed every day. I came home with freedom, even though I didn’t know it. Like I said, it took me 10 years. And that’s my story about my guys, and the lovely, wonderful Vietnamese people.”

Mercado’s heartfelt keynote address anchored an approximately 30-minute ceremony led by VFW Commander Mike McGlinn. It  included a Presentation of the Colors by the New Canaan Police Department Color Guard, Pledge of Allegiance, prayers led by VFW chaplain Brian Vanderheyden, a 1965 New Canaan High School graduate and former U.S. Marine corporal and Vietnam War veteran, reflections from Maryalice Gelhaus, vice regent of the Hannah Benedict Carter Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, reading out of the names of New Canaan veterans who have died in the past year, tolling of the Congregational Church of New Canaan bells, “Taps” played on bugles by NCHS students Finlay Arrix and Lylah Spring, comments from First Selectman Dionna Carlson and recitation of the poem “In Flanders Field.”

Veterans Day marks the end of World War I, when the armistice was signed with Germany on Nov. 11, 1918 (New Canaan celebration here).

Vanderheyden said during an opening prayer: “As we observe the 106th anniversary of the end of the war to end all wars, we call upon you, dear Lord, to bless all our veterans for their unselfish service in the continual struggle to preserve our country’s freedoms. We know that freedom is not free and that a special few pay the price for many. We owe a debt of gratitude to all those who have served and sacrificed to protect us and our free country. Today, dear Lord, we ask you to bless all our veterans and meet their every need. And bless their families for their many sacrifices as well. Protect all who are serving now and bring them home safely. Let us always remember in prayer those special people who made it possible for us to be here today.”

Gelhaus during her remarks noted that her grandmother, Mary Collins, had served as a U.S. Army nurse in France during World War I. Born in Norwalk in 1893, Collins “trained as a nurse at New York Postgraduate Hospital, which ultimately became the NYU School of Medicine.”

“And at age 24, she volunteered for the Army Nurse Corps shortly after the U. S. entered the war in April 1917,” Gelhaus said. “Her three brothers had already volunteered to fight.”

She served as an operating room nurse from July 1918 through March 1919, when more than 60,000 patients passed through the hospital where she had been assigned, Gelhaus said.

“In addition to the devastation of battle, Mary also cared for many patients with the Spanish flu, the most recent worldwide pandemic prior to the outbreak of COVID-19,” she said. “It wasn’t until after her death that my father found her record of war service, and we were able to piece together her experiences. She never volunteered details about her time in France. In addition to her orders, which listed all her assignments, pay, and the hospitals where she worked, were several awards she received, including one commending her for the time she came under German fire. My family regrets not having the foresight to have asked more questions about her experiences when Grandma Mary was alive. And that makes me so grateful for the amateur historians, the Scouts, and other volunteers who today work to preserve the veterans’ stories through interviews, articles and videos. Veterans, thank you for sharing your experiences to help us to never forget. Your words contribute to our collective national memory.”