On May 24, 1973, Nixon hosted a dinner at the White House honoring 591 service members who had recently returned after spending time in Vietnam as POWs. Fifty years later, those attendees marked the anniversary with a reenactment at the Nixon Library.
"President Nixon came into the room and said that the bartenders would keep pouring and the band would keep playing until the last one of us left, and for many, it was daylight before they left," retired Col. Thomas McNish recounted.
"My then-girlfriend and I decided we were going to wander around the White House since [Nixon] said we had full access to the White House with everything except their living quarters," he told the Washington Examiner in an interview."So, we wandered into the Green Room, and I did the smartest thing I ever did in my life — spontaneously asked her to marry me. And so at 2 a.m. in the Green Room, we got engaged.
The party represented a closure of the war in Vietnam, ending a moment in history that bitterly divided the country with a rare show of unity. "I'm really glad to know you're here, because you are declared killed in action," Halyburton said, recounting the conversation between him and another service member he identified as Al Carpenter.
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