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Arizona Honor Flight brings back haunting memories of war for veterans

A ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial gives veterans the thanks they never got when they first came home.

WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall changes. 

It changes by the hour, by the day, by the year.

It changes the people who travel to see it. It changes the people who see themselves in it. 

It was a complicated war. The nation was not united behind it. Thousands upon thousands of men were sent overseas to fight in Vietnam. Thousands never came home. 

Those that did come home, were not always met with thanks and congratulations. 

"I was at the embassy in Saigon on April 14," Gabriel Basso said, standing beside the Wall. "Enough to see some stuff."

The Arizona Honor Flight brought Basso and a busload of other veterans to Washington D.C. to see the memorials and monuments built in their honor. The war memorials always bring back memories. Sometimes they're memories the veterans would rather have forgotten.

"People were trying to give us their babies," he said. "You don't know how bad things are when somebody would rather you just take their child and give them a better shot at life."

It was all a lot for Basso to take. He lost friends, he saw things he remembers to this day -- 50 years after the war ended. 

"After I lost my buddy, when I came back I had to go to Long Beach Hospital or a while to try to get my stuff together," he said. 

When he came back, the names he was called hurt. Serving in the war weighed him down. Basso explained that he wasn't always proud to serve in Vietnam. 

"The only good thing about being in Nam has been from other Vietnam vets," he said. "Never from the general public."

But during the trip to the Vietnam Memorial, something changed. 

The Vietnam War Commemoration gathered all the Vietnam veterans on the Honor Flight trip for a small ceremony next to the wall. A representative from the group handed each of them a small pin with this engraving: "A grateful nation thanks and honors you for your services and sacrifice."

There, in front of the names of so many fallen, Gabriel Basso stood at attention and received his pin with a handshake and a "thank you" that was also partly an apology.

There, in front of the wall, 50 years after the war, a group of Vietnam veterans finally came home. 

“It makes me feel better," Basso said. "Before...I didn't feel so good."

RELATED: He was a medic in America's 'Forgotten War.' He traveled to D.C. to see the memorial for the friends he lost.

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