Rolling Thunder rolls on
“Roll me away / I’m gonna roll me away tonight / Gotta keep rollin’, gotta keep ridin’ / Keep searchin’ till I find what’s right.” – Bob Seger, “Roll Me Away”
This weekend, as has happened every Memorial Day weekend for more than three decades, Rolling Thunder will take place as tens of thousands of bikers from every state in the union ride their motorcycles – almost all Harley-Davidsons – along the “route of honor,” a three-mile ride that takes place Sunday, beginning at the Pentagon, across Memorial Bridge to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and then back to the Lincoln Memorial at the foot of Memorial Bridge. American flags dot their route, and the bikes themselves are awash with POW (prisoner of war) and MIA (missing in action) flags, because while Rolling Thunder honors all American veterans, it is chiefly in remembrance of the soldiers who sacrificed their lives fighting in Vietnam, as well as the approximately 82,000 POWs and MIAs, most of them from that war, still unaccounted for.
To that end, the following day, Memorial Day, there are wreath-laying ceremonies at the World War II Memorial, at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, and finally at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where there is also an official Memorial Day observance.
Rolling Thunder, named after “Operation Rolling Thunder,” a sustained bombing campaign against communist North Vietnam that began in 1965, was the brainchild of Artie Muller and Ray Manzo, both bikers and Vietnam vets.
In 1987, they sent out a call to fellow biker veterans asking they ride to Washington to support the U.S. military. Nearly 2,500 heeded the call. Today, Rolling Thunder is a nonprofit organization with 90 chapters that work with hundreds of thousands of supporters, businesses, corporations and local charities on behalf of their mission, which includes increased benefits and better treatment for all vets, but mostly focuses on a full accounting of the POWs and MIAs, and the return home of those still alive.
Reportedly, there have been nearly 10,000 sightings of Americans still in captivity in Vietnam, whose treatment during the war was horrific.
At the famous “Hanoi Hilton” POW camp, beatings, starvation and torture were the norm, and both Muller and Manzo believe similar treatment may be continuing. And both men believe over the past 30-plus years, the U.S. government has not done nearly enough to pressure the Vietnamese government into freeing all POWs and MIAs still alive so they can return home.
Until this happens, Muller, Manzo and their brethren simply “Gotta keep rollin’, gotta keep ridin’, Keep searchin’ till I (get) what’s right.”
And Rolling Thunder will roll on.
Bruce G. Kauffmann’s e-mail address is bruce@historylessons.net.