A chance conversation between one who was a protester and a soldier who fought in the Vietnam War turned out to be a very appropriate dialogue in view of the fact that "the moving wall," a segment of the Vietnam memorial, is travelling through Arkansas this week.

The conversation began amicably enough with two people, a man and a woman, near the same age reminiscing about the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The banter, though, easily grew serious as the realization struck each that they had been very serious political adversaries at one time.

One had marched proudly off to do what he saw as his duty when his country called. The other had just as proudly marched the streets, loudly protesting that her country's call to arms was not a true need, but a Dolitical sham.

The protestor fired the first salvo of the intense and sometimes bitter discussion that followed. She stated that if another war, like the Vietnam War occurred while her son was of draft age, she would do everything in her power to make sure her son was kept safe. Even if it meant personally driving the kid to Canada and chaining him to a tree - she would do anything, anything at all, to keep him from experiencing a disaster such as the Vietnam War.

But, she told the soldier, unlike her disagreement with American involvement in Vietnam, if this country was ever under direct attack, she would probably be one of the first to "join up" and fight - and encourage her son and daughter to do the same.

The protestor told the soldier that escalating American involvement in the Vietnam conflict during the 1960s and 1970s was wrong for several reasons.

First of all, she said, our role in that conflict should have only been as advisors. Traditionally other countries take a neutral stand during another nation's civil war. Take a historical look at French and British non-involvement in our own civil conflict 100 years earlier.

Second, the way the war was fought was completely asinine. It was pretty much the same way American minuteman were able to trounce British soldiers during our revolution.

One of the reasons the poorly-anned and starving revolutionary soldier was able to best the better-armed and better-funded adversary was caused by the Brits' own short sightedness. The British conducted war in America as it would expect any war in Europe to be - head-to-head, with two opposing forces marching to meet in a melee in the middle of a battlefield.

So as the beautifully red-coated soldiers proudly marched across fields in very pretty, ornamental ranks, the rawhide-clothed American sharpshooters, protected behind tree trunks and stone fences, picked them off one by one - a trick they had learned from fighting American natives.

America made the same stupid mistake in the way they tried to fight in Vietnam as the British did in trying to muffle the "shot heard 'round the world." They tried to fight a war in Asia from the European perspective.

Each day, American units were sent out to canvass and secure an area. Instead of digging in and waiting until rear echelon support was brought up to meet the soldiers' progress; the soldiers instead were brought back to the rear as soon as sufficient numbers were mowed down or the territory was thoroughly inspected.

In other words, they kept taking the same danged hill, day after day after day. "And that," the protestor said, "is asinine."

She also said to the war veteran that several years ago, when it looked like President Reagan was going to give the Nicaraguan Contras the lives of young American soldiers in addition to the money and guns already being sent to them, she had acted on her political convictions once again. She had actually called one of the U.S. senators representing her state and protested any further American involvement in Nicaraguan woes.

She said in that phone call that she, and others who believed as she did, had taken to the streets once before to protest political policy and they weren't so old that they couldn't do it again.

These statements seemed to fan the embers of resentment the soldier had carried with him across the sea and years since he had obeyed his country's call to arms. These embers had first flamed when he came home to taunts of being a baby-killer and war monger and was greeted by left-wing extremists who spit when they saw him in uniform.

He questioned the protestor's patriotism and morals - stating that while he was doing his duty, dodging bullets and sweating his life out under a tropical sun, the protestor was doing nothing more than mouthing catchy political slogans as a justification for getting hi Erb and Dracticing free love.

The protestor told the soldier that she had indeed served her country and in the tradition provided by the constitution both of them honored.

She said she took the rights granted in Article One of the Bill of Rights as a duty especially the rights of free speech and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. In other words, she saw it as her civic duty not only to question governmental policies but to protest when she thought they were wrong.

If she and other citizens didn't do this, then they were no better than the "good Germans" of 50 years ago who stood idly by while their Jewish neighbors were marched off to extermination camps. It was as simple as that.

The protestor told the soldier that she didn't hold him responsible for political policies a quarter- century old. She knew he was serving his country in the way he believed best, but that he had to understand that she had served in the best way she could, too. She told him that although she had protested governmental policies, she had never faulted the men and women who had paid the ultimate sacrifice for what was truly incorrect political thinking by those who were in command.

Finally, as the discussion wound down, she gave the soldier the three little significant words every American citizen should have greeted him with 25 years ago - instead of the taunts and reproaches he had received.

Words that should have been said as a bridge. A bridge from the ones who had practiced their civic duty in protest marches and speeches to the ones who had served by sweating and bleeding in the bombed-out rice paddies of a sad little country's civil war. Words that should have been said a long, long time ago.

"Welcome home, soldier."

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