By Eric Tucker,Associated Press Writer
Many Vietnam veterans are now reclaiming the military honors they once tried to forget.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – William Tallerdy arrived back from Vietnam in 1967, still wearing his Army-issued green uniform, and was met by a heckler in a New York City airport who asked if he was returning from the war- then struck him in the face.

Tallerdy recalls raging against the man, beating him in the terminal before being restrained by relatives and the police.

Soon after, he threw out his war ribbons.

“I was always proud of my military service,” said Tallerdy, who is now 57 and lives in Cheyenne, Wyo. “It was just that people made me feel like scum.”

Nearly four decades later, things have changed. A few years ago, Tallerdy requested his Purple Heart medal. Today, he keeps it displayed in a living room cabinet alongside eagle figurines, dog tags and other war memorabilia.

His evolution is not uncommon. Faced with a hostile public and cries of “baby killer,” many returning Vietnam veterans threw their medals in the trash or put them away in drawers and foot lockers, intending to never see them again.

But in recent years, a number of veterans increasingly at ease with their service in the war say they have sought replacements for medals they threw away or lost, or brought them out from storage to proudly display them.

Some veterans now say they regard the medals they once tried to forget with a renewed sense of pride. They have grown more open about their military service, and many say they hope such actions can help to spare soldiers now serving in Iraq from the rough homecoming they had.

William Muns returned in January 1968 from Vietnam, where he worked in finance for the Army. Muns took a job as a banker but never discussed his war experiences with his employer as he tried to move on. He married and had children but never talked about Vietnam with his family, either.

Instead, Muns stashed his uniform and his war medals inside a foot locker, never imagining he would want reminders of the year he spent in Vietnam.

In 2000, his wife brought his medals out and created a shadow box for him.

“As my wife says, You were there. You were exposed. You were put in harm’s way,'” Muns said.

Muns keeps his honors – which include the Good Conduct and Vietnam Service medals – on the wall of his office in Beaver County, Pa., where he is the county’s director of veterans affairs.

He said many who served in Vietnam are in the process of “coming out” as the passage of time has changed feelings about that war.

“Today we’re showing ourselves because we want those men that are active right now to know that they are welcome and they are being supported,” Muns said.

Many veterans describe a sharp shift in the public perception of the war and its participants that has helped inspire a renewed interest in their own service and medals.

“I think there’s a lot of deeply and personally held interest in what’s happening to the guys coming back,” said Bill Belding, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and a Navy SEAL during the war. “Even though it’s a completely voluntary military force now, I think there’s still that sense of that band of brothers thing.”

Many Vietnam veterans missed the same joyous homecoming receptions given to the World War II soldiers who beat back Nazi Germany. It might have been hard for some veterans to imagine, 35 years ago, that they would one day want to hang their honors from Vietnam on the walls of their offices and homes.

During the war, many veterans publicly threw away their medals and ribbons as acts of protest. Among them was John Kerry, a highly decorated Navy veteran who made his name as a war protester and later became a U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

Bob Kerrey, a former U.S. senator from Nebraska who earned the Medal of Honor in Vietnam, said the country’s overall attitude toward the military has improved dramatically since the war in Vietnam ended.

“We made peace with the former enemy,” Kerrey said. “And we made peace with a former enemy that had defeated us, which is extremely hard to do.”

John Wallace, a squad leader in a combat infantry platoon, was among those who put his medals away after returning home. When he moved years later from New York City to Maine, he never bothered to unpack the boxes that held his honors.

Even though he said he was honored for helping men out of a downed helicopter before a B-52 strike, he didn’t want to relive the moment in his mind.

That changed in 1989 when Wallace began immersing himself in advocacy work for veterans.

Now, he’s president of the Vietnam Veterans of America state council in Maine and keeps his medals, which include the Bronze Star and Air Medal, on the wall in his computer room.

“They see that and it sort of makes them feel better,” Wallace said of younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. “They can ask about how I got them, I can explain to them how I got them. It makes them feel better because what I went through was maybe worse than what they went through.”

As for Tallerdy, he traveled last month to Branson, Mo., for the first-ever Operation Homecoming USA, a weeklong tribute to Vietnam veterans that he said moved him profoundly. He is also interested in one day returning to Vietnam.

“I think now,” he said, “it’s almost become prestigious to say that you’re a Vietnam veteran.”