Comment on UMA exhibit ‘brings back a lot of memories’ for Vietnam War veterans

AUGUSTA — The air was stuffy in the Danforth Gallery on Thursday evening, as dozens of Vietnam-era veterans and their family members browsed an exhibit of canvases and bunks that once filled a naval transportation ship. That ship, the U.S.N.S. General Nelson M. Walker, transported American soldiers and Marines to the Vietnam war between 1966 and 1967, carrying up to 5,000 troops at a time. The exhibit included an actual berthing unit from the troopship, with eight canvas bucks attached to a metal frame and old orange lifejackets hanging from either end. But the stuffiness in the gallery, which is at the University of Maine at Augusta, didn’t compare to the claustrophobia and heat experienced by the men who actually slept in those bunks, said John Lambert of Alfred, who sailed on the General Nelson in July 1966. As an infantryman in the Vietnam War, Lambert, 70, helped patrol the country’s central highlands and the Cambodian border.