MILWAUKEE — For almost 40 years, George Banda couldn’t talk about his service in Vietnam. The decorated combat medic carried the weight of his experiences in silence until he discovered that helping other veterans was the key to his own healing.
Watch: Milwaukee Vietnam veteran George Banda finds healing through helping others
When Banda walks through the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center, he remembers his own service as a Vietnam combat medic and decorated hero. That honor came at a price.
“It’s one of those days you never forget,” Banda said.
May 6, 1970, was the day his base, Firebase Henderson, was attacked.
“About 95% of them were killed that day, and I knew every one of them,” Banda said.
His service was an important piece of history he couldn’t talk about for almost four decades.
“I wasn’t ready for it, you know. I was still dealing with a lot of anguish and guilt that I had made it back, and many of my buddies had not,” Banda said.
That changed in 2008, when he decided he needed to start volunteering — helping out at veterans organizations and spending time at the Milwaukee County VA speaking to other veterans, like his friend Marcia Cunningham, a Navy Reserve veteran.
“It’s been an honor knowing him because he’s so involved in so many veterans organizations and so many things around Milwaukee and around the state as well, you know, with Disabled American Veterans, with Purple Heart, with the Vietnam Veterans Chapter One,” Cunningham said.
“That helped me to deal with what I was doing because now I’m doing something positive, and I wanted to give back,” Banda said.
In the last 15 years, he has continued his work with veterans, leading organizations. In 2024, the Milwaukee County Veterans Association named him Veteran of the Year.
But Banda isn’t slowing down. He has one more big goal in his life: celebrating his culture.
“You start digging into the history of Latinos in this country, and you start seeing, wow, there’s a lot of contribution that we made that nobody knows about because our teachers in school don’t teach it, so we needed to do something about that,” Banda said.
One day, he hopes to help build a Latino veteran memorial somewhere in the city — a chance to pay homage and inspire the next generation.
“We’ll continue to do that, break barriers, and change things for the better, and, yeah, that would be a wonderful thing,” Banda said.
This story was reported on-air by Brendy Jones and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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