Vietnam veterans are men and women. We are dead or alive, whole or
maimed, sane or haunted.
We grew from our experiences or we were destroyed by them or we struggle to find some
place in
between. We lived through hell or we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure. We were Army,
Navy,
Marines, Air Force, Red Cross, and civilians of all sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight
for God and
Country, and some were drafted. Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and
screaming.
Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit--or a great
bit--closer to death than most people like to
think about. If Vietnam vets differ from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that
many of us never
saw the enemy or recognized him or her. We heard gunfire and mortar fire but rarely looked
into
enemy eyes. Those who did, like folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are
often
haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears that ran between
ourselves, our
enemies, and the likelihood of death for one of us. Or we get hard, callused, tough. All
in a day's work.
Life's a bitch then you die. But most of us remember and get twitchy, worried, sad.
We are crazies dressed in cameo, wide-eyed, wary, homeless, and
drunk. We are Brooks Brothers
suit wearers, doing deals downtown. We are housewives, grandmothers, and church deacons.
We
are college professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the history or
politics or
culture of the Vietnam experience. And we are sleepless. Often sleepless.
We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated
bulldozers, built bridges; we toted
machine guns through dense brush, deep paddy, and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk,
fish
heads and rice. Or C-rations. Or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high mountains
drenched
by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful
beaches in the world.
We wore berets, bandanna's, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets, canvas, rash and rot.
We ate cloroquine and got malaria anyway. We got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose.
We spent our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist-high water or
lying still on cold
wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie behind every bamboo blade. Or we slept in hotel
beds in
Saigon or barracks in Thailand or in cramped ships' berths at sea.
We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply
feared, and often we still do. We hate
the war or believe it was the best thing that ever happened to us. We blame Uncle Sam or
Uncle Ho
and their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough or tic of an eye.
We wonder
if Agent Orange got us. Mostly--and this I believe with all my heart--mostly, we wish we
had not been
so alone. Some of us went with units; but many, probably most of us, were civilians one
day, jerked
up out of "the world," shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-egotized and
taught to kill,
to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and were equally ungraciously
plucked out
of the morass and placed back in the real world. But now we smoked dope, shot skag, or
drank
heavily. Our wives or husbands seemed distant and strange. Our friends wanted to know if
we shot
anybody.
And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn't been there,
as if Vietnam was a topic of political
conversation or college protest or news copy, not a matter of life and death for tens of
thousands.
Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or
ambivalently.
What makes us different--what makes us Vietnam vets--is something we understand, but we
are afraid nobody else will. But we appreciate your asking. Vietnam veterans are
white, black, beige and shades of gray. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe,
and China. Or they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and formed
the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or farmed acres of corn
on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names like Rodriguez and Stein and Smith and
Kowalski. We were Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; most Vietnam veterans
are Vietnamese.
We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and
priests when the call came that
changed us all forever. We had dreams and plans, and they all had to change...or wait. We
were
daughters and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and lawyers. We
were rich and poor but mostly poor. We were educated or not, mostly not. We grew up in
slums, in shacks, in duplexes, and bungalows and houseboats and hooch's and
ranchers. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the
next.
Many of you have never seen Vietnam. You waited at home for those
you loved. And for some of you,
your worst fears were realized. For others, your loved ones came back but never would be
the same.
We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger
and
horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in small rooms, in VA hospital wards, in places
where only the
crazy ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Confucians and Buddhists and
Atheists--though as usually is the case, even the atheists among us sometimes prayed to
get out of
there alive. We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death. We are
injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or lost. We got too old too
quickly, but some of us have never grown up.
We want, desperately, to go back, to heal wounds, revisit the sites of our horror. Or we
want never to
see that place again, to bury it, its memories, its meaning. We want to forget, and we
wish we could
remember.
Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few
of us who don't know how to
cry, though we often do it alone when nobody will ask "what's wrong?" We're
afraid we might have to answer. If you want to know what a Vietnam veteran is, get
in your car next weekend or cage a friend with a car to drive you. Go to Washington.
Go to the Wall. There may be hundreds there. Watch them. Listen to them. I'll be there.
Come touch the Wall with us. Rejoice a bit. Cry a bit. No, cry a lot. I will. I'm a
Vietnam Veteran; and, after 30 years, I think I am beginning to understand what that
means.
Author Unknown