Vietnam

Last evening I watched two back-to-back programs on TV called Vietnam in HD. One featured the Battle of the A Shau Valley and the other on the Tet Offensive.  The programs were unique in that they used rich amounts of home camera footage as well as combat footage and the carnage was more real than most military programs.  

As I sat glued to the TV screen and my wife a few feet away, I realized she was staring as me as I was laser-locked on the scenes. She asked, "why is watching that so important to you?"  By the way, certainly not the first time I have been asked that for there is still this intrinsic hunger to want to understand, to feel, to get inside, to know what happened in Vietnam and why now so many years behind us but still tainting to our adult culture. There is no easy answer to that still pertinent question.

Many that know me know I served my country honorably even though, with the draft lottery, I did not have to serve but I wanted to.  To this very day, there is this gaping, hollow hole in my soul that feels like I should have experienced that combat, in retrospect. I lost so many friends there and later had the honor of working with and commanding so many returning Vietnam veterans in armor and cavalry units. 

I would drill deeply into these men blatantly touched and scarred by the experience for I was insatiable in wanting to feel, to know, to understand what it all meant. That hunger is powerful to this very moment I realize as I watched last night the Huey medivac in-bounds, the door gunners, the long barrel artillery pounding, the stacked corpses of both sides; an endless array of whys for me.  As I watched the home protests, the testimonials of returning veterans finding themselves disdained by people at home thus ditching their uniforms touched me deeply. I actually emailed a great friend that went and returned as a completely different man that I knew so well to ask if he was the target of ill will by people upon his return. Why? It was and is still important to me.

Teaching a few years on the Kent State Main Campus and very close to the location of the May 4, 1970 shootings that always resonates in my brain in wanting to know locations of students and troops, angles of fire, the pagoda.  Recently my wife and I returned there one Saturday afternoon for me just so I could walk the pathways of the shootings, the memorials where the students died; I just have this need deep in my soul as strange as that may sound or even be this number of years hence.  

As a man of passion, my wife has stated many times that had I gone to Vietnam I no doubt would have been killed in taking the point or the leadership of the unit or the mission; perhaps true but fact remains, there is something missing in my journey for not having experienced that. I have studied the battles, researched the strategies, endless hunger to want to see footage, hear and see the stories both there and in parallel here at home as the confluence of home and her came crashing into a cataclysmic tarnishing of an entire generation of men and women still dealing with the deep internal hurts, anger, frustration of the experience. 

Our current loss of national prestige, I am convinced, as the great policeman on the beat is driven in large part by POTUS and Congress scared to death to not repeat the Vietnam experience. The reality and results is, of course, the world no longer trusts nor believes in the effective use of the military asset American possesses thus our intentions are questioned and our long term commitments doubted and rightly so!

Yes, at almost sixty-eight and as much as I was invested in the military of my country, the gap in my soul concerning Vietnam is real and doubtful will ever be fully filled. I am sure there are many others that feel the same and likewise, many reading this will assuredly believe I have lost my mind. Oh well!

To the men and women that served there and to the families still marked by the names on the Wall, the nearly 60,000 that died there and the countless millions still fighting the ravages of Vietnam via drugs, alcohol, treatment centers, prisons, hospitals; please know my heart and my prayers are with you.  It is still so very painful and yet uplifting to stand at The Wall seeing names and touching the names on The Wall of close friends that were part of my young life. Yes, I should have been there!

For those that served, you did not serve in vain for you served this nation honorably in a transformative time in American history.  For each Vietnam veteran I know, see and hope to see, I salute you for what all you and your families did for all of us! Thank you.