O/T for sure, but if you know a veteran who seems "distant." this may help you understand why.
Received from a friend, and fellow Viet Nam Veteran who served two tours in Country as a paratrooper during the 67-68 time frame.
If you are a Veteran, or have a family member who is, I would like to invite you to attend one of our VVA, chapter 1028 breakfast's at the Grand Slam Sports Bar, 6:30- 9:30 AM every Wednesday morning (excluding holiday's.) Direction's can be had on the web, or by I phone, simply Google The Grand Slam Sport's Bar in Murphy flats (off HWY. 30, just past the Bluffs shopping center.)
"Do you still think about Vietnam?"
"This story came to me anonymously via e-mail, the author, a fellow
Vietnam Veteran. After reading his story, I felt compelled to share
this with you. If you didn't participate in the Vietnam War, this will
give you some insight into how our minds work. He writes: A couple of
years ago someone asked me if I still thought about Vietnam. I nearly
laughed in their face. How do you stop thinking about it? Every day for
the past forty years, I wake up with it- I go to bed with it. This was
my response:
"Yeah, I think about it. I can't stop thinking about it. I never will.
But, I've also learned to live with it. I'm comfortable with the
memories. I've learned to stop trying to forget and learned to embrace
it. It just doesn't scare me anymore."
A lot of my "brothers" haven't been so lucky. For them the memories are
too painful, their sense of loss too great. My sister told me of a
friend she has whose husband was in the Nam. She asks this guy when he
was there.
Here's what he said, "Just last night." It took my sister a while to
figure out what he was talking about. Just Last Night. Yeah, I was in
the Nam. When? Just last night, before I went to sleep, on my way to
work this morning, and over my lunch hour. Yeah, I was there
My sister says I'm not the same brother who went to Vietnam. My wife
says I won't let people get close to me, not even her.They are probably
both right. Ask a vet about making friends in Nam. It was risky. Why?
Because we were in the business of death, and death was with us all the
time. It wasn't the death of, "If I die before I wake." This was the
real thing. The kind boys scream for their mothers. The kind that
lingers in your mind and becomes more real each time you cheat it. You
don't want to make a lot of friends when the possibility of dying is
that real, that close. When you do, friends become a liability.
A guy named Bob Flanigan was my friend. Bob Flanigan is dead. I put him
in a body bag one sunny day, April 29, 1969. We'd been talking, only a
few minutes before he was shot, about what we were going to do when we
got back to the world. Now, this was a guy who had come in country the
same time as me. A guy who was loveable and generous. He had blue eyes
and sandy blond hair.
When he talked, it was with a soft drawl. I loved this guy like the
brother I never had. But, I screwed up. I got too close to him. I broke
one of the unwritten rules of war. DON"T GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE
GOING TO DIE. You hear vets use the term "buddy" when they refer to a
guy they spent the war with. "Me and this buddy of mine."
Friend sounds too intimate, doesn't it? "Friend" calls up images of
being close. If he's a friend, then you are going to be hurt if he
dies, and war hurts enough without adding to the pain. Get close; get
hurt. It's as simple as that. In war you learn to keep people at that
distance my wife talks about. You become good at it, that forty years
after the war, you still do it without thinking. You won't allow
yourself to be vulnerable again.
My wife knows two people who can get into the soft spots inside
me----my daughters. I know it bothers her that they can do this. It's
not that I don't love my wife. I do. She's put up with a lot from me.
She'll tell you that when she signed for better or worse, she had no
idea there was going to be so much of the latter. But with my daughters
it's different. My girls are mine. They'll always be my kids. Not
marriage, not distance, not even death can change that. They are
something on this earth that can never be taken away from me. I belong
to them. Nothing can change that. I can have an ex-wife; but my girls
can never have an ex-father. There's the difference. I can still see
the faces, though they all seem to have the same eyes. When I think of
us, I always see a line of "dirty grunts" sitting on a paddy dike.
We're caught in the first gray silver between darkness and light. That
first moment when we know we've survived another night, and the
business of staying alive for one more day is about to begin. There was
so much hope in that brief space of time. It's what we used to pray
for. "One more day, God. One more day."
And I can hear our conversations as if they'd only just been spoken I
still hear the way we sounded. The hard cynical jokes, our morbid
senses of humor. We were scared to death of dying, and tried our best
not to show it.
I recall the smells, too. Like the way cordite hangs on the air after a
fire-fight. Or the pungent odor of rice paddy mud. So different from
the black dirt of Iowa. The mud of Nam smells ancient, somehow. Like
it's always been there. And I'll never forget the way blood smells,
sticky and drying on my hands. I spent a long night that way once. The
memory isn't going anywhere.
I remember how the night jungle appears almost dreamlike as pilot of a
Cessna buzzes overhead, dropping parachute flares until morning. That
artificial sun would flicker and make shadows run through the jungle.
It was worse than not being able to see what was out there sometimes. I
remember once looking at the man next to me as a flare floated
overhead. The shadows around his eyes were so deep that it looked like
his eyes were gone. I reached over and touched him on the arm; without
looking at me he touched my hand. "I know man. I know." That's what he
said. It was a human moment. Two guys a long way from home and scared
to death.
God, I loved those guys. I hurt every time one of them died. We all
did. Despite our posturing. Despite our desire to stay disconnected, we
couldn't help ourselves. I know why Tim O' Brien writes his stories. I
know what gives Bruce Weigle the words to create poems so honest I cry
at their horrible beauty. It's love. Love for those guys we shared the
experience with.
We did our jobs like good soldiers, and we tried our best not to become
as hard as our surroundings. You want to know what is frightening.
It's a nineteen-year-old-boy who's had a sip of that power over life
and death that war gives you. It's a boy who, despite all the things
he's been taught, knows that he likes it. It's a nineteen-year-old
who's just lost a friend, and is angry and scared and, determined that,
"some*@#*s gonna pay". To this day, the thought of that boy can wake
me from a sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling.
As I write this, I have a picture in front of me. It's of two young
men. On their laps are tablets. One is smoking a cigarette. Both stare
without expression at the camera. They're writing letters. Staying in
touch with places they rather be. Places and people they hope to see
again. The picture shares space in a frame with one of my wife.. She
doesn't mind. She knows she's been included in special company. She
knows I'll always love those guys who shared that part of my life, a
part she never can. And she understands how I feel about the ones I
know are out there yet. The ones who still answer the question, "When
were you in Vietnam?"
"Hey, man. I was there just last night."
So was I. How about the rest of you vets....Hits home doesn't it!
Share this article with others so they understand why many of today's
veteran's behave the way they do be it Vietnam or other conflicts, this
is a common thread shared by all.”
Tom Ford
No. 3036
If you are a Veteran, or have a family member who is, I would like to invite you to attend one of our VVA, chapter 1028 breakfast's at the Grand Slam Sports Bar, 6:30- 9:30 AM every Wednesday morning (excluding holiday's.) Direction's can be had on the web, or by I phone, simply Google The Grand Slam Sport's Bar in Murphy flats (off HWY. 30, just past the Bluffs shopping center.)
"Do you still think about Vietnam?"
"This story came to me anonymously via e-mail, the author, a fellow
Vietnam Veteran. After reading his story, I felt compelled to share
this with you. If you didn't participate in the Vietnam War, this will
give you some insight into how our minds work. He writes: A couple of
years ago someone asked me if I still thought about Vietnam. I nearly
laughed in their face. How do you stop thinking about it? Every day for
the past forty years, I wake up with it- I go to bed with it. This was
my response:
"Yeah, I think about it. I can't stop thinking about it. I never will.
But, I've also learned to live with it. I'm comfortable with the
memories. I've learned to stop trying to forget and learned to embrace
it. It just doesn't scare me anymore."
A lot of my "brothers" haven't been so lucky. For them the memories are
too painful, their sense of loss too great. My sister told me of a
friend she has whose husband was in the Nam. She asks this guy when he
was there.
Here's what he said, "Just last night." It took my sister a while to
figure out what he was talking about. Just Last Night. Yeah, I was in
the Nam. When? Just last night, before I went to sleep, on my way to
work this morning, and over my lunch hour. Yeah, I was there
My sister says I'm not the same brother who went to Vietnam. My wife
says I won't let people get close to me, not even her.They are probably
both right. Ask a vet about making friends in Nam. It was risky. Why?
Because we were in the business of death, and death was with us all the
time. It wasn't the death of, "If I die before I wake." This was the
real thing. The kind boys scream for their mothers. The kind that
lingers in your mind and becomes more real each time you cheat it. You
don't want to make a lot of friends when the possibility of dying is
that real, that close. When you do, friends become a liability.
A guy named Bob Flanigan was my friend. Bob Flanigan is dead. I put him
in a body bag one sunny day, April 29, 1969. We'd been talking, only a
few minutes before he was shot, about what we were going to do when we
got back to the world. Now, this was a guy who had come in country the
same time as me. A guy who was loveable and generous. He had blue eyes
and sandy blond hair.
When he talked, it was with a soft drawl. I loved this guy like the
brother I never had. But, I screwed up. I got too close to him. I broke
one of the unwritten rules of war. DON"T GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE
GOING TO DIE. You hear vets use the term "buddy" when they refer to a
guy they spent the war with. "Me and this buddy of mine."
Friend sounds too intimate, doesn't it? "Friend" calls up images of
being close. If he's a friend, then you are going to be hurt if he
dies, and war hurts enough without adding to the pain. Get close; get
hurt. It's as simple as that. In war you learn to keep people at that
distance my wife talks about. You become good at it, that forty years
after the war, you still do it without thinking. You won't allow
yourself to be vulnerable again.
My wife knows two people who can get into the soft spots inside
me----my daughters. I know it bothers her that they can do this. It's
not that I don't love my wife. I do. She's put up with a lot from me.
She'll tell you that when she signed for better or worse, she had no
idea there was going to be so much of the latter. But with my daughters
it's different. My girls are mine. They'll always be my kids. Not
marriage, not distance, not even death can change that. They are
something on this earth that can never be taken away from me. I belong
to them. Nothing can change that. I can have an ex-wife; but my girls
can never have an ex-father. There's the difference. I can still see
the faces, though they all seem to have the same eyes. When I think of
us, I always see a line of "dirty grunts" sitting on a paddy dike.
We're caught in the first gray silver between darkness and light. That
first moment when we know we've survived another night, and the
business of staying alive for one more day is about to begin. There was
so much hope in that brief space of time. It's what we used to pray
for. "One more day, God. One more day."
And I can hear our conversations as if they'd only just been spoken I
still hear the way we sounded. The hard cynical jokes, our morbid
senses of humor. We were scared to death of dying, and tried our best
not to show it.
I recall the smells, too. Like the way cordite hangs on the air after a
fire-fight. Or the pungent odor of rice paddy mud. So different from
the black dirt of Iowa. The mud of Nam smells ancient, somehow. Like
it's always been there. And I'll never forget the way blood smells,
sticky and drying on my hands. I spent a long night that way once. The
memory isn't going anywhere.
I remember how the night jungle appears almost dreamlike as pilot of a
Cessna buzzes overhead, dropping parachute flares until morning. That
artificial sun would flicker and make shadows run through the jungle.
It was worse than not being able to see what was out there sometimes. I
remember once looking at the man next to me as a flare floated
overhead. The shadows around his eyes were so deep that it looked like
his eyes were gone. I reached over and touched him on the arm; without
looking at me he touched my hand. "I know man. I know." That's what he
said. It was a human moment. Two guys a long way from home and scared
to death.
God, I loved those guys. I hurt every time one of them died. We all
did. Despite our posturing. Despite our desire to stay disconnected, we
couldn't help ourselves. I know why Tim O' Brien writes his stories. I
know what gives Bruce Weigle the words to create poems so honest I cry
at their horrible beauty. It's love. Love for those guys we shared the
experience with.
We did our jobs like good soldiers, and we tried our best not to become
as hard as our surroundings. You want to know what is frightening.
It's a nineteen-year-old-boy who's had a sip of that power over life
and death that war gives you. It's a boy who, despite all the things
he's been taught, knows that he likes it. It's a nineteen-year-old
who's just lost a friend, and is angry and scared and, determined that,
"some*@#*s gonna pay". To this day, the thought of that boy can wake
me from a sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling.
As I write this, I have a picture in front of me. It's of two young
men. On their laps are tablets. One is smoking a cigarette. Both stare
without expression at the camera. They're writing letters. Staying in
touch with places they rather be. Places and people they hope to see
again. The picture shares space in a frame with one of my wife.. She
doesn't mind. She knows she's been included in special company. She
knows I'll always love those guys who shared that part of my life, a
part she never can. And she understands how I feel about the ones I
know are out there yet. The ones who still answer the question, "When
were you in Vietnam?"
"Hey, man. I was there just last night."
So was I. How about the rest of you vets....Hits home doesn't it!
Share this article with others so they understand why many of today's
veteran's behave the way they do be it Vietnam or other conflicts, this
is a common thread shared by all.”
Tom Ford
No. 3036
posted by Crestwood Independent at 09:38
1 comments
Find sex offenders near me