Tribute to Veterans

A college student posted a request on an Internet Newsgroup asking for personal narratives from the likes of us addressing the question: "What is a Vietnam Veteran?" This is what [Dan Mouer] wrote back.

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 Veterans 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, calloused, 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 cammo, 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, bandanas, 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 hated the war or believed 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-egoized 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 Veterans are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different -- what makes us Vietnam Veterans -- 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; but in comparison with our numbers in the "real world," we were more likely black. 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 hooches and ranchers. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next.

Many of us have never seen Vietnam. We waited at home for those we loved. And, for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others, our 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, desparately, 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.

Adam, 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. It's going to be Veterans Day weekend. There will be hundreds there... no, thousands.

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.

-- Copyright © 1996, Dan Mouer.

All Rights Reserved.

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Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the Gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the mornings hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circled flight,

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there, I did not die.

Author Unknown

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,

Dream of battled fields no more.

Days of danger, nights of waking

Sir Walter Scott

I'm standing on a troop ship

Long Beach harbor Golden State

Freeway in the distance

Cars as far as I can see

They all know just where they're goin'

Sure wished it was me.

Well the officers were older

But most of us were kids

And I don't think we ever thought

We'd do the things we did

Never thought we'd all return

The odds were just too thin

But no one talked about it much

No one thinks it's him.

We weren't fightin' for our freedom

But we fought 'em just the same

In the Delta, in the Highlands

We fought hard just stayin' sane

Maybe someone else had it figured out

I just wanted it to end

It seemed like such a wasted time

And a lot of wasted men.

But there were no rules in that jungle

There were two sides back at home

Told us not to think about it

But it made you feel alone

I don't hold it gainst' nobody now

For the way the way that thing got sold

No one asked for my opinion

We just did what we were told.

But no one raised me to be bad

For the most part we were first rate

Some, the best this country had

Just good ol' boys ex-college kids

Hell, we knew by eight years old

If your country called your number

You just did what you were told.

But there were no rules in that jungle

There were two sides back at home

"Get Together" sang the Youngbloods

But late at night I felt alone

I don't hold against nobody now

For the way the way that thing got sold

No one asked for my opinion

We just did what we were told.

Grubby stranger came along

Cardboard sign and a little dog

Thought "Man, where'd he go wrong?"

But his Blackhawk patch caught my eye

He looked like he was stoned

I know he's just another one

That never got back home.

Cause there were no rules in that jungle

There were two sides back at home

You don't have think about it

But it chills me to the bone

Every time I stop!!!.....and think about

The way that thing got sold

Go ahead, ask my opinion

We just did what we were told!!.

Copyrighted. Forbesland@aol.com