A VIETNAM VETERAN’S TRUTH: BROTHERHOOD IN THE FACE OF DEATH

I would like to say we completed every assignment. It was not the case. Every mission went sideways. I do not know what it was, but I concluded nothing was ever what I thought, planned, or expected.

We needed to manifest every day counted. Another choice did not exist. Still, we participated in narrow escapes, but not injury and death. It followed us like a hungry demon waiting to devour us body and soul.

I think of what we did and how we survived, and I cannot imagine how we escaped it all, but we did, though not unscathed. The pain of my injuries never left. My internal injuries still create problems. The medication barely keeps in check, but there are always flare-ups. Sometimes, I feel the crawling of leeches and insects on my skin. It’s not real, I know that. It’s just my mind.

But the names on that Wall in Washington are real. They’re not tricks. They’re the hard truths of that war. A thousand years wouldn’t be enough to forgive those who started it, sent us into that mess, and took 58,000 of my brothers. Another 150,000 came back broken.

I wrote it all down and told the story as it happened. It is raw, but there is humor, love, loss, sorrow, and the one thing that remained for all time: brotherhood. Our duty in Vietnam took a lot from us, but not that. Not…