DUTY, PAIN, AND BETRAYAL: SURVIVING THE VIETNAM WAR

I could scream at the insanity of the Vietnam War if it would do any good. The terror, the horror — God, the horror. I wanted to run. But duty, training, oaths, and allegiance kept me rooted. It didn’t matter how badly I wanted to flee. I had to stay. And in the back of my mind, I wondered if anyone back home would ever understand. The men we were before, the recruits, the fresh-faced boys who stepped into basic training, were gone forever.

Who would believe the hell we lived in? The blood, the mud, the rotting jungle consuming us. Every day was a test of survival. There were no answers, just days filled with misery. And still, there was the sound of guns, the stench of death, and the crawl of insects eating us alive. Leeches, worms, microbes — everything hungry, everything wanting to destroy. The sickness in our bodies was worse than the enemy’s bullets. It worked from the inside out.

And the people back home? Those who never wore the uniform. They called us cowards. They called us losers. They blamed us for the hell we endured, not understanding it was our government who’d put us there.

I will never forgive them for it. For the fifty-eight thousand dead. For the countless others who were never the same after that war. For the invisible wounds, the cancers taking decades to understand, the poisoned blood…