THE LONG ROAD HOME: REFLECTIONS FROM A VIETNAM VETERAN

There came a time when my senses betrayed me. The weariness seeped in and became part of me. Still, I could not afford to slip.

Inattention meant death. The North Vietnamese laced the jungle with booby traps and mines. They pulled us into ambushes and set us in their sights. Snipers crouched in the darkness of the dense canopy, their eyes as deadly as any weapon. A single moment’s distraction could end it.

Absentmindedness represented a gravestone — a thousand paths through the jungle, not one led home. The only way out was to survive the tour — anything else meant death or injury.

Staying alive demanded everything. But exhaustion dragged at me — lack of sleep. Eyes heavy. Still, we moved, step by step, into the void where every sound represented a threat or nothing at all.

We hunted an enemy who hunted us. What we became was the opposite of what we once were — boys turned killers, trained to fight, to kill, to survive.

The actual battle began when the war ended for those who made it back. We couldn’t see the invisible wounds — PTSD, Agent Orange. We didn’t know the most challenging fight lay ahead: reintegration into lives we’d left behind. And that, I suppose, is what it meant to be a Vietnam veteran.

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