THE SILENT PRAYER: SURVIVING VIETNAM

U.S. forces never lost a battle against the North Vietnamese. Our politicians said the war would be over in weeks. It made sense. Vietnam was small. It had no army and no resources to challenge the might of America.

But when I crossed those battlefields, there were over 550,000 of us. We shelled and bombed the land and dropped millions of tons of explosives on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Yet the North Vietnamese kept coming. They didn’t stop. They fought for their freedom, regardless of how many died or wounded.

Our politicians didn’t understand that kingdoms fall when the oppressed rise.

We, the men who fought, saw the truth. The more we fought, the deeper we sank into that quagmire. Death, destruction, and evil deeds surrounded us. We didn’t know then, but we’d become victims too. I didn’t realize we’d slip into madness and lose ourselves.

And it became just another day. One day closer to going home. I whispered to the silent sky, Just let me make it through today, alive and whole. It was the prayer of millions, a prayer that never came true. Not for me. Not for them.

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