Memorial Day Thoughts.

I spent a few days in May with some old Army buddies. I learned more about them and myself. We weren’t thinking about Memorial Day, but the conversation turned to our history, and the memories fit in to a Memorial Day theme for me.

What do veterans think about at those times? Friends lost. Things we did right. Things we did wrong. A misstep that caused a tragedy. Intravenous kits that failed to work. Bravery, loyalty, and sorrow. Brave foes. Hapless, innocent people caught up between warring forces. Fate. We wonder what happened to someone, perhaps someone you would not expect us to worry about. We discover we are not alone in those thoughts.  This is a piece I started writing last year, about a man we knew, who became important in our lives and memories.

 ”The World”

“The World” is what we called our homeland, the United States. What we meant was “The Real World” as opposed to the “unreal” world of our nightmare existence. Our lives seemed unreal at all times, whether we were fighting for our survival, taking risks we had never imagined we could, or playing like uncontrollable children to release tensions we did not comprehend.

And of course, we complained about being there in Vietnam. It was a year, an interminable year. We longed to get out, to go home.  We could welcome a “million-dollar wound” that, even if partly disabling, meant our internment in that strange, unreal world would end. Like grazing beasts, we lived in a wandering herd, doing what was necessary to survive, and gratefully moved beyond the scene when one of our number was pulled down in combat.

When we did go home, most withdrew and left the past behind. But not really.  A moment when you failed to save a friend is never forgotten. Some were rejected by the people they came home to.  Some managed to slip back into their old lives. Most adjusted to daily life and moved on.

We have the luxury of time and peace to look back. It did not really matter to my friends why our government went to war. Oh, sure, some volunteered out of patriotism. Some believed they were fighting would-be dictators who wanted to oppress a weak nation.  Most simply felt it was their duty to serve rather than run away to Canada. But the truth is that we were young, with only half-formed beliefs and even less understanding.

There was a man, more of a pawn and prisoner of fate than I, who put my year into a perspective I will always remember.  His name was Ni. A peasant farmer, he had been forced to work with the Viet Cong until we captured him.  He was  “re-educated” by his government, and released into our custody again as a “Kit Carson” scout.

“You Americans,” he said, “always complain. But you have only a year.” He told me that in his country, he had to fight from the age of seventeen, and could not quit until he was thirty-five. If he was lucky. If he survived. If he was not again captured by the enemy and forced to join their ranks. Forever. His war was forever. His chance of survival was best with us, and he was glad to be with us, to share our gruesome chore and our risk. Because it was the best he had experienced.

He had a family and twelve living children we never saw. That is all I know of him. That and his simple statement that both complained and accepted the reality of what he must do to survive.

We left him behind when we came home. I think of him and hope that he too found a “real” world to come home to; that he could live out the rest of his time in peace with his family.

Clair Button

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