Coming Home from War

On the CNN website today there are stories from IReporters regarding veteran fears on going home. I have not read them but had those fears on my return from Vietnam. As I had said in an earlier post, I was release a couple weeks early due to my little brother's hunting accident. It was on Thanksgiving day 1971. I was rushed to get my records, packed, processed and out that night.

It may sound strange but as that day progressed the more afraid I felt. I wasn't able to say my goodbyes due to the nature of my leaving other than to a few people. I remember one of the Ambulance drivers from the South who started crying and hugging me. I did not even get to say a real goodbye to my bunk mate nor exchange addresses with him or others I had been stationed with.

I was so confused. At first I was happy that my time had come to return to the "World". Then, slowly, I became afraid. It took me only a couple days to return home without those goodbyes or to even try to understand what was about to happen. It took me a day after I returned to realize this was a mistake. The "World" as I left it wasn't the same. It had progressed to a different time. Slang was different, people were different and I was what I was a year before, frozen in time except that I was no longer the same inside. I was overwhelmed with sadness for the sudden loss of "my family" in Vietnam. Those who you shared so much with. The joy of a soldier surviving his injuries and going home, working 12 hours or more a day with little time off. Sharing joys, sorrow and friendships. Hearing the song "Leaving on a jet plane." or "I'm five hundred miles from home." and not ashamed of crying or having tears run down your cheeks knowing that your feelings were truly understood. And sharing the biggest sorrows of war, dismemberment and death. Always remembering those whose suffered such pain, loss of limb, burns and death.

I have been back almost 40 years yet remember it as if it was yesterday. And how I long for those days again and I go back there daily in my thoughts and dreams. I have come to realize recently with the help of the Vet Center that no one would be able to sustain living that type of life for 40 years. But I have more understanding as to why I feel the way I do and I feel so proud of what I was able to do in that year and proud of my fellow soldiers. A number of years ago someone in Washington D.C. said that we were not the best but I beg to differ. We may have been from poor or minority families that were drafted, uneducated or could not afford college but we gave all we could for a country and it's citizens who were ungrateful for the scarifies we made. Yes, things may have tempered since then but the hurt we experienced, the name calling, etc. will remain with us forever.

To my fellow Vietnam Veterans - and all veterans from any era - we were all the best this country had to offer and this country is free because of us.