By Steve Myers
—You were there…Danang? In ’66?
—Only air medevac…in and out on my way to P.I.
—Not me. One whole year. I was just out of high school and bang! Drafted. My luck. There were guys given the choice of jail or the Army in our platoon. You give them that choice then give them weapons…rifles…grenades…all the ammunition they want and tell them to go kill. Hell, they loved it. But me, most of us, we were scared shitless for 365 days. You couldn’t’ve pounded a nail up my butt with a sledge hammer. Bad. Still, after all those years, still dream about it. Funny…like smoking. I gave it up twenty years ago and I still dream I’m smoking one of those small cigars…cigarillos. I dream about the boats…pontoon boats. Charlie would swim under water and cut holes in them. You never knew when you’d sink or swim, right? The worst part was the mind games. He’d let you know how easy he could get to you. And the tunnels…bomb them…even napalm. They’d come back out. Win? Could we have won? Shit, we’d have been there forever. Look at Afghanistan.
—Oh, yeah. It’s all shit. Like the movies.
—They never get it right. You can’t show the ball-shrivelling fear.
~
The guy in fatigues never took off his cap. He wouldn’t lie on a bed. He slept on the floor in an open padded cell. At night, when the barred gate separated the Open and Closed wards of the neuro-psychiatric ward, he stood there holding onto the bars for hours and muttering.
—What’s up with that guy?
—He spent a night pretending to be dead while the V.C. moved around the bodies of his buddies.
~
—That new guy in the Closed ward bothers me.
—You mean the black guy…Edwards?
—Yeah. He just stares at you and never says a word.
—The psychiatrist explained it to us in Group.
—So? Why?
—Edwards whispered to him that God had said he wasn’t supposed to talk about what he saw.
—What’d he see?
—What do you think?
—I get it. There’s stuff I wish I hadn’t seen too.
—Or could forget.
~
—You been to the Wall?
—No.
—Any reason?
—I’m afraid I’d see my name on it.
—That’s another bad dream.
—Yeah.
It’s hard to type while crying.
The scars never go away… a great piece. Thank you for reminding us what our vets go through now
Well Done. My favorite of course is Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It”
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/facing-it
Thanks for the link. I didn’t know the poem before.
Steve:
This is very good…..!
The last few lines are quite brilliant………..
Is it not a act of patriotism to at least read the simmering memories of Vets which seem never to completely wash out to sea? What they have gone through for the rest of us. Thanks for your vivid description. Not that I liked it. But I need it. Frequently Had not known of the poem. Harrowing.
I’ve been to the Wall. So deeply touching, and then to see men and women, some of whom had to have been children during Vietnam. Weeping. Touching the name with wet fingertips.
Well felt.
As an air Force guy who served in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1966-67, I thank you for writing this, Steve. You got it mostly right, especially the line about “being scared shitless for 365 days.” Many thanks for sharing this. You did a great job with this one.
I thought this was fantastic, it hooked me right away, short but so powerful! I especially liked it as someone who has never been in the military and knows nothing about being in a war. Really great, visceral insights.
The dialogue told the whole story. That’s just plain genius, Steve; and the ending brings tears.