SwiftVets.com

[mtboone]

I am posting this for many reasons, it was written by a Ground Pounder and I have no ideal how they did it, but to put into perspective how 35 years ago, does make a difference. How it has affected our lives and will til the day we join our brothers. It is a long post and I do not know the man who wrote it, but it so true to most that served and to the men and women serving now. It will affect them for life, to the vets I hope this does not cause bad feelings, that is not my intent.


1994
I Was There Just Last Night by Robert Clark

A couple of years ago someone asked me if I still thought about Vietnam.

I nearly laughed in their face. How do you stop thinking about it? Every day for the last twenty-four years, I wake up with it, and go to bed with it.

But this is what I said. "Yea, I think about it. I can't quit thinking about it. I never will. But, I've also learned to live with it. I'm comfortable with the memories. I've learned to stop trying to forget and learned instead to embrace it. It just doesn't scare me anymore."

A psychologist once told me that NOT being affected by the experience over there would be abnormal. When he told me that, it was like he'd just given me a pardon.

It was as if he said, "Go ahead and feel something about the place, Bob. It ain't going nowhere. You're gonna wear it for the rest of your life. Might as well get to know it."

A lot of my "brothers" haven't been so lucky. For them the memories are too painful, their sense of loss too great.

My sister told me of a friend she has whose husband was in the Nam. She asks this guy when he was there. Here's what he said, "Just last night." It took my sister a while to figure out what he was talking about. JUST LAST NIGHT. Yeah I was in the Nam. When? JUST LAST NIGHT. During sex with my wife. And on my way to work this morning. Over my lunch hour.

Yeah, I was there. My sister says I'm not the same brother that went to Vietnam. My wife says I won't let people get close to me, not even her. They're probably both right.

Ask a vet about making friends in Nam. It was risky. Why? Because we were in the business of death, and death was with us all the time. It wasn't the death of, "If I die before I wake." This was the real thing. The kind where boys scream for their mothers. The kind that lingers in your mind and becomes more real each time you cheat it. You don't want to make a lot of friends when the possibility of dying is that real, that close. When you do, friends become a liability.

A guy named Bob Flanigan was my friend. Bob Flanigan is dead. I put him in a body bag one sunny day, April 29, 1969. We'd been talking, only a few minutes before he was shot, about what we were going to do when we got back in the world.

Now, this was a guy who had come in country the same time as myself. A guy who was loveable and generous. He had blue eyes and sandy blond hair. When he talked, it was with a soft drawl. Flanigan was a hick and he knew it. That was part of his charm. He didn't care. Man, I loved this guy like the brother I never had.

But, I screwed up. I got too close to him. Maybe I didn't know any better. But I broke one of the unwritten rules of war. DON'T GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO DIE. Sometimes you can't help it. You hear vets use the term "buddy" when they refer to a guy they spent the war with. "Me and this buddy a mine . . ."

"Friend" sounds too intimate, doesn't it. "Friend" calls up images of being close. If he's a friend, then you are going to be hurt if he dies, and war hurts enough without adding to the pain. Get close; get hurt. It's as simple as that.

In war you learn to keep people at that distance my wife talks about. You become so good at it, that twenty years after the war is over, you still do it without thinking. You won't allow yourself to be vulnerable again.

My wife knows two people who can get into the soft spots inside me. My daughters. I know it probably bothers her that they can do this. It's not that I don't love my wife, I do. She's put up with a lot from me. She'll tell you that when she signed on for better or worse she had no idea there was going to be so much of the latter.

But with my daughters it's different. My girls are mine. They'll always be my kids. Not marriage, not distance, not even death can change that. They are something on this earth that can never be taken away from me. I belong to them. Nothing can change that. I can have an ex-wife; but my girls can never have an ex-father. There's the difference.

I can still see the faces, though they all seem to have the same eyes. When I think of us I always see a line of "dirty grunts" sitting on a paddy dike. We're caught in that first gray silver between darkness and light. That first moment when we know we've survived another night, and the business of staying alive for one more day is about to begin.

There was so much hope in that brief space of time. It's what we used to pray for. "One more day, God. One more day."

And I can hear our conversations as if they'd only just been spoken. I still hear the way we sounded, the hard cynical jokes, our morbid senses of humor. We were scared to death of dying, and trying our best not to show it.

I recall the smells, too. Like the way cordite hangs on the air after a fire-fight. Or the pungent odor of rice paddy mud. So different from the black dirt of Iowa. The mud of Nam smells ancient, somehow. Like it's always been there. And I'll never forget the way blood smells, stick and drying on my hands. I spent a long night that way once. That memory isn't going anywhere.

I remember how the night jungle appears almost dream like as the pilot of a Cessna buzzes overhead, dropping parachute flares until morning. That artificial sun would flicker and make shadows run through the jungle. It was worse than not being able to see what was out there sometimes. I remember once looking at the man next to me as a flare floated overhead. The shadows around his eyes were so deep that it looked like his eyes were gone. I reached over and touched him on the arm; without looking at me he touched my hand. "I know man. I now." That's what he said. It was a human moment. Two guys a long way from home and scared sh*tless. "I know man." And at that moment he did.

God I loved those guys. I hurt every time one of them died. We all did. Despite our posturing. Despite our desire to stay disconnected, we couldn't hep ourselves.

I know why Tim O'Brien writes his stories. I know what gives Bruce Weigle the words to create poems so honest I cry at their horrible beauty. It's love. Love for those guys we shared the experience with. We did our jobs like good soldiers, and we tried our best not to become as hard as our surroundings. We touched each other and said, "I know."

Like a mother holding a child in the middle of a nightmare, "It's going to be all right." We tried not to lose touch with our humanity. We tried to walk that line. To be the good boys our parents had raised and not to give into that unnamed thing we knew was inside us all.

You want to know what frightening is? It's a nineteen-year-old- boy who's had a sip of that power over life and death that war gives you. It's a boy who, despite all the things he's been taught, knows that he likes it. It's a nineteen-year-old who's just lost a friend, and is angry and scared and, determined that, "Some *@#*s gonna pay."

To this day, the thought of that boy can wake me from a sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling. As I write this, I have a picture in front of me. It's of two young men. One their laps are tablets. One is smoking a cigarette. Both stare without expression at the camera. They're writing letters. Staying in touch with places they would rather be. Places and people they hope to see again.

The picture shares space in a frame with one of my wife. She doesn't mind. She knows she's been included in special company. She knows I'll always love those guys who shared that part of my life, a part she never can.

And she understands how I feel about the ones I know are out there yet. The ones who still answer the question, "When were you in Vietnam?" "Hey, man. I was there just last night."
_________________
Terry Boone PCF 90
Qui Nhon 68-69

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

That's one hell of an essay, Terry. Thank you for posting it - if we find out who the author is, of course we will be happy to add that.
_________________
~ Echo Juliet ~
Altering course to starboard - On Fire, Keep Clear
Navy woman, Navy wife, Navy mother

[ILUVTHEUSA]

THat is one POWERFUL essay. It was the kind that just stops you in your tracks. There's the saying, "It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all." The author of this essay shows you that sometimes it is just TOO painful to love, yet sometimes you have no choice--it just happens anyway. Thanks for sharing.
~ILuvTheUsa

[Beatrice1000]

Thanks Terry - it hurts.. but I'm glad I read this. Helps me to understand my brother better.

[SandiM]

A deeply moving piece, and a small glimpse towards explaining the unexplainable, telling the untellable, revealing the unrevealable.

We who were not there cannot even begin to understand, but we can afford them due deference, the highest respect, and ask no more of them than they have already given. They owe nothing, we owe everything.

SandiM
_________________
Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. (Winston Churchill)

[Guest]

I know He goes to war

I can't tell you of ever finding God in church
And I can't remember feeling
He was near me when I went there.
I do remember seeing a lot of friendly smiling faces
And people dressed in all their nice clothes.
Somehow, I always felt uneasy -
Too many people, too close.

No, I don't remember seeing God in church
But I hear his name there constantly. Some ask,
Have you been born again? If so, when?
And I don't understand!

I did feel God in Vietnam -
Almost every day.

I felt him when, after an all night fire fight,
He sent the sun to chase the rain away;
And the rain would return with majesty
The very next day.

He was there when I collected
Sgt. Moore's body parts to put in a body bag.
He was there when I wrote
A letter to his widow explaining how he died.

He was behind me when I heard
Sergeant Sink's last dying gasp.
He helped me carry
Sergeant Swanson down a hill in the An Lo valley.

I caught a glimpse of God when I felt the heat of napalm
Called on our own position, May 27, 1967.

I felt him around me when
The chaplain would hold field service for our dead.

I saw his reflection in the faces of my men
When I told them to save one bullet for themselves
As we were about to be overrun one hot steamy day
In a Nam far away.

He led me in the "Lord's prayer"
On every assault
As we stood on the skids coming in at treetop level.

When we set up night ambushes
And I couldn't see my own hands because of the darkness,
I could feel his hands.

He sent loneliness to guarantee the fond memories
That always appear later in life.

I'll always remember the strength God gave
To the orphans - the children of war.
He made them strong, but they didn't understand.
I know after 25 years,
We sleep under the same star.

He sent boys to war.
They returned young men;
Their lives forever changed
Proud to protect the land of the free.

I don't know if God goes to church,
But I know He goes to war.

Written by Barry L. McAlpine
First Squadron, Ninth (US) Cavalry

[rhv5862]

mtboone, thank you for this powerful post. Was difficult to read all the way through but glad I did. It says what so many are feeling even today.

RHV

[Cazador]

Hi,

What a powerful story.

I found an original post about this. The other stories are just as powerful -- I posted one in Geedunk.

http://www.vietvet.org/nvetnew.htm

Best,

Cazador

[CaptnJack]

The article and poem bring back feelings as much as memories. Both would assist those that were not 'there' understand why the Swifties came forward now and understand they really are NOT political.

[USMC_CommGod]

I was not there, and have only heard the countless tales...

I can't even really express what I felt after / while reading that (and the later poem), but it's the same thing that I've always felt when I was told these stories...what I was thinking when I finally contacted my recruiter...

Something that all US Marines (and forgive me, I wish that it were also impressed so upon the other services...for the sentiment is the same) are taught from their first days in bootcamp. it's an obscure Latin phrase, called "Semper Fidelis"!

http://www.free-definition.com/Semper-fidelis.html

It extends well before our time, and will continue long after our time...and every servicemember who has truthfully risen their hand in a solemn oath to protect our country should understand this.

The times will change, and ideologies and rationels for war will come & go...but we the people who serve (and most importantly those who've seen combat) are the ones who hold true to our humanity! It is we who provide and protect the future...while being doomed to forever relive the past.

Thank you for that amazing reminder, and thank you all for your service! Today is the Marines 229th Birthday...and tomorrow is Verterans Day. Let us never forget those who've gone before us!

Semper Fi
_________________
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

[Padma]

Moving words, that say a lot to those of us from our generation. A very powerful essay (and poem). I wasn't there, but today it seems like mere chance that half my Basic platoon went to Nam, and I ended up in a mailroom in Kansas. I wasn't there, but I had friends who were, and who didn't come back. I had friends who did come back, who wouldn't, or couldn't, talk about it, not for a long time.

In 23 years of service, I never saw actual, in your face combat. I was support, which meant I came close, but never quite was there. But I think that all those years, with all those buddies who went into harm's way, helps me appreciate what they/you have experienced.

USMC_CommGOd: maybe the other services don't impress it so indelibly, and kids who only serve one tour don't understand what has changed about them, but those of us who give a large portion of our lives serving our country, and re-volunteer every few years, knowing what we are doing, I think we understand Brotherhood, and the meaning of "Semper Fi".

Happy Birthday, Marines, and I'll remember everyone here tomorrow, as we honor our veterans.
_________________
Master Sergeant, USAF (Retired)

[USMC_CommGod]

I didn't mean to diminsh the power of that essay, or to cast an unfair light on ANY of our services...merely to point out that some Marine (perhaps by the very fact that they ARE usually the first to face combat...) had somehow come up with a definition for the feeling that this essay gives you!

I've always contended that EVERY service deserves respect, and we all (from infantry to support [which by comm, you can guess that I probably wouldn't have faced combat anyway...]) each have our vital roles in the bigger picture!

Again, when I was a little kid listening to these stories...whenever watching a movie or reading a book, and through all of my years since, I've always fallen back on what exactly that phrase means and why the Marines use it!

Semper Fi!
_________________
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

[Mother]

Close your eyes a moment, feel the warmth and comfort of my arms around you, feel my lips brush your hair, your ear and listen as I tell you,

It's going to be all right.

Had you not been there, I could not pass along the gift of your message to my nineteen year old, three weeks before he heads to Parris Island.

God love ya.

I do too!

Don't ever think you're alone in those memories. We have all climbed in that boat with you. Swiftly : )

[mtboone]

When I came home, neither my mother, father, brothers or sister asked me one thing about my year in VN. I am sure most veterans have thought more about their time there since jfk brought the war back to us, but I know we were never too far away at any time.
_________________
Terry Boone PCF 90
Qui Nhon 68-69

[Firedawg]

It was hard to read that essay but it made me realize that the feelings poured out in it are also my life. I don't feel anyone could have stated it better. I'm not use to tears welling up inside of myself but this individual brought them out and I do feel better after reading it. I used to sometimes feel I was all alone, although in my heart I knew better and understood that all my brothers still have many of those same feelings. It's just good to read it and realize, I was never really alone.