We have an old Vietnam vet that lives up the road from us. His wife passed away almost three years ago. He has no children and all of his family has passed away except for a sister that lives in NY state. She is old enough that she can't travel. The guy doesn't have any family left. He has no friends because he is a recluse that has lived in the mountains since he got back from Vietnam. We check on him everyday. He is a good man. This story kind of hit home thinking about our neighbor.
It's a bit of a struggle to figure out how to answer this. Of course I don't have to respond, no one does.
I am a Vietnam Vet. Friends of mine didn't make it back. Some came home in parts. Damned if any of us knew that we would be branded forever. Why should it be any different from more recent war vets? I haven't a clue. Maybe it isn't. Vietnam Vests have this stigma. It's beyond me.
Friends I served with have done well. Friends I served with ended up on the street or living rough in the woods. Somehow I have always understood that though I was fortunate not to have taken that path. I don't know why. That is a question in itself.
I was afraid to come home. Scared ****less to rotate back. I wanted to come back but, it scared the hell out me. I thought it was me but later found out that a hell of a lot Vietnam Vets felt that way. There was this great sadness I didn't want to bring home. Later I found that most Vietnam Vets had to deal with the same feeling. To this day I don't understand it.
My first tour was on me. I volunteered. It had nothing to do with God, mom, and apple pie. The second time I volunteered was about 3 months after I got back. I didn't fit. Vietnam was a better option of bad. I was at best in some kind of military purgatory, better there than here wherever here was. It was very difficult to deal with, and you dealt with it alone. Seems things haven't changed much in that regard.
Close friends: One is retired and happy as a pig in ****. We were stationed together stateside. I looked him up once when I was sent down to MACV in Saigon. He's doing well.
Another stayed in for 22 years and recently retired a second time as the director of corporate security. I'm not surprised. He was a prince. The best of best.
Once good friend retired from the Dallas police force. No doubt the people of Dallas danced the night that crazy bastard retired.
I caught up with one very good friend living on the street in Atlanta. He was perhaps my closest friend. We lost touch. I'm afraid he never made it back to "the World" even though he made it home.
Bobby caught some shrapnel one night on the perimeter in Peiku. We grew up together. When he came home he was unhinged. His parents used to call me to come "talk him down", him often sitting drunk and crazy in his bedroom at his parent's house holding a beer and a pistol.
Steve got shredded one night after 3 months in country. Hell, I don't think I can list all of it: both legs, one arm, the back of his head, in his side, and all the way up from just above his johnson straight up to his sternum.
A close friend I grew up with became a Phd psychologist in an effort to escape the ghosts. A former SF trooper, he found solace living in a remote area far away from the world. He's doing all right but he prefers no contact save for me and a very few others. He always was and remains a hell of a friend and a stand up guy. It's just that he no longer relates to most people. I get that.
That's enough. It isn't any different for men and women who have been in the **** in the Middle East. People may not know the sacrifice. Hell, I met guys who were on the USS New Jersey who provided arty 15 or so miles away - off shore - who worried about rounds they had sent and who the rounds may have hit 15 miles away.
I have a friend I grew up with who handled flight manifests back home to "the World" who couldn't get a friend out on an early flight who died as a result of not making the flight.
It goes on an on. I doubt it is any different today. Plus there are people in every branch of service who are today involved in crap they can't talk about who may be assigned to places that don't exist. It isn't
that rare, y'all. It could be in South America or South Africa. We don't know. Sometimes the places you'd never expect are the very places you'll never know about. The troops who serve there serve with little or no recognition.
