Dwelling on the Past

I personally do not believe my parents' generation dwelt very much on their war.  It was a singular event with two climaxes: VE Day and VJ Day.  It seems, from what little I have gathered, that everyone went back to whatever square they were on before Dec 7, 1941; and picked up from there.

Jobs, marriages, children; always with one eye on the brass ring of prosperity.  After the free round of drinks in their local taverns, the returning troops just shed their Class A uniforms and went back to forty hour work weeks, to meld into a postwar economy bent on conspicuous consumerism.  Buying brand name appliances with names like Crosley and Kelvinator; cars with Packard, Kaiser and Willys emblazoned on the hood

Well, why not?  It was the greatest victory this country had ever experienced.  We were the champions of the world; shortly to become the champions of the so-called free world.  There isn't a lot to ponder when you are Number One.

Korea was another matter.  Calling it a victory would be something of a stretch.  We didn't out and out lose the Korean Conflict; but sixty years later, we help guard a wall between two parts of one country, praying that another Commie hoard doesn't blow a tinny bugle and mount another suicidal charge.

We may not recall that towards the end, Korea was an extremely unpopular war in this country; sufficiently so that Eisenhower made a truce in Korea a point in his campaign for the presidency (not that he couldn't have won the election without ever leaving the golf course, had he chosen to do so).

Then, there was Viet Nam.  The American War, as the Vietnamese refer to it.  Forty years later, sixty percent of Viet Nam's population were born after 1975.  Do they dwell on the War?  In an exploding economy like theirs, certainly not.

The jolt of reality came to me last year when an aging Bob Dylan performed a concert in Ho Chi Minh City.  The attending crowd was a mixture of Vietnamese and foreigners and the stadium was only half full, but news of the event stunned me into a world I have had to come to accept: no one gives any thought to the Viet Nam War anymore.

Except a dwindling group of tottering white haired old men who are coming out of the bunker they relegated themselves to forty years ago--to see the world as the post-1975 world sees it.

I wear my Vietnam Veteran gimme cap with some trepidation, even now.  Youngsters call me 'sir' and shake my hand, thank me for my service to our country; totally unaware of the core of shame within me that is finally, finally beginning to ebb away.

At the end of 'Saving Private Ryan', the aging Ryan turns to his wife and begs an answer to his question, 'have I lived a good life?'--not for himself, but to give meaning to the sacrifice of the Rangers who saved him, and all who remained forever on the battlefields, to give us that shining victory.

The 'Dirty Little War', as Bernard Fall depicted it, remains the defining moment of my life.  The twelve month tour from 1969 to 1970 has colored every click in my timeline, try as I may to place it in a small felt-lined box on the mantlepiece of my memory.

Despite my uneasiness, I continue to wear my hat now for the 58,000  whose spirits remain forever in that sweltering green jungle half a world away.  I don't dwell on the events, whether the history that was incessantly delivered  into our consciousness by the evening news; or my own insignificant footprints in the sands of China Beach.

But like a low grade fever or a knot in my back, the sense of it is always with me; the foci of the maelstrom that is the life that I have lived

Today, I strive to maintain a sense of gratitude for life and the serendipity of having survived Viet Nam, to bear witness to a national folly.

The final irony?  My elaborately embroidered gimme hat is manufactured in China.

The Vietnam Syndrome

Since donning my garish Vietnam Veteran gimme hat and trotting out to public places, young people come up with their hands poised to shake mine and declared their gratitude for the service I performed for my country.  Most of these kids were born after 1995; so they have no concept of the 40 odd years most of us Viet Vets slinked (slunk?) in the shadows bearing our unrequited shame for the war that was lost.

After a lifetime of nose-to-the-grindstone workaholiah, and not a retirement nest egg to piss in, my country ups and shows its belated gratitude by bestowing me with a 100% disability with all the benefits and compensation of a true hero.  All I had to do was contract prostate cancer and demonstrate I was in-country between such and such a date.  The new think is that the cancer is 'presumed' a result of exposure to Agent Orange.  Now, I am retired because a nest egg exists where one did not exist before.

Oh, did I mention the diabetes, the cataract in my left eye, and the PTSD that came out of nowhere and bludgeoned my life to a standstill?

It all seems so surreal.  It's beginning to look like another one of God's Big Ha-Ha's in this bewildering miasma I call the Divine Plan.  We Vets, to this day, do not discuss the war.  On my way to my VA dental appointment, I rode the elevator with a guy my age and a gimme hat similar to my own and a tee shirt which identified him as a Navy Seal.

In the day, we called these guys Spooks.  They tore around the 'Nam coastlines and riverways on sleek heavily armed boats appropriately nicknamed Spook Boats (the Navy manuals referred to them as 'PTF-70 "Nasty"--top speed classified),  kind of an over-sized cigarette boat bristling with cannons and Gatling guns.

I asked him if he was in I Corps (there was a big Seal Team base in Da Nang harbor).  He answered, 'Mostly II and III Corps--we were kinda all over the place'--and stepped off the elevator without another word. 

That wasn't a peculiar exchange; that was typical.  If we broach the subject at all, we only ask, 'where were you at?'  No one ever talks about what they did there, only where they were at.  That guy probably has enough stories to populate a couple of action-thriller movies; but was there a word about them?  Would there ever be? Absolutely God Damned not.  These exchanges are always truncated and rarely occur.  I've probably had half a dozen in 40 years.  Until I started wearing my hat, I can't remember anyone ever initiating an exchange with me about the War.

The last time I looked, approximately 130,000 Vietnam Veterans have committed suicide.  That is a staggering statistic for the 2,000,000 odd participants in the 30 years of the war (yes, kids: begin counting from 1945 until the last pathetic Huey liftoff from the Saigon Embassy).

The final irony: the garish expensive gimme hat that brings me to the attention of my fellow grateful citizens? Made in China.  I really hope they parcel out some of the piecemeal assembly tasks to factories in Vietnam.


                                                           

The Day Commenseth; the Life In Medias Res

The new puppy rescued from the shithole at Pleasanton Animal Control is a border collie/howler monkey mix.  After keening to me from the patio for most of the night, sleep deprivation won out.

The problem was remedied by bringing the cute little fella into the house to be loved, petted and allowed to chew the Ethernet cable to the Wii. The destruction of a fifty foot wire seemed to assuage his fretting discomfort and brought an end to the high pitched howling.

He was adopted out, very soon after (not soon enough), to a nice young couple who had not a clue as to his nocturnal serenade.  I'm sure they will cope... somehow.  If not, they can curse me out in one of those amorphous messages occasionally  seen on Craig's List: 'To the jerk who unloaded this G*d D**d obnoxious dog on us'...you've seen the sort.

For the present, in the quiet hour before dawn, all the dogs--my personal pack of 6-- and 3 cats--laying around the couches, my office, the bedroom and the bath tub are dozing, waiting for sunrise to begin the day. I have perhaps forty minutes before the morning cacophony to peck out whatever peckings come to mind. I will not insult your intelligence by calling them thoughts.

I begin this tale of my life (how completely grandiose!) pasted on the Ethernet wall where lies the graffiti of the 21st Century.  The juxtaposition of print on screen rather than fine vellum doesn't make me an anachronistic Neanderthal, it makes me a lazy SOB without a mountain of wadded paper on the floor below a greasy Underwood portable.  Samuel Dashiel Hammett, roll over in your grave.

Perhaps some alien archaeologist will discover this on a resurrected  hardrive in the infinite future, and ponder its meaning.  After trying to answer that first vital question posed to the off-world diggers; namely,  'What religion did all those prolific golden arches represent?', my electronic scribble will nonplus the little green buggers with, I hope, equal enigma...

Incidentally, the {...} may dot these musings from time to time: it signifies that I have mentally drifted off the page, but that I will return. Some of you may not wish me to return.  To you I have only three little words: 'Delete. Sure? Delete'.

I note in reviewing this melange that there is a place to entreat my readers to like, comment and share.  So, follow me to Perdition...or not: the language will become more fecund and the thoughts more outrageous; but as to whether anyone is liking me or not, I give not a rat's ass.