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.