I believe I help a lot of veterans with my booklets and newsletters. And since I very rarely meet anyone I have helped, I sometimes have visions that maybe their lives have improved above and beyond any compensation they receive from the VA; that maybe they no longer have to live with Vietnam every day. I try to imagine that my life is much better, and the war doesn't bother me so much now. And then something will happen...The other day on the news someone mentioned Vietnam as the war we lost, and I felt a deep rage. My wife shocked her friends at work because she says our family motto is you can never have enough ammo. Just minutes ago, I was outside on my porch during a hard rain like Nam rain. I stared at the woods, listening, and remembered what it was like to sit in the cave dark night soaked beneath a poncho while waiting to die. I haven't gotten over the war. I live with it, and I try not to think about what I might have been or what direction my life could have taken without Vietnam. And I feel nothing but anger toward the Vietnamese. Some veterans say they forgive their enemies and can move on. I can't forgive. I turn to ice inside when I think about Vietnamese.
The official Vietnam News Agency recently said that by the time Americans left at the end of 1975, three million Vietnamese had been killed, four million wounded, and two million were affected by toxic chemicals including Agent Orange. The agency said that fifty thousand children were born deformed in the first ten years after the war. It also said that a recent survey of areas around Danang found nearly 41% of the population were either dead, missing, or wounded by the time the war ended. About ten years ago, 80% of all Vietnamese were under twenty years old. Of course, they want us to pay them money. To me that brings up one question...We lost?
I don't feel sorry for them. We all lost in one way or another. The bad thing is our government gives them money with both hands, while veterans have to fight for every dime in compensation. I also read that there were 2.8 million men in-country or in combat during the war. Thirty years later there are less than a million (800,000) left alive: two million gone in 30 years. We are dying at a rate equal or faster than World War 2 or Korean vets.
One of my best friends from childhood was shot in the butt in Nam while crawling under fire on some Agent Orange defoliated hill up north. He lay there two days before choppers could get in. Years later, with no family history of cancer, he developed a tumor at the site of the bullet wound. A cancer so rare that doctors say there have only been a few cases recorded this century. The VA said Agent Orange had nothing to do with it. It moved into his lymph system. They removed his lymph system on his entire left side. He said he would shoot himself rather than go through more therapy. He just turned 51 when this happened, and he died a few months later when the artery in his leg ruptured and he bled out in front of his kids. The war is still killing us.
Another Marine veteran from the New Orleans area, who I never met, but who I had tried to help for over five years by listening and giving advice, wrote me that last Christmas and told me he went blind from diabetes. I felt like someone tore my stomach out. He was like family to me, even though we had never met. I didn't know how to comfort him, and I am angry at the system that would stall a highly decorated combat veteran for years with petty delays and unsympathetic treatment.
While reading the newspaper, I saw a section about what famous war protesters are doing now. It said Jane Fonda divides her time between her zillion acre ranch in Montana and Atlanta. That really upset me. A small town Marine like Robert Garwood, who spent his entire young life as a prisoner for fifteen years, can be branded as a traitor. But Jane Fonda, who got more men killed than any NVA unit, walks free. Oh, she did apologize once on television, an apology that meant nothing. She is an American who watched while prisoners were tortured, who sat behind enemy antiaircraft guns and acted like she was shooting down American planes. And she walks free, filthy rich off American blood.
There are constant reminders of the war all around me, but when I receive a letter from a veteran who became service-connected for PTSD because of my booklets or advice, I feel it is all worthwhile. I can almost forget that I’m 100% myself, and maybe helping other vets is my mission in life. Each combat veteran must deal with their war their own way. I have been lucky. My way is to help other vets. Maybe that’s why I survived.
