Christmas 1967
It was Christmas 1967 in Vietnam. Being an fng (fucking new guy) I was assigned to guard duty during the month of December.
I marched out to my post in the rain and cold and fog on Christmas Eve. I spent the night shivering and looking from the slit in my bunker for potential attackers. I actually thought that my post might be attacked in that abysmal weather.
A month later, I would learn that the preferred method of killing me was to launch a mortar shell or rocket straight at me.
After that, I learned the meaning of fuck it.
posted by Lynn @ 9:54 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
On Christmas Eve 1967 I was safely asleep in the room I shared with my little brother. Vietnam wasn't even in the remote fringes of my seven-year-old consciousness. There, tucked in my bed in a frosty little town in New Hampshire, the only thing on my mind, filling my dreams, were visions of a brand new Hasbro Lite-Brite. It's what passed as a high-tech toy in those days. I thought it was magical the way those little plastic pegs glowed: blue, violet, pink, red, orange, green and white. I still have it, and a handful of those pegs, stuffed into some corner or some closet....
By coming into this world in 1960, my young life was spared concerns of snipers and mortar shells, draft cards and protests. But years later as an adult, while reading a National Geographic article on the Vietnam War Memorial I broke down and wept. I don't know why. I wasn't involved in the conflict in any way; I didn't even have a family member who was... no uncle or brother. I just wept at the insanity of the whole muddled, botched mess of the thing; the lives, either lost or ruined, the righteous politicians who sent our young men to war, the activists who cursed them when they returned... just the whole dirty, foul affair.
I'm glad the enemy missed you 38 years ago....
Happy New Year.
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