The rest of the night passed in mud, a penetrating mist returning to add some sort of cutting liquid thinner to the blood being sucked in by the feeding mosquitoes. As I lay in my semi-comatose state replacing real sleep, I couldn’t hear any more firing. There were no more explosions that I was aware of.
I didn’t need an alarm clock because I was always conscious, but never truly conscious. I could move if I had to, or was called upon to move, but I chose not to. I counted for the dawn to come. One, one thousand, and on up to the hundreds, finally keeping track of thousands with the fingers of both hands. Seconds to live. Light was life, if only I could get there, or the world could get there around me and take me along with it. When there was enough light to see my hands, I unwound them from their counting positions and stretched. There was enough light to stop the counting and push back the blackness of night and fear.
Actually, more than a few Marine Corps Officers were West Point graduates. Every year graduates from the various service academies end up entering other services as officers. I’ve known several of them.
Yes, there were quite a few. I met only four personally in my time in the corps though
three in Quantico and one in Nam. Thanks for supporting my contention.
About some things, if you were really in the corps, you just cannot be wrong.
Semper fi,
Jim
The racial problems that went on in combat units out in the field and then back in the rear areas
have gone almost completely ignored back here. There was a sequence in the movie Platoon but that was it.
It was a living and breathing thing to be confronted or ignored, depending upon the circumstance over there.
USA rules certainly didn’t apply. And that caused a lot of racial adjustment in units when the Marines
and troops came back to serve out their time in US commands. Race is one of the those very rare things that
is instantly recognizable when one human is in front of another. And it can’t or won’t ever be ignored.
The lingering effects of Vietnam remain for so many of us. The PTSD stuff is hard because of what I feel in myself.
I don’t want or need people to feel sorry for me or “honor” me. When I came home I just wanted a decent job
with pay and respect, along with a quiet respect for my service. I didn’t get that. Most did not and they don’t get it
today. They get lip service and minimum wage. The public adores and respects military service in general, not in specific.
Thanks for the extensive history in your comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
James,
I am 58 years old. Honorably discharged from the Navy for service as brief as it was without distinction. I remember reading a novel, when I was in 10th grade, which was a fictional account of a campaign in the Au Shau Valley called, “The 13th Valley.” Have you heard or read of it? To me, it an account of how good and bad (mostly bad) the military campaigns, in the Au Shau, were managed. I am deeply troubled and sorry so many fine young men were sacrificed in the crucible that was the Viet Nam war, to no good end.
Yes, read the 13th Valley. Good book. Bit different from this though!
Semper fi,
Jim
6 months
Interestng comment, Stanley. I am puzzling over it. Can you give me a little more to go on?
Semper fi,
Jim
You guys were my heroes growing up. You continue to be my heroes today. Thank you sir for the harrowing, gripping, account of your baptism by fire. Each object in the story is both real and a symbol. Powerfully written. I am numbed!
Thanks Chuck. Some powerful comment there. I don’t think the symbology will be picked up by everyone
and I guess it’s like the song lyrics in a way…you’ve got to lay it between the lines…in order to
truly reach the inner intellect and emotional center. I hope I am doing that but as a writer the only
results are recognizable from the readers. Thanks for that result.
Semper fi,
Jim
Extremely intense. I am living with you. I am a little young. Having said that, my neighbor, a great young man of 20, was kIA in 1966. Sherwin Crescent Shoppe. USMC. I have a friend who fought at the Frozen Chosin, and in Vietnam. 5 Purple Hearts. His grandsons, USN, and USAF, want him to write a book, as he is highly decorated. He has had offers, but he doesn’t want to talk about his experience and says it’s not important. A barracks at Lackland AFB was to be named after him, but he refused. He is a USMC/USAF , retired. After reading your account, I know why he prefers to not bring up old nightmares. My son is special opps.
J. David. Thanks for the uplifting comment “I’m living it with you.” No higher compliment than that kind of remark, except for maybe some of the guys who believe I’ve helped them because they can
point at my story and say “see,” to friends and family. It’s hard to have credibility as a combat survivor because the things that we had to do to stay alive are not the things that most people want
to believe, which means there’s little help at home for PTSD. Thanks for your son’s duty too!
Semper fi,
Jim
You’re a good writer Jim. You’re giving away a damn good book for free! Enjoy reading your stuff!
Thank you Mike, but the regular publishing industry is never going to publish this book, or the follow on books if I get that far.
It will be bad enough when the ‘regular’ establishment comes for me, which I now know to expect. They are a bit slow but they are not stupid.
Thanks for the reading, the comment and the support.
Semper fi,
Jim
I turned 18 in January of 1974. I received a draft card that said 1H…”h” for holding until a final decision was made about the draft. But the war was all around me. I saw the little green Army cars that appeared in town to break the news to families of fallen soldiers. I also saw those who returned but never to be the same again. A friend in Jr High…his brother a wounded Marine was one of those. He became reclusive, allowing no one near excerpt family. I knew almost nothing about the Marine named Woodley…except he was gravely wounded not just in body. He later committed suicide. I always wished I knew Marine Woodley’s story. Thank you for sharing yours.
Randall. Thanks for that frank revelation of your own background with Vietnam and its effects upon you. I am happy that you are with us and still kicking enough to write this. Glad you missed the show. So many of my real combat brethren cannot come out open up about what happened. For obvious reasons as you continue reading my story. I could not either for a long time. My wife wanted a ‘real’ war story several years after I came home. We were roller skating at a place in Mission Viejo. I remember Dream Weaver playing when we skated along and I gave into her request, since she’d guessed that I was lying about most of what happened over there. So I told her a short real one. She threw up. Right there on the middle of the wooden floor. That story hit hard for both of us because it reinforced in me the feeling that I better shut up and take the pain all by myself. I understand why these guys won’t talk. They don’t want to be ridiculed and lose credibility and they don’t want to be exposed to the heartless American system of jurisprudence either. Thanks for the comment and the support.
Semper fi,
Jim
all writers can put words on a page…a few are able to paint pictures with their words..I can read your words and get the visual at the same time…
Thank you Rodger. I’ve been at it a long time and I guess, after a while,
you either get to the point where your descriptives and dialogue place the reader inside the story or they don’t.
To be one of the ones that can accomplish that is a true compliment and gives me some satisfaction to go on.
I don’t expect this to be a bestseller as a writer but then I have
my social security, disability and some money dad left me to get by, and I am okay.
It is a pleasure to be able to write and have people like you say that about the writing.
It is enough.
Thank you.
Semper fi,
Jim
I was IV Corps Army 67-68. My older by 14 months brother wa USMC 66-69, I Corps of course. The poison spray finally killed my brother in 2001 (throat cancer…doc said VA’ll never admit it, but he had no doubt)…and your story is, in some ridiculously lyrical sense, like visiting again with my brother. I miss that Jarhead more than I ever thought probable. Thank you.
I wonder sometimes Neil, what the other guys were thinking when we were in the bush together. I am revealing here in this story about as much as I can of what was in my mind. I wonder if a lot of other guys were thinking similar thoughts and so driven by gut survival as I was. It’s impossible to really know. I am very happy that you see the thought process I am unfolding before you, as something that might have been akin to what your brother might have shared.
That’s a compliment of the highest order and I can’t thank you enough. I tried to act in the best interest of those around me but so many times I was dragged kicking, screaming and resisting but going along with truly selfish motives and actions. And then regretting how I could be so selfish, and then doing it all over again. In Vietnam it was like I had to make every mistake I could in order to figure a way through and, when it was all done, look back and see that my own survival was due a whole lot more to circumstantial fortune than my own actions. Thanks for the heartfelt comment and thanks for thinking my story and I are okay.
Semper fi,
Jim
…we’ll, if you’re a bit like myself, “okay” is kinda relative to time and miles. I’m writing some, myself…for my children & grandgirls…just so they’ll know some of the detritus we lug around and the evil ruts it came from. It’s dirty work, at times…but good for me to look at it and translate to pen and paper.
Glad you are writing too, Neil. Maybe my work will motivate some to follow your example. This will all fade into the past soon
enough and some reality should be available other than Apocolypse Now, which actually made me laugh, and Deer Hunter made me laugh even
more. I do like the fact that Robert Duvall has spent the rest of his years mad about being identified with the movie line “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.”
Thanks for your comment and your support.
Semper fi,
Jim
James
I was wondering since I’ve been reading , times I goofed up over there .One was putting trip flare in flack jacket pocket with M33. Walking in line to new perimeter I got hung up on bush and pulled pin on flare. Buddy in front of me turned and used butt of his 16 to knock the burning flare and M33 out of pocket.Wasn’t long I rotated back to the world .I got a letter from buddy that said engineers came and blew grenade and said I and everyone around me was lucky.It had melted the spoon right up to pin.Like I said before ,not like you I lucked all the way through.Always had this overwhelming guilt of why a lot of my friends didn’t make it and I did. Later
Most of us got saved by others whom we could not necessarily save ourselves.
We all come back wondering why we lived and so many around us did not. I have
a feeling that that’s a whole lot of ‘you’ll never know’ stuff going on, depending upon
what you might believe about life, religion and the rest. Thanks for reading and liking what
you are reading. I shall endeavor to persevere….
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, I hope the comments and your replies make it into the book. It adds some clarity and perspective to me as I try to understand my brother’s experience during his first tour as a grunt 66-67 and his decision to Vol. For a second tour in 69-70 that led to his KIA.a very insightful read. Keep up the good work.It’s as if you’re speaking for those who didn’t make it back also. MS
Thanks Mike, it was never my intention to ‘speak’ for anyone but here I am, still trying to make sense of my own reactions to what happened.
I question some of it is that I was not tough enough to come home and do what so many people told me to do, even professional counselors: “Just get over it.”
I tried hard, especially early on. That time that night in San Clemente, California, with my wife and kids asleep upstairs while I sat with a .45 and a bottle of Bacardi really happened. The Bacardi saved me life because I drank the whole thing and promptly passed out. I could not get over it and I could not avoid it without drugs and booze. When standing at the wall in Washington with my friends they could not understand why I could not stand there at the wall and give honor and memory to my men up on that block of stone. I could not do it. I ended up at my brother’s gravesite in Arlington with another bottle of Bacardi. Half that bottle is still buried right there at his graveside. I sat there and drank the other half and dug a hole with my hands. I have always wondered if I would one day go back, dig it up and sit there on his stone and drink it. I don’t think so but I don’t want to take one of those popular veteran’s flights to D.C. to find out. Whom, aside from some of you reading this, would understand? Nobody. If they didn’t say ‘get over it’ they would think it. The draw pulling me back, and my struggles against that pull are strong. I can’t speak for the dead because I’m part of the dead, but still alive. I sound like a zombie and maybe that’s what I really am, I don’t know. Your brother and my brother. They are still there for me every day and every night, side by side. I like to think they wait with some sort of pleasure for the rest of us, who had to go on, to join them. A long answer because I thought you (and your brother) deserved one.
Semper fi, brother,
Jim
I agree with adding the comments. As good as your story telling is ( And its damn good) the comments also hit close to home. I am asking my children and wife to read this to help explain what hell on earth really is. Keep it coming brother.
I agree with you and Mike. The comments area has become quite something all on its own.
Tied very closely to the reading and reviewing (and some critiquing too) of the story.
I am not sure how to include that part of it but will talk to the friends helping me
put it together now.
Semper fi,
Jim
a Rolex with a mineral crystal in nam in what year? I did 20 months in nam and never saw or even heard of a rolex watch much less a mineral crystal….all crystals in that time frame were plastic, even rolex’s…other than that detail..
The Rolex Submariner was supposedly available at the in country PX sites and in PX sites in Japan
and Hawaii for about six hundred dollars. The sapphire crystal for watches was invented in the mid=nineteenth century
but not used in watches until the fifties. They were uncommon and many times, apparently, the real crystal was mineral glass was covered with a layer of
the rather expensive synthetic sapphire (as in some rare Rolex models of the time). By the way, the sapphire has a hardness of nine
not seven as in the story. The Internet is a wonderful place to look stuff up. I did try to find the Rolex Mertz claimed to have but could not find it.
Sapphire on watches became much more common in the 80’s and 90s.
Thanks for the attentive care in checking stuff out.
Semper fi,
Jim
Your writing is superb. I did not go, though I was a volunteer from day one. I have cousins that went, and the one that still survives talks of his time over there with the 173Abn. I let him talk about it all he wants.
Your description of what you endured up until day nine terrifies me even as I sit here at age 73 and nearly 50 years later. I am so sorry so many of our Citizens had to go through that hell. Please keep writing your story. The world needs to know….
That the Captain refers to you as “that second Lt. and you’re that Company” confirms you made a hell of an impression on the Brass Asses from the git-go.
If there’s a special place in hell for stupid politicians that squander the lives of their citizens in wars they do not commit to win, then I’m sure the ones from the Vietnam era are toasty warm right now. I anxiously await the next installment.
They think knew me back at battalion as a complete cowardly fuck up.
They credited the company and me with every battalion failure in the field, and they made sure of that
by making us the point of the battalions movements. We were the Fucking New Company!
Funny how perception really works and how it all plays out as time goes on.
As my story must portray and it should stick out hugely, is that the training at officer levels
of all ranks was unbelievably lacking in almost every are that was needed to survive and function in
a guerilla war situation, much less win a war there.
Thank you for your lengthy comment and your seeing things that others might miss in the story.
I’m not always aware, as I write, that I reveal some of those things, as you pointed out.
Thank you!!!
Semper fi,
Jim
Good read, Junior!!!
When I was in the hospital at First Med in Da Nang I could not talk because I had a tube down my throat
and four transfusions going at once. I was conscious and being prepped for surgery. The surgeon said I was going in
because there was no triage at that moment and I was a poor candidate. He didn’t say for what. A priest appeared and leaned over
to administer the last rights and I got scared. Before they hit me with the gas in the mask a nurse holding my file said that she had to make sure of
my identity. She leaned down by the priest and asked me who I was. I just looked at her. She turned over the front page of the file and then said: “are you the one they call Junior?”
I nodded my head at that, and then I was gone. So, Larry, you can call me Junior. Most every person commenting here has earned that right.
Semper fi,
Junior
It took “only” nine days. Nine days of being wrung out like a dirty dish rag. But with today’s episode, I was able to do it. I smiled! Shit, I laughed out loud. “Whatever you do, DON’T tell him your grid position on the map”. And you slid it in there like a stiletto. Your craft is getting about that sharp, too, Strauss. Appreciation extended.
SF,
PFJ
“
John. You are something else. I put that line in there without clear thought about it. I was back in the day
and living it again, where everyone had become an enemy if they in any way impeded my ability to stay alive.
That you read it with such clarity surprised me, but it should not have. Your incisiveness is there to make sure
that I remain aware that this piece of work is not being read and absorbed by fools or simple vicarious creatures seeking adventure.
Your comment is real. I felt it and it makes me proud.
Semper fi,
Jim
I have come to look forward to reading the comments almost as much as reading your narrative. To say you’ve struck a collective nerve would be bordering on the trite, but it’s a fact nonetheless. I see no “fools or simple vicarious adventure-seeking creatures” in this line up of commenters. (And your well thought out replies reflect that.) You’ve given voice to a genre of reluctant rememberers, all of similar vintage, who applaud your efforts and your accomplishments. It’s an analogy only the farm bred will get, but when you’re digging manure and the pitchfork finally hits the concrete under the compacted shit, you know you’re making headway. Write on, Strauss, we’ve got your six.
SF,
PFJ
I loved the part about don’t tell him your position coordinates!
You may not have felt it at the time, but your team thought you were a badass LT!
Thanks!
Thanks Dave, as ever for your perceptive comments.
I was one frightened dude somehow managing to get the footwork
right enough times to stay alive. Thanks for your observations.
Semper fi,
Jim
Lt. Strauss. I grew up in the 60’s and early 70’s with the expectation of being drafted and going over there. Fortunately it was over just before my 18th birthday. I remember the nightly news reported by Cronkite and others. I am glad that you are writing this now so that maybe my children and grandchildren will believe what I tell them about the time and the war instead of the liberal drivel being force fed to them by today’s education system. I still joined up. I didn’t know what else to do as my future had been all but written for so many years. I proudly served in the USCG before coming back home to a career as a firefighter. Thank you for putting the truth into words for all to see. I look forward to the rest of your story. Andy
Guys who did not go.
Thank God! So many went and so many did not come home.
The guys who went and actually were in the shit do not hold ‘not going’ against anyone.
If you think after what you’ve read so far, that I would have liked to see you in that situation,
or any other decent young guy, then you have misread me and what I was and what I have become.
I am glad you are here to have this dialogue with me because it is quite likely you would not be if you had been at my side.
You turned out to be a cultural hero of the first order.
My dad was USCG for thirty years and who can argue the regular unsung heroics of firefighters.
Thank you. And thank you for liking what I am writing and finding some identification with it.
Semper fi,
Jim
Extremely pleased that you are getting this on paper before it is too late. Before long the only ones left to write the history will be the historians, and what they write will be anyone’s guess but surely not as accurate as this truth. Snappy hand salute LT.
Gary, I am doing the best I can with the assembled fragments of old letters, maps
and different other junk that has made it through the years. Not to mention a memory that is pretty
damned clear to this day, thank God. I don’t know what true history is because it always involves so
much opinion of the observer and holes in memory that get glossed over. That is in this work too.
I do the best I can but it cannot be perfect. Thanks for your support and the comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
I personally have great difficulty these days separating what actually happened there from 50 years of nightmares. I suspect that I’m not alone on that.
Spot on Gary! The dreams can be mind benders and changers. I too have awakened to discover myself very happily home but frustrated because
the dream ‘converted’ what I thought to be true. I have one dream that reoccurs where there are local Vietnamese sitting along this snaking road.
Not combatants. Just civilians in civilian attire. They just sit there, a dozen of them. Men, women and children. They stare at me and I stare
back. The wind blows. Dust comes up from the road. It’s real. I wake up sweating. It wasn’t real. I never was on that road or stood along it.
Those civilians were never there in that way and they would have no reason to look at me in that deep penetrating unblinking sort of way. Now, as the
years have passed, was that real and my memories faulty? If it was not real then how did it get into my mind? I do not tell any VA counselor because
I know it would not do any good and I would get no answer that would modify or change that dream. It will be back and I don’t know when. You are
having a similar experience if I get your comment right. I also wonder if everything that is pouring back into my mind from wherever it is stored
is as accurate as I feel it is.
Thanks for the depth of your comment and the fact that you had enough confidence and courage to write it.
Semper fi,
Jim
“Jesus H. Christ” !
Haven’t heard that for awhile. Memories.
His demeanor and words suggest he hadn’t been in country long. Or was just a permanent dick head. Or both..
I never got to know about Mertz or experience him again. That happened so often over there. Units would shift and mix personnel so often that there was no real unit identity for long, not like WWII at all…or so I am told by those vets. Band of Brothers is a really neat television series but I wonder how valid most of that stuff is. At least they showed some PTSD and some of the real huge casualties we too and how much that hurts to lose the guy next to you.
Thanks for the comment and your reading support.
Semper fi,
Jim
What an asshole. Mertz that is. You da man LT!
We were all victims of circumstance over there Tony, not to diminish what you concluded. He was an asshole. His defense in being placed in about
the last place on earth West Point trains people for was to retreat to that position. Unreasonable? Hell, yes. But so was the situation.
Thanks for the support and reading the story!!!!
Brothers in arms, no longer in arms…or so we hope.
Semper fi,
Jim
Beruff, He’s an asshole because war is about detachment, death and destruction. It’s currency is human lives. The Captains’ sop is sending men to their death while the Lt’s is saving the lives of his men. What it finally boils down to is this; better you than me. That’s the way it is, whether in war or back in reality. Seven dead because of a mistake, LT got off easy. People die to teach lessons to the living. Sorry Strauss, hard lessons are taught harshly, that is the way it is…
Tracy, Mr. Nobody
The rationality applied to the results of our actions is always being done in the past.
Foretelling the future effect of our decisions, in war and in peace, faces the same nearly insurmountable obstacles.
Those obstacles are all about the detail of unknown, miscalculated or forgotten events impinging upon the result of our decisions.
What was wrong or right when my company came together with Captain Mertz will always be debatable and likely
never explainable ‘better you than me’ hard boiled philosophy.
Not informing Kilo that they might be walking into a likely ambush set up for my company wasn’t good.
But then I didn’t know they were assigned to come up our back trail either.
Rushing back down to attack the NVA unit in the ambush was good,
not to mention being accurate in predicting the ambush was there (it was).
Not informing the men of my company that the plan was for Kilo to open up from across the clearing was bad,
and the Gunny and I shared the guilt for that.
Now that I’ve laid the story out as it happened it is much much easier to look into it and see where things
went right and wrong, while also regretting the lives that were lost when things went wrong.
All the lessons in actual combat are harsh and all are costly unless strange good fortune results.
I was also so young and new and trained more for WWII engagement than a jungle guerrilla war.
My mind just rocked back and forth with fear, dread, grief and lack of sleep, cleanliness, diet and you name it.
My excuses are many, although I do not think that you get from the writing that I thought
I was anything decent as a commanding officer or a real lieutenant of Marines.
There is little question that I cost a lot of men their lives and that a better lieutenant would certainly not have had
as big a ‘butcher’s bill’ as mine.
That conclusion does not escape me.
Ever.
Was Captain Mertz a better C.O. with Kilo than I was with my company?
Probably so, snobby starchy asshole that I thought he was.
When it comes down to it Tracy you are right.
Hard lessons are taught harshly, and they sure were there.
Thanks for your deep thinking comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
Well said LT, well said indeed. When you are in the shit, deep shit happens. Don’t lose sleep over it. Mark it up to lessons learned and the ear marks of war.
Tracy, sleep changed forever over there. All my friends are mostly old so they are not
up at this hour but thanks to night life in the Nam I am here and working away. I’ll bring the
new year in by myself but in memories, as well. Thank you for being up with me tonight,
at least in mind. I’m okay and writing on.
Thank you!
Semper fi,
Jim
Well, let’s see. How shall I say this. Tip-toes or right in the smacker. Maybe with a sprinkling of humor.
Observation is key to insightful understanding. Command of men takes a severe… who the F* stole my Tabasco.. mental toll. Self-doubt that transmutes into a mania, is all too common. The higher the rank, the greater self doubt rolls in, thus more…I’ll pigeon hole that bastard the first chance….. mania’s.
It will interest you to know that I would watch senior staff take periodical trips to the pharmacy; for their anti-loony tunes pills. That was the signal that something was about to happen. You just had to wait for the balloon to go up.
Command never gets easy, only harder as you waltz up from crows roost, vulcher’s row to finally Eagles nest.
Those are my observations. Remember, I’m Mr. Nobody….for a reason.
I am certainly not the only decent writer on here, that conclusion by my own observation of course.
That was a great paragraph that you just wrote Tracy and I must admit that it will take more re-reading for me
to fully comprehend your message because there are at least three subtle themes. Not bad at all.
Thank you for the self-effecing delivery of your opinion and experiences.
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim, Thank-you for the compliment. I write well in retort but not at independent full length essays. I must also say that I am not a Veteran. I served my jail time working as a civy on base; but I picked-up a thing or two. I still want to know where my Tabasco went… Great stuff Maynard.
Mr. Nobody
Thank You Sir. I think is some way your accounts may help us all somewhat heel. Looking forward to your book. Tater
Thanks George. Comments like yours keep me going. I don’t have time to be a bestselling author anymore but felt I just had to
get this out before I’m gone. Maybe it will help some guys tell their stories and refer back to the unbelievable nature of what I am
writing, thereby making their own story more acceptable and believable. Sometimes the public just does not want to know.
Semper fi,
Jim
For me this is your most resonating comment so far Jim.
You Mark, who’ve walked the walk, are most entitled to write that. Thank you. It is easier to consider mortality when it became clear so
long ago that the distinction between living and not living is not nearly so huge as we conceive it. But the ‘trail’ we may or may not leave
behind can be so poignantly helpful to those trying to follow in our own footsteps. The roiling, raging and seemingly irrational fear so
many of us “Lord of the Flies’ participants endure and were driven by needs revelation and accommodation. Not to or by us, those who lived it,
but to those who live in contemplation of what such conditions create for those returning alive. There is no good and effective treatment for
PTSD because it does not exist as what it is in the minds of counselors who never experienced the ‘stressors’ they are always in search of.
Possibly, this written narrative of intensity and revealing circumstance may help. I don’t know. All I can do is my damnedest to try.
Thanks for the past comments and this one too, in a big way.
Semper fi, brother,
Jim
So very true is your statement about the counselors for PTSD not understanding the reality of what we faced because they did not experience it first hand. I did not talk about my experiences for almost 40 years because no one but a Vietnam Vet would understand. And we were all trying to block them out of our minds.
Pastor. And the blocking is not effective unless it is done with stuff so powerful that the rest of our life goes into hibernation for only temporary periods of time.
Hence, the effectiveness, however long term damaging, of alcohol and other drugs. Where does one run from himself?
Hell, the counselors at the VA are put in an awful situation because they would have to turn people over to the authorities who confessed
real circumstance causing PTSD. It ain’t about killing the enemy. That’s mythology.
Thanks for laying it on the line Pastor.
Semper fi,
Jim
There were those who were not in reality. I continue to enjoy your writing sir.
Jim “Wingnut”
Thank you Jim, for your terse but accurate comment. I came to understand much later that some humans cannot ever take it in. It was too surreal
and their own inability to accept what is there in front of them often got them killed.
Semper fi,
Jim
I couldn’t agree with you more sir! I realized early in my tour that my odds of survival were very slim. Once I accepted the fact I would die there the daily grind became a lot easier. My fire team and squad became my brothers and the jungle became my home and I was only frightened, shook, after a fire fight. I would like to say your writings bring back memories, but I have lived with them every day and night since 1969. Keep up the excellent work Sir. Semper Fi. Sgt. Dan Barker Lima 3/9 3rd Mar Div 1969
Thank you sergeant Barker!
Yeah, there are a lot of us that had to ‘make the jungle our home’, like you did.
I never fully adapted but I came to accept just how tough it must have been
for humans to make it through while putting up with all the discomforts
and dangers without modern technology.
Hell, it was mostly miserable with tons of advanced technology.
Thanks for the comment and the support.
Semper fi,
Jim
“The Captain was not in my Vietnam.” Wow. We all experienced our own version. Well said Jim. In so many ways your conversation with the Captain and your agenda for the upcoming day reflect the futility of the war. I look forward to the next chapter and of course the book! Thanks Jim!
Thanks Jack. There was a lot of that. Just a few clicks away the whole war might be strangely different than where I was. I didn’t figure out just how different for many years after. There is no futility of war, there is only the never ending battle for stuff, real estate and money. THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT! I am on the next segment now…
Semper fi,
Jim
While I like the realism, there’s a factual problem referring to the Captain as a “pointer.” West Point primarliy provides army officers. A marine corps officer academy graduate would have come from the naval academy.
Nope. Do your homework.
Steve, I believe Jim is correct. Slots must be filled regardless of the origin. I once met a guy that started out in the Army, went to the Navy, then Marines. His last couple years were filled in the reserves of Army and Marines. He received his pension for 20 years service. I guess he didn’t like the same scenery every day. Who knows. He got his free headstone a couple years back. Jim, hopefully you are still writing and exorcising those demons. Best.
I am back at it Tracy and thanks for caring enough to write…
Semper fi,
Jim