Our Finest Young Men

_______________________

A Spiritual Journey from the

Trauma of War to Inner-Peace

Andrew H. Farris.

VietNam Veteran

Table of Contents

EXORDIUM, I.

INTRODUCTION

• Addendum to the Introduction

† The Violence, Out of the Quiet.

o My First Night Mission

I. Tour of Duty – September 1967 – September 1968

The 25th Division, and the 2nd of the 12th Infantry, Area of Operations (1966-1968)

• The Alpha Company Ambush, October 1967

• Loch Ninh, November 1967

• Sammy Was One of My Men, December 1967

• TET, January 1968

• Hoc Mon, March 1968

• The Horse Shoe Ambush, April 1968

• The New Kid, May 1968
  † I Had To Write A Daddy

• “I Lost My Tan Line.” August 1967

• In Tribute: Billy J. Jordan, CSM

† Memorial Day 1999, A Remembrance.

II. The Path of Healing

EXORIDUM, II.

• “Welcome Home” September 1968

• Snap Shots  PTSD

• The Dedication, Veterans Day, November 1982

• The Georgia Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program

· The Viet Nam Veterans Leadership Program

· God’s Healing Messengers.

• The Healing Journey

· Healing

· You Are Blessed

· Blessed, But Not Healed.

III. Inner-Peace, The Cleansing

EXORDIUM, III.

• Preface
• “We Shall Pay any Price”

† The Healing Dream.

• Prologue

• Prayers

† Never Again, By, Zane Alexander

† From “Thoughts in Solitude”, By, Thomas Merton

EXORDIUM, I.

“I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle. I have seen them in a thousand streets, in a hundred towns, in every State in this Union working and laughing and building, filled with hope and life.”

President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Address to the Department of Defense,

1965

§

“Five months after the midsummer meeting in Hanoi, a provincial Party

Committee in South Vietnam summarized for its trusted cadres the meaning of the coming battle as it had been presented from on high. The Binh Dinh Province Committee wrote in a secret report:

In July 1967 a Resolution for a General Offensive and Uprising was

Adopted after lengthy assessments of the current political and military situation and with the realization that we possess the capacity for success:

The General Offensive will occur only once in 1,000 years.

It will decide the fate of the country.

It will end the war.

It constitutes the wishes of both the Party and the people”

Don Oberdorfer

TET. The Turning Point in the Vietnam War,

!971

INTRODUCTION.

“Twenty-two years have passed since the days of Vietnam. I think about it daily. It seems I have been in one type of therapy or another since my return from the Nam. I know, now, closing the door on my Vietnam experience will be impossible...“

Ian Dixon Jones,

Viet Nam Veteran and friend

Dixon’s Journal, 1987

__________________________________

There is a vivid memory, a scene frozen in time that lurks in the recesses of my mind it is a picture of a young Army officer, standing at the tomb of President Kennedy, dressed in a wrinkled kaki uniform, just a week before departing for assignment in Vietnam. I read and absorbed the words from his Inaugural address engraved on the granite surround over-looking the eternal flame that marks his resting place in Arlington National Cemetery. As I read his address my eyes went to a lesser know part of his speech, not the often quoted, “Ask not...what you can do for your country…”, part, but this passage,

“Let every nation know
Whether it wishes us well or ill
That we shall pay any price - bear any burden
Meet any hardship - support any friend
Oppose any foe to assure the survival
And the success of liberty” (1),

Reading these stirring, inspirational words, read as I was on the verge of going to Viet Nam, instilled in me a sense of pride, a sense of purpose that we, our Country, were fighting to bring liberty, and freedom to the people of South Viet Nam.

As I stood there absorbing these words, little did I know then how much pain five of those words would cause me, and my fellow Vietnam Veteran’s, over the next 40 years; just five words:

”We shall pay any price”

On Veteran’s Day in1982, after the Dedication ceremonies of the Viet Nam Veteran’s War Memorial, I walked down the knoll until I stood close enough to touch the names chiseled on the wall. My gaze focused on the line of names at my eye level. I knew nothing, then, of the panels, the chronology, the order of the names, I just stood frozen staring at the names. It was then that I experienced a moment that has forever changed my life.

As the day began to fade the light changed, the setting sun and the cloudy, twilight-gray sky turned the polished black granite into a perfect mirror. As my focus adjusted the names disappeared, and I stood staring at my own reflection. I cannot tell you how long that moment lasted. But during that moment the awareness that I was indeed alive brought uncontrollable tears to my eyes – I did not know why I was alive, why I saw myself reflected by the wall, nor why my name was not engraved on the Wall.

This moment of epiphany unleashed the images and horrors of the battlefield that I had stuffed in the dark corners of my mind, and had left unvisited for over a decade. In that moment I knew, simply, that I was alive only by the Grace of God - in that moment of knowing - I understood that God had shepherded me safely through Viet Nam for His purpose. A purpose I knew I had to learn.

At the age of 62, forty years after I stood at President Kennedy’s tomb, I was interviewed by a psychiatrist to determine if I suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Sitting on a coach in his small room I realized this interview would force me to talk about memories of the war I had buried for four decades.

In Viet Nam I served as an Infantry Officer before and during the TET Offensive of 1968; ever since I have recited the names of the men I lost almost daily to myself. The Doctor was a smallish man, slight of build, with rimless glasses and a small graying beard. His movements were very precise and measured as he spoke in a soft, articulate voice, listened intently and then slowly wrote his notes.

It surprised me when, after he asked me a question, I laughed loudly and he showed no reaction. The question he asked was, “How are you affected when you watch war movies?” My laugh was immediate, nervous, and followed by a broad smile to which his eyes showed puzzlement, even though his face was unemotional. As he sat and stared at me I answered, “Doctor, war movies don’t affect me at all because I don’t watch them”, I said this with more than a bit of bravado.

I did not tell him that some 20 years prior I had to walk out of a screening of a movie called “Letters from Home”. The movie contained film shot during the war, grainy, black and white video of young soldiers lying on the ground dead or dying, all I could see were Timmy, Sammy, Arthur, “the new kid”, and other men whom I had commanded, and who I saw die.

I did not tell him that when I saw Oliver Stone’s movie “Platoon” I had to go straight to a bar and drink two martini’s before I could begin to erase the flash backs in my mind, and talk to my wife. I did not tell him that when Tom Hank’s character in “Saving Private Ryan” dies that I sat in the theatre and cried openly, tears streaming down my face.

The interview lasted an hour or more, the clearest memory I have of the interview, besides the laugh about the movie question, was when I described the day the new kid was killed and I was the one who found his head. I described the scene as if I was doing a voice-over to a video tape, and that is exactly what I had done.

I did not tell him of the years of alcohol and drug usage, the many jobs I held and lost, nor of the years of angry behavior I have directed at my loving wife. I did not tell the Doctor about the night, early in our marriage, when Sandi’s sinus condition caused her to snore suddenly, loudly causing me to reflexively snap-out a left jab which broke her nose. Her crying woke me up I was unaware that I had reacted.

Yet, a few weeks after this interview I received a letter from the Veteran’s Administration saying that I was being awarded a VA service connected disability rating for PTSD.

§

Near the end of my tour I requested a hardship assignment in order to be near my Father, who lived in St. Louis, he was then in poor health. The Army assigned me as an Advisor to an Army Reserve unit in Nashville, Tennessee which placed me about six hours from St. Louis.

The flight home from Viet Nam landed at Travis Air Force base in Oakland California. Upon landing the plane taxied out and away from the terminal where we sat for over an hour. The engines were shut down, there was no air in the cabin and the September heat radiating off of the tarmac was stifling. As we sat sweating in the plane we watched as soldiers on their way to Viet Nam boarded another plane. Once the plane with the fresh troops taxied away the crew opened the plane doors and we were allowed to exit, the plane was still sitting a considerable distance from the terminal. We were told that the Army didn’t want the new troops to see us coming home as it might demoralize them.

We were quickly ushered into an old warehouse where dim lights, old green medal fixtures with exposed light bulbs, hung from the ceiling over a long row of tables where enlisted men processed us and then gave us our service folders. When the soldier processing me finished he took the folder, lifted it up for me to take and without looking at me said, “Go through the door on the left”.

I stood silently looking at that the soldier holding up my folder, not accepting the folder from his out-stretched hand. As his hand began to quiver from holding the folder upward for me to take he finally looked up at me. Seeing that I was an Officer his voice changed, and then he said, “Sorry Sir, please go through the door on your left”. I said, “Thank you, Corporal.”

After being in the dimly lit warehouse we opened the door and were nearly blinded by the bright California sunshine, and found ourselves standing on a sidewalk. A small plane that was maybe 50 yards away, past a fence, started-up and gave a popping sound as its propeller began to turn; the sound was just like that of incoming mortar rounds. We’d been “home, on the street” for all of :10 minutes, reflexes honed in the war kicked-in instantly.

My friend Bill Donald and I, along with several Marines, hit the ground. After realizing we were back home, and the sound was from a plane’s prop and not in-coming mortars, we all stared at each other sheepishly and laughed. It was then that we realized there were no buses, no Army contingent of any kind to welcome us, no one to help us begin our journey’s home. Realizing this we all ran toward a cab stand.

One of the Marines looked back at the warehouse and shouted, “Welcome fucking home.”

Bill and I ran to catch a cab to take us to the San Francisco airport.

§

When I landed in St. Louis my Mother and Father were there to greet me, I noticed immediately that my Father was using a walker. I learned that he had fallen and broken his hip. Mother later told me that they didn’t write to tell me because they didn’t want me to worry. My Mother had tears in her eyes and hugged me, unable to say a word. My Dad beamed, his eyes were wet as he put his hand out to shake mine. He said in his familiar way, “Hi’a boy.”

Years later my Mother told me that during the two weeks I was at home, before I left to report to my assignment in Nashville, “…you slept most of the day and went out at night. You didn’t talk very much, and we didn’t know what to say to you.”

The irony in her statement speaks volumes about my condition then. At the time my Father was a Doctor with the Veteran’s Administration. Dad had joined the VA with some old Army buddies after finding a lack of purpose in the private practice he returned to after he was separated from the Army. A doctor Dad served in the Medical Corps during WWII.

During part of his time in the Army, Dad served on the hospital staff at Ft Gordon, in Augusta, GA where he treated German POW’s. At the time I returned from Viet Nam Dad was Chief of Physical Medicine and Chief of Pensions and Disabilities for the VA Regional office in St. Louis. I can hardly remember a Saturday growing-up when there wasn’t a man, a Veteran, around the house doing some kind of work – plumbing, tuck- pointing, painting, or working in the yard. I remember they were all alike in that each was missing something, an arm, a leg, an eye, their spirit. At the end of the day my Father would take them out to his tomato garden where they’d share a beer, and he’d help them see that they still had value, still had the ability to work.

Given the hundreds of physically and emotionally wounded men he had helped and administered to his inability to talk with me during those two weeks I lived at home suggests the withdrawn, insolated nature of my emotional state at that time. I can remember lying in my bed, the same bed I had slept in as a child for years. I stared at the ceiling and could see Sergeant Bell lying in my arms following an ambush, his shattered face and legs bleeding; I could smell the putrid odor of his blood that had dried on my fatigues late on that terrible day, long after we had put him on a Medevac.

These images were still vivid as the day the ambush happened in April; it was now September of 1968, only five months since the ambush occurred.

The images, smells and emotions that were occurred over and over as I laid in the safety of my childhood bed, a bed in which I laid day after day, the bed in which I had sought refuge just 48-hours after leaving Viet Nam. I know from talking with other Viet Nam vet’s that my experience was not unique.

For many of us there is the life-long pain of losing a buddy, we ask ourselves why can’t I let loose of all these painful memories. Jerry Swilley, a combat Medic, who was in the first platoon to which I was assigned, told me a few years ago,

“It’s sad…we could see what happened to guys, especially a grunt…Just think a guy on Monday morning is in the jungle - scared to death - then he’s on a copter and in two, three days he’s on the streets in the U.S. Everyone expects him to blend back into his routine…there’s anger, psychological shock… in Vietnam guy’s understood, back in the U.S. no one understood… no one cared.”

§

When I separated from the Army I went back to school to complete my degree work and then moved to Atlanta, GA. One Christmas, probably in 1975, I flew home to spend the holidays with my parents, Dad at that time would have been in his mid-seventies having been born in 1901.

During the visit back home Dad asked me if I’d drive him downtown, he wanted to do some Christmas shopping at one of his favorite downtown stores. After he finished his shopping he said, “Let’s get a cup of coffee”. We walked a few short blocks and settled into one of his favorite old downtown restaurants close by his old VA office building. Like many men of his generation Dad didn’t talk much about war, his or mine, but out of the blue, he looked at me and said, “Son, I retired because the wounds of your men are beyond my medical power to fix them.” He cried as he told me this. I had never seen him cry.

§

The story that follows tells of my 40 year journey from the horror and trauma of the battlefield to achieving my peace with the war, and finding an inner-peace. This book chronicles forty years of my life and has been assembled or edited from my journals, from pieces I have written at one time or another, from speeches I’ve given, from ideas scratched-out on napkins or scraps of paper, always with the dream of one day completing the book. These forty years of envisioning the book have also been fraught with the hesitation, doubt, and uncertainty every writer faces when he or she wonders, is my writing good enough? Do I truly have a message, a story that will connect with and help others?

My commitment to finally assemble all of the written pieces that comprise this book came during a writer’s retreat at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers GA; the Monastery is home to a community of Trappist monks who are of the Order of St. Benedict. During one of the retreat workshops, Fr. James Behrens, OCSO, who is a very fine, published writer said,

“We, as writers, are the point of contact between the human and the Divine. When we write we are writing alone, but you are a light, a truth, using the groaning of God”. He referenced the “groaning” as being from Romans. 8: (v. 26-27)

§

More recently my determination to set aside my writer’s anxiety came from an NBC-TV News report (February, 2008). Brian Williams reported that, "More active duty US Army personnel committed suicide in December 2008 than were killed in battle in Afghanistan and Iraq combined”, he further reported that, “the number of suicides is projected to be even higher for January [2009]."

This news drove me to tears, as I am sure it did for other Viet Nam veterans who may have seen or read about this report. This new generation of emotionally wounded warriors will suffer more than even my own Viet Nam generation due to the longer duration of their tour, and their more frequent deployments. They will carry with them an even greater number of friends lost in battle than those of us who served a tour, a single 12-month tour of duty in Viet Nam.

Thinking about this report, I went to Google and typed in “PTSD AND Treatment”. Google returned 2.1 million hits. The first, non-sponsored return was a link to a study published by The Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, which had been commissioned by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, it was dated October 2007.

The study reported that, “Setting a high standard for research on PTSD and delivering on it will require close collaboration between VA and other government agencies, researchers, clinicians, and patient groups. The committee’s recommendations are its suggestions for setting a framework for the future that can more successfully address the critical needs of veterans who return to civilian life with the diagnosis of PTSD.”

I stared at the phrase, “The committee’s recommendations are its suggestions for setting a framework for the future…” Viet Nam Veterans have been struggling with PTSD for more than 40 years; two-thirds of Iraq veterans screen positive for PTSD; active Army personnel are committing suicide; what does the Committee mean by “framework for the future”?

The study contained eight recommendations, the first of which I found both shocking and completely dismaying, the recommendation stated, “Treatment of PTSD has not received the level of research activity needed to support conclusions about the potential benefits of treatment modalities.”

The phrase, ““Treatment of PTSD has not received the level of research activity needed…” seized my attention, especially when I referred back to the published date of the Committee’s recommendations which were written in 2007. The recommendation was written 40 years after I lay in my childhood bed with re-occurring flash-backs of Sergeant Bell lying in my arms waiting for a Medivac.

A few weeks after absorbing this research, by coincideince or by God’s hand guiding me to yet another of the messengers He has placed on my healing path over the past forty years, I met with a Senior PTSD Counselor at a VA hospital. The counselor had been scheduled to speak at a luncheon of a local Viet Nam Veterans Association. As it turned out neither she nor I was able to attend the luncheon, so through a couple of e-mails and a phone call we scheduled a meeting.

Prior to our meeting I told her of the book I was writing and sent a few pieces for her to read. When we met she had an appreciation for my Viet Nam experience and for the healing intent or nature of the book. After learning about her work I asked about the Army’s report on suicides and her answer surprised me. She said that, “Basically the new generation of veterans, from Afghanistan and Iraq, think that they are all right. It’s your guys that keep me busy.” I looked at her for a moment trying to form a question when she said, “In this office we have 7 to 10 Viet Nam veterans walk-in every week asking for help.”

“Are they asking for help with PTSD?” I asked.

“Yes. The term we use is ‘avoidance’; you guys came home to a hostile environment, there was the anti-war movement, the hostility toward you individually, and you quietly went back to school or to work, got married, raised families, and became work-alcoholics, actual alcoholics, you joined associations, Men’s Groups or whatever to stay so busy you avoided thinking about Viet Nam. Today the average age of a Viet Nam veteran is late-50’s or early-60’s.You are retiring, voluntarily or not, you have a high divorce rate, many of you have gotten sober, your children are out of the nest and you are faced with all this time to think.”

I mentioned that I had taken a recently returned Iraq veteran to a Viet Nam veteran’s luncheon, telling her, “he enjoyed being congratulated by the men there, but he did not discuss aspects of his tour, and he told me he was ‘fine’”. She looked at me and said, “The new generation looks at Viet Nam veterans as their heroes.”

The Counselor looked at me intently, with a strong yet compassionate look, staring deep into my eyes, “Yes, you can see the one’s who have, or are going to have, problems, I can see it in their eyes. The Viet Nam veterans who come in here now, I can see 40-odd years of pain and regret; the Iraq vets say they are ok, but I can see it in their eyes too. I have a good five more years of work with your generation, then a good 10 more years with the new one’s.”

The phrase that I found on my Google search, the one that states, “Treatment of PTSD has not received the level of research activity needed…” popped into my mind.

As the Marine said, “Welcome fucking home.”

§

As you read the individual stories of my healing journey of the past forty years, written much in the reporting style I learned studying Journalism in college after I separated from the Army, you will see that each piece has its own by-line; its own place and date. I have tried to stay true to this chronology of people, places and events as they have occurred, as I have followed the path God has guided me along since I arrived home from Viet Nam in September of 1968.

You will meet the incredible people, the Messengers, He has led me to, each appearing in my life as if by a mysterious providence He put into place long before I met them. It is through the grace of these treasured people that my healing has taken place. It is my hope that I have given each of them as much as each one has given to me. Without them my healing, and this book, would never have come to pass.

One of these Messengers is himself a man of God, a Trappist monk who also served in the Army. Father Gerard was a Medic, stationed at a hospital near Denver where men who suffered the most severe leg wounds in Viet Nam were sent for treatment. He saw first-hand their physical, mental and spiritual devastation. We met several years ago when I attended a weekend retreat at the cloistered Monestary near Atlanta where he lives in the community of monks. Over the past several years we have met once or twice a year and frequently corresponded via e-mail.

Recently, Father Gerard and I spent an hour hiking together through a wooded section of the Monastery’s grounds, first walking easily away from the main area, then across a bridge. Looking ahead he suggested we strike out toward a hard-baked clay hill, it was a steep, demanding climb which brought us to an old over-grown farm road along the edge of the woods close by an old fence. Along the way he asked about where I was in my life and I spoke about my writing, noting one bit of difficultly I was having with the subject of suffering.

As we cleared the road we climbed a gentle slope and came into a lush, green meadow. Stopping to absorb the openness, the thick green meadow grass and the clear blue spring sky, Fr. Gerard said, “God chooses the weak to suffer so that they may become strong and help others who suffer.” As I tried to scribble this down on a small piece of paper he added, “you’ll find that quote in St. Paul, Corinthians 2”. I stuffed my notes into my pocket as we made our way back to the main road just as the Abbey’s bells pealed for noon prayers.

§

This book is part of my on-going ministry to help other Veteran’s heal their wounds of war, to help them understand that it is ok to grieve for their lost buddies, to forgive themselves for being alive, to shed the cloak of guilt at not having been the one to be killed, to learn that it is alright to allow themselves to Be At Peace.

This book will be about the men I served with, the battles we fought, the men we lost whom we still morn, who they were, what they might have become and why they were so loved as a buddy. More importantly it will be about the men who survived. It will recount in their own words what the war was like for them, about the pain they still carry, and offer their feelings on how they have worked to recover from the enduring affects the war embedded in them.

It will tell about the ever-increasing connection of Vietnam Veteran to Vietnam Veteran, over the Internet, through e-mails and phone number searches, the surprise and excitement of talking with someone you know but have not seen or spoken to in three-plus decades, about men connecting through their military unit Web sites, and about the reunions they hold where they gather together, men now in their late-50s and early- 60s; the reunions where they hold cleansing memorials to remember their lost brothers-in-arms, where they grieve and hug each other, and how they strive to help each other heal their mutual, undiminished pain. This goes beyond the bond of brotherhood forged in battle, this goes to the heart of love among men.

 
 
 
 “I am reminded of a statement by a recently returned Iraq War II vet I saw on the news the other night. He said that he never really understood the veterans of previous wars who had such a bond and, “cried at reunions. Now I understand." 
  From an e-mail from The Sarge, 15 Mar 2005.  

General Westmoreland once said about Viet Nam Veteran’s, “They held their own damn parade, and they build their own Memorial.”

Now, we are helping each other to heal.

This is book not about war, rather it is a book about men who fought in a war, and who still battle the affects that war as it still rages within them.

The pain that every combat Vietnam Veteran carries, I carry too. I know the unresolved feeling of survivor guilt. I have stood at the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and touched the names of Sammy Buffington, Willie Hunter, Timmy Schroeder, and the names of other men who had been under my command, and I have cried.

My hope, my prayer is that this book will, in some small way, help my fellow veterans, and the families who have lost sons and daughters in the service of their country, find a message of healing, to provide a measure of comfort, and help them begin their own spiritual journey to find their peace from their war.

Addendum to the Introduction .

“History will long dwell on how America made the same bloody errors in

Vietnam and Iraq within a generation…”

New York Times, April, 2006

Now, two years after Ms. Dowd’s troubling, predictive statement comes the news report that active duty Army personnel are killing themselves in greater numbers than are being lost on the battlefield. Surely, I thought, the military must be doing something to help these men and women.

A few days after seeing this news report I dug back into my files and found an article I had written for my high school alumni magazine, which I had titled: “CBC’s 9/11 Corps”, the school is Christian Brothers College High School. The 9/11 reference came from having recently met Army officer candidates when I spoke at a Senior Status Review at Ft. Benning, Georgia. My headline-quote for the article glared at me as I re-read my piece, it is a quote from a column by Ms. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times.

In my alumni magazine article I wrote, “CBC’s 9/11 Corps represent the most noble of their generation, forsaking the everyday comforts and life-styles they could be living in America. They have forsaken careers, incomes and relationships for the hardship and deprivation of life in a combat zone - where death is a daily experience. They will gain immeasurably in life-long friendships as meaningful as family relationships, even as they will endure a lifetime sense of loss.”

In fact, it is being reported that, “More than one in three soldiers and Marines who have served in Iraq later sought help for mental health problems… Researchers have found that nearly two-thirds of Iraq veterans who ‘screened positive’ for PTSD…are not receiving treatment.” Veterans Report Mental Distress, Washington Post, March 1, 2006

§

When I met with the Counselor at the VA I told her that I had met a young Army Captain, at a weekend retreat at a Trappist Monestary near Atlanta. The topic of the retreat was “Divine Healing”, the Captain had driven several hours from her current duty station to attend. After introducing myself to her as a Viet Nam veteran we formed that instant bond that develops so readily between combat veterans. One afternoon between work-shops the Captain and I walked down by a lake and found a table where we sat and talked.

The Captain is in the Intelligence Branch of the Army and has completed two tours, one in Afghanistan and one recently in Iraq. She is a young, 27-year old woman and has been in the Army for a little over seven years, she earned her commission through a University ROTC program. Her assignment in Iraq was to work closely with an Infantry unit to identify “high value targets”, specifically “terrorists cells in Iraq that are developing IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices)” that have had such a devastating affect on American troops in Iraq, both physically and emotionally.

The Captain spends “months and months” with the Infantry units in their Forward Bases until they have secured “sufficient, detailed intelligence” that allows her to brief her Commanding Officers. If they give her a “Go” on a target she gives the mission to the Infantry unit. Often the mission results in the Infantry unit ambushing a terrorist cell as they plant an IED. She looked at me with a far away sadness in her eyes, the kind of look I saw so often in grunts in Viet Nam, and still see even today. Then she said, “The Infantry guys secure the ambush site and check the kills. They usually find the KIA’s are teenagers; they’re just kids, poor kids trying to earn money for their families”.

Writing this I recall the Counselor’s flat-toned, straight forward comment, “I have a good five more years of work with your {Viet Nam veteran] generation, then a good 10 more years with the new one’s.”

§

“The spiritual journey of the vets is important for America, especially for that part of America that calls itself Christian. The veterans were forced to confront questions that most people either never consider or else consciously evade. Their story contains profound spiritual lessons for an America that desperately needs to learn the meaning of its own dark side and must discover how to find God in the midst of pervasive moral evil.”

William P. Mahedy,

Out of the Night,

The Spiritual Journey of Viet Nam Veterans.

1986

The Violence, Out of the Quiet.

The violence of death in Nam,

Came from the silence

It shattered the quiet, always sudden, explosive

Never expected,

Nerve-ends altered instantly, knowingly.

The violence roared and erupted

ear-splitting, bone-splintering, body-shattering,

blood-gushing;

It came from the quiet.

The violence is what you never forget.

You were still, or walking, the earth was quiet

Then you’re inside the noise, surrounded

Engulfed in the violence,

Heavy thumping of the first burst of an AK-47

Shatters the silence and escalates into the killing roar;

A total convulsion of violence -

Rifles screaming lines of red fire, machine guns hammering,

Hand grenades, rocket powered grenades,

Mortar and artillery shells whistling, bursting

Close, too close.

Deafening explosions concussing your mind;

Gunship blades thump overhead, missiles streak down

With frightening speed and denotation, and

Door guns whine chewing-up trees and earth and men.

Then the eerie quiet;

Clouds of cordite hang in the air the smell

Assaulting your nose and eyes, and

The scream of MEDIC rings out,

The sound reaches shock-deafened ears

Penetrating the shattered mind,

And the screams ring out

“MEDIC”.

The violence is what you remember.

The violence is why

You are always alert to the quiet,

Eyes darting into the silence, ever vigilant,

Now, still, after forty years

Wary, waiting in the quiet

Praying the violence never returns,

To have its way.

EXORIDUM, II.

“Our resistance will be long and painful, but whatever the sacrifices, however long the struggle, we shall fight to the end, until Vietnam is fully independent and reunified.”

Ho Chi Minh,

Dec. 19, 1946

§

“…I believe we could have and should have withdrawn from South Vietnam either in late 1963 amid the turmoil following Diem’s assassination or in late 1964 or early in 1965 in the face of increasing political and military weakness in South Vietnam.”

Robert S. McNamara

In Retrospect,

1995

EXORDIUM, III

“Historians and teachers as well as politicians should look deeply at the suffering caused by wars, and not just at the justifications that governments give for them. We have to teach our children the truth about war so they learn from our experiences and understand that violence and war are not the right way, they are not the right actions to take. We have to show our children that people on both side of war – The French and American soldiers in Vietnam as well as the Vietnamese people – were victims of the ignorance rooted in their societies and governments.

Remember, there were no winners.”

Thich Nhat Hahn

Creating True Peace,

2003

Andy welcomes comments and thoughts from all Alpha Association men:

Tel: 770-597-5536

Email: andyfarris@att.net

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