It's been 35 years since I left the rice paddies of Vietnam, but shortly after I got back I put everything in a diary. It's a good thing too, because today when I look back, some of the things that happened in Nam seem distant and dim.

I was eighteen when I got to Nam. I had joined the Marines at age seventeen and had to wait a year before going to Nam. By the time I arrived in country I was a Corporal which put me in the position of squad leader from day one.

I remember being terrified at the prospect of leading Marines into combat. I Corps South Vietnam was a place where 70% of our caualties came from booby traps. For the first few months I was the green Marine who kept his flack jacket zipped up, helmet with chin strap hooked up, and ready for all hell to break loose at anytime.

The other Vets who had spent the last six to nine months in combat where a crazy bunch to observe. They move through the countryside as if nothing was going on. Their jokes were morbid and their dares to nature and God seemed fool hearted to say the least. I cound'n understand how men facing death everyday could live so much on the edge. The strange thing was that three months later, after a few firefights under my belt, and seeing death and destruction all around me I became the same.

Vietnam was as elusive a place in reality at the time, as it seems to be today these many years later. Today I only read the news or see the wars happening on TV. The thing is today many times when I go to sleep at night, I have dreams of being in combat again, or see myself leading troops. Im guess once being there you can never really leave it, it just stays a part of your sub-conscious mind. I remember something I wrote in my diary that comes to mind; once you travel through the door of an experience, you can never go back the way you came.

Gy7ras

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I've been spending the last few days looking around the zoints community and reading the profiles.  It's funny that the only things that have changed is the environment and technology, but not people. 

 

As I read through the different age groups I find that they are pretty much like the age groups that I lived through in my travels through life.  The teens are still trying to show their independance by how they design their proflies and yet they are pretty much the same.  The 20 somethings are more into trying to impress everyone with their coolness and the fact that they have left teenhood and are becoming men and women.  The 30 somethings are a little bit more layed back because they have experienced a little more life by now and realize that life is not everything thing they expected.  I don't think I've seen to many more of the age groups represented.

In my age group the 50 somethings I can understand why there's not too many here on zoints, it's because in my experience the internet is not really their thing.  Most of us are empty nesters, but still are interacting with the new generation ( our Grand Children), still working in most cases, but still finding time for ourselves and spouses.  Don't get me wrong, I've live through all those ages myself and found that I too traveled the different stages of discovery, dismay, excitement and boredom. 

 

When I look back at it it's been quiet a ride.  From Grade school to high school, from boot camp to Vietnam, from war to peace time, from Batchelor to husband and father, from father to granfather.  yes I think when it comes to human emotions and the human heart, we are pretty much all the same, and that's not all bad!

I'm just starting my Blog here on zionts, and since the theme is military I guess I'll talk about something I'm familiar with.  That's not to say that only military comments are allowed and all are welcomed, but it's a topic that's always with me.  I served in Vietnam with the first Marine division  at age 18.  I remember that I was 12 years of age when America got involved in the war.  I would rush home from school and catch the 6 O'clock news and pay special attetion to the Americans fighting in the war.  I recall that at that time the average American loses where being reported where light.  By 1967 the average losses were around 250 Americans a week.

 

I also recall the news reels and seeing American forces waist deep in water as they cross rice paddies and looking for the Viet Cong ready to engage them in battle.  My older brother had joined the Marines and had served in 1966-67 time frame and later again in 1970.  Never in my imagination could I have known that by 1970 I would be a young Marine Corporal crossing those same rice paddies and waiting for Viet Cong Charlie to engage us.  I remember thinking that history had recorded World War One as the war to end all wars, and yet here I was involved in another war.

 

Many small engagements have followed in between the wars we are invloved now in Iraq and Afghanistan.  War is a strange business that leaves many living with mixed emotions about their involvement.  It ranges from thoughts of adventure, unbelief, fear, lost loves etc.

 

Sometimes even today I think I might want to go back to vietnam as a tourist just to see and try to remember what really happened.  For you see now some 35 years after the war, I can't always recall what was real and what was imagined.  The war was that horrific for me as an infantry squad leader and flashbacks and dreams still come.  It can be music of the era that triggers it, or a smell, or a sound.  I still see the faces of those I served with and even those of the enemy at times.

 

Vietnam was a beautiful but deadly place that I compare to the Venus Flytrap, Beautiful for some of us and deadly for others that went there.  I can only imagine what those invloved in the wars of today are going through.  They will definately write the new chapters and experiences of what they are living, and what they are seeing.  God bless and keep them.

 

Semper FI!

 

Gy7ras!