“Ain’t found a way to kill me yet...”
I will admit that I used to find Veteran’s Day troubling.
Having grown up when I did, which was just a little too young to be part of the
Vietnam War, but old enough to formulate an opinion on war...yet still an
impressionable teenager, I was conflicted. We lost the war...but our soldiers
did their damn level-best. But we lost.
And as such, in the years immediately
following the end of hostilities, our collective national consciousness had to
find someone to blame. And tragically, many blamed the soldiers. I adopted that
mindset as well. And as a result, I wanted nothing to do with military service.
My father even pitched it to me as I was graduating college – “You know, son,
you could go into the Navy, come out of OCS as an officer, and retire in twenty years,
at age 43.”
You might as well have suggested I run off and join the
circus. Wasn’t happening.
As I grew older, I realized my anger was displaced. Those
troops were put into a totally unwinnable quagmire. The real villains were the
politicians. And, honestly, our society for how they were treated once they returned
to the States. That’s why you see so much “Honor Our Troops” entreats...I
believe it was guilt over how we treated the Vietnam Vets. But I was still
conflicted – I couldn’t just swivel and unconditionally thank them for their
service; there was a part of me that still thought, ‘Hey, you signed up for
this gig.’
“Walking tall Machine Gun Man...They spit on me in my
homeland...”
So I spent a lot of time trying to understand the American
soldier, without judgment. I asked friends of mine who served what it was like.
I turned to media to help me understand. And it was in this search that I came
across perhaps the most poignant, horrifying, and accurate description of what
it had to be like in those jungles.
“My buddy’s breathing his dying breath...Oh God please won’t
you help me make it through...”
Jerry Cantrell is a member of the band Alice In Chains. He
wrote the song Rooster in honor of his father, Jerry Cantrell, Sr., who served
in Vietnam; ‘Rooster’ was his nickname. And the video, frankly, is hard to
watch. But I insist that you do:
I am no longer conflicted. They were heroes. All of them.
Happy Veterans Day.
