Shut Up and Dribble

 Vietnam Memorial Remembrance – doing something right even when it is considered wrong.

                                                                    Me after Vietnam

One of the realities of time is that the more you experience, the more you remember or try to forget. But forgetting does not work, at least not for me; it just delays the moments that will surely come. So as I think about those events, some six decades ago, that forever changed my life -I still wonder what my life would have been like had I made different choices. Ok, what the hell? Let's talk about that time, those choices, and how they dramatically shifted my trajectory.

 The year 1966 -I had just graduated from high school and was starting college. Although I was a member of the elite, deferment – so the draft was not an issue, I could not avoid the controversy of the period. I was growing up in what some call the hood -E. St. Louis -meant that many, if not most, of my high school male friends were ducking and trying to dodge the draft. Some got married, and some disappeared. I remember one kid, Henry, who took a baseball bat and shattered his kneecaps to get a medical deferment. What a price to pay -but he did not have to go. Having an uncle on the Draft board and being a college student, I would not get drafted. So, this college-exempted, elite kid started his journey into higher education.

I was living at home and commuting to the local college S.I.U. – Edwardsville (which at the time was a brand-new university) was just built about 30 miles down the road. So even though I was attending, I never left home. This meant that I continually saw my high school buddies leave for the military and all too often come back -f**Ked up, traumatized, or even worse, dead. Each cycle hit me harder and closer to home. I recall sitting in a sophomore class on Existential Philosophy, and somehow, we began a conversation about why things happen. The conversation drifted, and we discussed the Vietnam War before we knew it. And the professor gave his reasons why this war, and essentially all wars, were evil, manipulative, and counter to the basic principles of humanity. The Temptation's recent cut "War, what is it Good for -Absolutely nothing" went through my head. Yet I could not get past the sight of my friends being shipped off and the guilt that I could avoid it, hiding here in this haven called college.  

I could not get the thought out of my mind; another kid from the hood was also in the class. And we began to challenge the professor. If war was all bad, then why were we constantly fighting them? If war was bad, why did we celebrate them at every turn? And the clincher -this was an existential class nonetheless – On what basis do you make your claims? Which war did you serve in?  -Silence. The professor admitted that he had never served; no one in his family had ever served. He was basing his conclusion on what he had read, what he had heard, and what he believed. Naively, my buddy and I began to challenge the professor. Well damn, if our experiences shaped those realities, these experiences should be the basis of our truths. You could not condemn something that you have not experienced. 

And there we were, at an existential moment. We looked at each other, stood up, and walked out of the class. In the hallway, we began to talk about Jimmy, who had just come home in a casket, and we decided then that we had to do something. Guild is a mother, so we went to the local Army recruiting office and signed up -he for three and I for four years. What the hell? We bought the whole recruiting song and dance -hook, line, and sinker. We were off to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for basic training within a month. We were duly certified as Army eight weeks later, tough but unskilled. Henry, my hometown buddy, would go to artillery school, and I went off to the Army Security Agency and learned to become a Morse intercept operator. Strangely enough, as life turned out, Henry and I were sent to Nam -he went to Da Nang and I to Hue, but we lost contact shortly after coming to the country. 

In the country, I did what I had been trained to do. Our whole unit was assigned to intercept and track Viet Cong military movements and activity. We did our job well, receiving several unit-level recommendations. But we also learned many things we did not know in the States. For example, we began to learn that the leader of the North Vietnamese forces was Ho Chi Minh. While criticized for being a communist, our whole reason for being in Nam was to halt the spread of communism. However, we learned that this was not the total truth. Ho Chi Minh had risen to power in the country's rebellion against the French and their colonial control of the country. Ho Chi Minh was a fan of George Washington and the story of the American Revolution. Strangely, as the French had trouble holding on to their colony, we stepped in -to help. Our help increased over time, and the French left. But we doubled down and sent even more troops to control what was, for the Vietnamese, a liberation struggle. We, the U.S., were the imperialist.

Learning this changed everything. But what were we to do? We did what any naive, immature, and idealistic kid would do -we decided we no longer wanted to aid Uncle Sam. We decided to go on strike. Now you are probably wondering what a group of kids do, whose main job is to track V.C. communications go on strike, and what good would it do. Without our intel, Command could not know where and when the V.C. moved, their activities, and the like. Our going on strike, and our entire unit universally upheld this strike, meant that Command was essentially blind. 

And they were pissed. We read the "riot act." Told that if we did not immediately return to our duties, we would be court-marshaled and possibly even put to death as traitors.   We stood firm, declaring that we were conscious objectors and we would not continue to work in support of this war. The Army did what the Army does when faced with a dilemma -a whole unit that was insubordinate and willfully disobeying orders -after the threats, they broke up the unit sending us all over the world. We even got promoted, and I got sent back to the States. My objector status was elevated as I joined others in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.    

We did not avoid the PTSD of war, we did not avoid the confusion of being thrust into an America that was deeply divided over the war, and we did not avoid being blamed and criticized by our fellow citizens for our part in this war. Strangely, even though I was among a small group that had put everything on the line to object to this war, my fellow citizens rarely gave us a chance to explain this. Returning to school, ultimately completing and becoming a professor -did little to shield me from the blame. And so, for years, I chose to try to forget -but forgetting is not possible; it only delays the memories. And so, this season, I prefer to remember that we did something right, even though the war was wrong.