The month of May offers much more than the ending of Spring and the early beginning of Summer. There are two special days during this month that without a doubt make it the most cherished month of the year. This story will combine the second Sunday and the last Monday of this memorable month in my attempt to not only honor all Mothers on their special day but to also keep the remembrance alive of all those that gave their lives in any war so we may be able to live ours in ways of our own choosing. My “remembrance” focus will be on the Vietnam War since that is where I spent the better part of two years of my life. I have written a few stories of my experiences in Vietnam. I will be piecing together parts from them in an attempt to keep something so important to the forefront. That something would be “remembrance.”
As I begin writing this I am on my way from Michigan to The Villages, Florida where I will meet up with my brothers, Jim and Wayne. On the 21st of April we will be celebrating my Mother's 96th birthday. We plan to do so by taking her to dinner and then watch a baseball game with her.
How can I be so lucky to be able to join in on what has become an annual event? I ask that since I am into my fifth year with this so called incurable disease called Parkinson's. Regardless of the depth of despair this God given disease may someday lead to, everything that has happened so far since it incurred has been positive. It took 37 years since leaving Vietnam for me to begin writing. It was after the diagnosis of Parkinson's, some personal counseling from my brother, Wayne and the trade off of what was known as my best friend, my daily six pack for sobriety on my knees at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. that led me to believe I wasn’t going to die with my music still in me.
In 1970 and 1971 I was stationed in Pleiku which was located in what was known as the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, along the Cambodian border where some of the heaviest fighting of the war took place. I was assigned to an evacuation hospital and my primary duties were related to the admission and disposition of patients. I saw much more than my share of death and destruction.
How could I possibly forget the 22 year old burn patient that died in my hands while crying out for his Mother with his dying breath, or the 19 year old that I watched die in the emergency room because he couldn't be taken to surgery soon enough.
Further profound memories were of mass casualties when one helicopter after another would
bring in sheer numbers of young men with mutilated bodies and the heart wrenching screams of the
wounded as they begged for morphine to ease their pain. Yes, they all had Mothers, every one of them. Some had girl friends and some had wives, but they all had mothers. There were a total of 58,267 Americans that died in Vietnam. I personally wear a bracelet with that number inscribed for an everlasting memory.
Many people have said and continue to say that the Vietnam War was not a popular war and that we shouldn't have been involved in it in the first place since it was a war that we couldn't win. My response to that would be of course it wasn't a popular war. The definition of the word popular is liked by most people. Tell me what war was ever liked by most people. As far as the should haves and could haves, just drop them completely and look at the reality. We were there.
As I closed on my Veteran's Day story last November I revealed these statistics. Of the 58,267 Americans that were killed in Vietnam 39,996 of them or about 70 per cent of them were 22 years old or younger. What I failed to mention since I do not have the actual totals were the number of draftees included in that total. You can be sure their numbers were in the thousands. These were the ones that were taken from their homes, their jobs, their girlfriends and sometimes their wives and yes of course their mothers. Most of them were 21 to 22 years old. They were sent to fight in a war in a country thousands of miles from home. A country they may never even knew existed and many thousands of them were killed. Yes, they all had Mothers. Could you imagine approaching any one of those mothers and telling her that we shouldn't have been in Vietnam and that her loved one died for no reason. Of course not. If mistakes were made of our involvement in Vietnam, those mistakes were made in Washington.
I also asked in that Veteran's Day story that we all give a moment of silence in remembrance of those 58,267 that gave their lives so we could live ours. We must never let those memories die. This time I am pleading that you give that moment on both Mother's Day and on Memorial Day. This time close your eyes in privacy if you wish, put all of your thoughts on those 58,267. You will soon begin to feel a welling in your eyes. When this begins blurt out these words out loud: “Thank you my friend, we miss you.” If you hear sort of a creak in your own voice, I've reached you.
