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THOSE EYES!
How many times have you noticed the warmth and
happiness of tender years in another's eyes?
How many times have you noticed pain and despair in
those
same eyes?
How many times have you seen the cold dead stare in
yet those
same eyes?
How many times?
Many souls have been exposed through a
person's eyes
They speak of horrors and a dark demise
For eyes can tell us what our loved ones, our friends
and our foes are feeling inside
Look into their eyes!
Look!
Those eyes!
They cannot lie, those eyes
We spend our lives often seeing through our eyes, but
what do
we actually see?
Do we see the needs of our Brothers and Sisters?
Do we see the homeless veterans on the streets?
Do we see the effects of PTSD and Agent Orange upon
each other
or our families?
Do we see these veterans in need?
Do we see their eyes?
Do we see the pain they hold inside?
Look into their eyes!
Look!
Those eyes!
Many of them have seen the horrors of war through their
eyes
Many have seen the glistening life fade away in a
Brother's eyes
Many veterans see those eyes every night and day
Every waking moment they see those eyes that never
go
away
Look into our eyes for you will see the pain
Look into our eyes as our hopes and dreams have been
refrained
Our eyes, see their eyes, those eyes!
Look into their eyes!
Look!
Those eyes!
Veterans see each other through eyes of knowing
We know what a Brothe r or Sister has seen, through
their
eyes
For we have most likely have seen it too, through our
eyes
We've seen the fear in each other's eyes
We've seen the hate
We've seen the questioning of why is this happening?
In each other's eyes
We've looked to the heavens for the answer, Why?
Through eyes of youth we have seen each other as no
one else
ever could
Not in a thousand lifetimes can one possibly know what
goes on
behind our eyes
Eyes that have seen more of life and death than any
other ever
would
Look into their eyes!
Look!
Those eyes!
We feel the pain of cancers and diabetes and all the
rest
We who have fought for liberty and justice for all
We who have passed every harsh test
We who were forgotten and left on distant shores
We who protected your freedoms as we saw our
Brothers
fall
We remember them and what they died for
They died for us, they could not give anything more
Look into their eyes!
Look!
Those eyes!
So when you see a homeless or needy vet
Look into his eyes and see the pain
Feel his pain!
The pain created by serving his country for all of
you
Treat him well and respect his deeds that they may not
have been in vain
Remember he has given you all your freedoms at a
price too high to ever repay
Answer his call if he asks for your help, he probably
won't ask, but offer it anyway
You may call your political leaders to help him out
Sometimes they are deaf so you may need to shout
Tell them to take a moment out from their tasks
Tell them to step out on the street and see a homeless
veteran at last
Tell them to look into their eyes!
Look!
Those eyes!
Philip D. McMillin
November 24, 2003 (Used by Permission)
Remembrance
is a collection of "Galleries" containing imagery, stories,
poems, songs, maps, and narratives from or about the
Vietnam War era. This section also contains a
"Glossary" of terms and slang used in this era and
found in the writings throughout this Site.
One Gallery is dedicated to Vietnam Veterans
Memorials from around the world, and virtual searches
can be done in others for the names listed on The Wall
in D.C. and by State. There are two "Roll of Honour"
Galleries of the Services Personnel and civilians of our
Mates Down Under who were killed in Vietnam -- one
for the Aussies and another for the Kiwis.
http://www.vietvet.org/thepast.htm
E mail billm@grunt.appliedphysics.swri.edu
billm@grunt.appliedphysics.swri.edu
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I Was There Just Last Night
By Robert Clark
* The High Ground
P O Box 457 - Neillsville, WI 54456
A couple of years ago someone asked me if I still thought about
Vietnam. I nearly laughed in their face. How do you stop thinking
about it? Every day for the last twenty-four years, I wake up with it,
and go to bed with it. But this is what I said. "Yea, I think about it. I
can't quit thinking about it. I never will. But, I've also learned to live
with it. I'm comfortable with the memories. I've learned to stop
trying to forget and learned instead to embrace it. It just doesn't
scare me anymore."
A psychologist once told me that NOT being affected by the
experience over there would be abnormal. When he told me that,
it was like he'd just given me a pardon. It was as if he said, "Go
ahead and feel something about the place, Bob. It ain't going
nowhere. You're gonna wear it for the rest of your life. Might as
well get to know it."
A lot of my "brothers" haven't been so lucky. For them the
memories are too painful, their sense of loss too great. My sister
told me of a friend she has whose husband was in the Nam. She
asks this guy when he was there. Here's what he said, "Just last
night." It took my sister a while to figure out what he was talking
about. JUST LAST NIGHT. Yeah I was in the Nam. When? JUST
LAST NIGHT. During sex with my wife. And on my way to work
this morning. Over my lunch hour. Yeah, I was there.
My sister says I'm not the same brother that went to Vietnam. My
wife says I won't let people get close to me, not even her. They're
probably both right.
Ask a vet about making friends in Nam. It was risky. Why?
Because we were in the business of death, and death was with
us all the time. It wasn't the death of, "If I die before I wake." This
was the real thing. The kind where boys scream for their mothers.
The kind that lingers in your mind and becomes more real each
time you cheat it. You don't want ot make a lot of friends when the
possibility of dying is that real, that close. When you do, friends
become a liability.
A guy named Bob Flanigan was my friend. Bob Flanigan is
dead. I put him in a body bag one sunny day, April 29, 1969.
We'd been talking, only a few minutes before he was shot, about
what we were going to do when we got back in the world. Now,
this was a guy who had come in country the same time as myself.
A guy who was loveable and generous. He had blue eyes and
sandy blond hair.
When he talked, it was with a soft drawl. Flanigan was a hick and
he knew it. That was part of his charm. He didn't care. Man, I
loved this guy like the brother I never had. But, I screwed up.I got
too close to him. Maybe I didn't know any better. But I broke one
of the unwritten rules of war.
DON'T GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO DIE.
Sometimes you can't help it.
You hear vets use the term "buddy" when they refer to a guy they
spent the war with. "Me an this buddy a mine . . ."
"Friend" sounds too intimate, doesn't it. "Friend" calls up images
of being close. If he's a friend, then you are going to be hurt if he
dies, and war hurts enough without adding to the pain. Get close;
get hurt. It's as simple as that.
In war you learn to keep people at that distance my wife talks
about. You become so good at it, that twenty years after the war
is over, you still do it without thinking. You won't allow yourself to
be vulnerable again.
My wife knows two people who can get into the soft spots inside
me. My daughters. I know it probably bothers her that they can do
this. It's not that I don't love my wife, I do. She's put up with a lot
from me. She'll tell you that when she signed on for better or
worse she had no idea there was going to be so much of the
latter. But with my daughters it's different.
My girls are mine. They'll always be my kids. Not marriage, not
distance, not even death can change that. They are something on
this earth that can never be taken away from me. I belong to
them. Nothing can change that.
I can have an ex-wife; but my girls can never have an ex-father.
There's the difference.
I can still see the faces, though they all seem to have the same
eyes. When I think of us I always see a line of "dirty grunts" sitting
on a paddy dike. We're caught in that first gray silver between
darkness and light. That first moment when we know we've
survived another night, and the business of staying alive for one
more day is about to begin. There was so much hope in that brief
space of time. It's what we used to pray for. "One more day, God.
One more day."
And I can hear our conversations as if they'd only just been
spoken. I still hear the way we sounded, the hard cynical jokes,
our morbid senses of humor. We were scared to death of dying,
and trying our best not to show it.
I recall the smells, too. Like the way cordite hangs on the air after
a fire-fight. Or the pungent odor of rice paddy mud. So different
from the black dirt of Iowa. The mud of Nam smells ancient,
somehow. Like it's always been there. And I'll never forget the
way blood smells, stick and drying on my hands. I spent a long
night that way once. That memory isn't going anywhere.
I remember how the night jungle appears almost dream like as
the pilot of a Cessna buzzes overhead, dropping parachute
flares until morning. That artificial sun would flicker and make
shadows run through the jungle. It was worse than not being able
to see what was out there sometimes. I remember once looking
at the man next to me as a flare floated overhead. The shadows
around his eyes were so deep that it looked like his eyes were
gone. I reached over and touched him on the arm; without looking
at me he touched my hand. "I know man. I know." That's what he
said. It was a human moment. Two guys a long way from home
and scared sh*tless.
"I know man." And at that moment he did.
God I loved those guys. I hurt every time one of them died. We all
did. Despite our posturing. Despite our desire to stay
disconnected, we couldn't help ourselves. I know why Tim O'Brien
writes his stories. I know what gives Bruce Weigle the words to
create poems so honest I cry at their horrible beauty. It's love.
Love for those guys we shared the experience with.
We did our jobs like good soldiers, and we tried our best not to
become as hard as our surroundings. We touched each other
and said, "I know." Like a mother holding a child in the middle of
a nightmare, "It's going to be all right." We tried not to lose touch
with our humanity. We tried to walk that line.To be the good boys
our parents had raised and not to give into that unnamed thing
we knew was inside us all.
You want to know what frightening is? It's a nineteen-year-old-boy
who's had a sip of that power over life and death that war gives
you. It's a boy who, despite all the things he's been taught, knows
that he likes it. It's a nineteen-year-old who's just lost a friend, and
is angry and scared and, determined that, "Some *@#*s gonna
pay." To this day, the thought of that boy can wake me from a
sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling.
As I write this, I have a picture in front of me. It's of two young
men. On their laps are tablets. One is smoking a cigarette. Both
stare without expression at the camera. They're writing letters.
Staying in touch with places they would rather be. Places and
people they hope to see again.
The picture shares space in a frame with one of my wife. She
doesn't mind. She knows she's been included in special
company. She knows I'll always love those guys who shared that
part of my life, a part she never can. And she understands how I
feel about the ones I know are out there yet. The ones who still
answer the question, "When were you in Vietnam?"
"Hey, man. I was there just last night."
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