Vietnam Story

With only three months of duty served in Vietnam I had already begun to have my doubts. Doubts that questioned my ability to get out of that place alive. Doubts that questioned why I was even in Vietnam to begin with. Doubts that my life when I got back home would be anything close to the same as when I had left. At first I was constantly asking myself these questions, but I soon became accustomed with Vietnam life.

My platoon called it humping. Waking up in the morning, eating, taking deep breathes, and then walking miles over the rugged terrain. I got used to it after about three weeks, there wasn't much to it really. We would usually take paths because the elephant grass there resembled something out of hell. Paths were usually muddy, narrow, and for the most part seemingly never ending. Every once in a while there would be an enemey or two passing across our path and instinctively we would take aim with our M-16s and fire. The site of dead men became more normal than most people would think. It was just how things worked. You would wake up in the morning, if you had even slept the night before, you would hump, and you would fight and kill. I had become more apart of death than I
had ever wished but at the time I didn't see any other options.

During the final months of my stay in Vietnam coming home didn't seem as appealing as it did two years previously. When I took my first step onto Vietnam soil I was thinking of ways to get myself out of there. I had heard a guy back home got out of the draft because he faked some medical condition and got a doc to right him "unelgible" to fight. What shit I thought that was, it was unfair. I thought that I might be able to go home if I pulled off some really great asthma attack my first night there but I didn't have it in me. My first night there I was scared out of my shorts and decided not to do anything that I might regret. However, I didn't end up staying in Vietnam. When given the opportunity I did come home eager to see my newly wed wife, Martha.

Coming home was a bit more different than I had expected. I remember one night out in the brush looked up at the stars and imagined them as banners and posters of my name when I got home and the smiles that would take over my familie's and friend's faces but as I most unexpectedly discovered that wasn't the case when I got home. The only person waiting for me at the bus station was Martha. My sweet Matha. When I got off the bus we were brought to eachother like magnets and we hugged quietly for a while. As we reluctantly released each other from our grips we looked at eachother and at that moment I knew it was worth coming home.


As later years would tell though, Martha and I slowly became more distant. I didn't find work for a while when I got back because to tell you the truth there wasn't any job in the world that was like fighting in Vietnam. I felt like my purpose was there, fighting the Viet Cong army, not here. My love for Martha also began to fade as time unraveled. I wasn't too sure what it was that made me but all I knew is that it became harder to live with her than to not. Eventually we got a divorce. She didn't want to and told me she didn't understand why I wanted this.

We still talked by sending each letters and we weren't geographically separated by that much. I had moved just a couple miles out of where we used to live together. But let me tell you that I sure as hell felt alone. I ended up never being employed and I was living off money that the government had given to every Veteran. It wasn't much but I didn't need much. I missed the guys that I fought with. There were who I missed the most, the guys that I had once trusted my life with. I tried writing some of the guys but after a couple weeks I didn't get any responses. After that I coundn't stop thinking about how I felt like I had left a part of me over in Vietnam that day when I came home.