After Vietnam,The Healing

VIETNAM . . .

It is interesting how a word can invoke so many feelings ….. memories….images….emotions…and so different for each soul…
Back in the mid-60s, I wrote my first songs, wanting desperately to make a difference with my music; and so… I was also a seeker you could say, and a deep thinker; but being a seeker in the 60s was intense. There was a lot to contemplate for those of us who dared to question the establishment, such as the Civil Rights movement spearheaded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and then there was the “enlightenment movement” influenced by visiting Mahatmas and Maharishis who were introducing their version of spiritual awakening. We watched the sexual revolution ravel and un-ravel, while we followed the Look Magazine reports, all the way to colorful and dreamy homesteads of “back to the landers” who, hand in hand, shared community bliss in their organic utopias.

And then there was the Vietnam War…right in the middle of it all. Music raged around me, from Bob Dylan’s provocative and poetic portrayals of the cultural crisis “du jour,” to the hair-raising electricity of Hendrix; and meanwhile Janis Joplin poured her guts out with every song she sang.

History was playing it all out in music; and Nam was central to many of the stories being told, from those who had been there as well as on the part of others who vented about the so-called “war machine” with a procession of platitudes, unique to the Vietnam War debate.

I also remember the daily news from Nam…and all the still shots and casualty reports that left my mind numb. At times I tried to imagine what life was like for the soldiers. I had lived in foreign nations as a child; and I had seen extreme poverty. I had known the feeling of intense heat & humidity beating down on my skin, a razor sharp scourge to the flesh that only jungles can produce. But I had never known war.

And as for Liberty and its cost?…Honestly…no matter  how much of a deep thinker I might have thought myself to be at that time….what could I have really known about the price of freedom being paid by our military in Southeast Asia?

As for those who were serving over there…well…they likely didn’t know either, starting out… until the Huey dropped them off, in a field somewhere. “Welcome to Hell” was the theme upon their arrival to the “zone”… where behind any bush, hut, or slope, even within the skirts of women holding their young…the enemy could lurch forward, indulging in their favorite forms of destruction and always with the surprise element, which guerilla warfare never fails to bring.

Yes… these recruits learned far too much about the price of Freedom and too fast, as their innocence was replaced by battle-driven grit and as they slipped deep into sheer survival mode. They adapted with lightning speed… to the unimaginable, as they watched out for each other, having arrived as strangers but soon becoming brothers…. and sisters.

But as if the horror of war was not enough, this was by enlarge, a conflict not understood or supported by the citizens of the USA; and while legislators back home condescended to “administer policy”…our Veterans endured agonizing frustrations, being throttled in their efforts as they faced the perils which always result from unchecked bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, as I continued my soul-searching… safe on the homeland, I soon realized that this group of Americans were caught in the middle of an agonizing storm of controversy…a group who were not afforded the luxury of “contemplation” as they crept through sweltering swamps and jungles…every sense extended with hypervigilance brought on by the unique warfare occurring in Southeast Asia.

Surviving their tour of duty physically, involved one set of acquired skills, as they passed through the eternity of moments each day. But as they watched their numbers diminishing, they faced even more ever-lasting nightmares, dealing daily with unimaginable losses as they watched their buddies fall beside them, one by one… or as they were called upon to “do the unimaginable”….and not what their mama taught them to do.

But worst of all, most were left with the searing and relentless guilt of finding themselves to be… a survivor; and guilt is a nemesis of any soul…

But this would be just the beginning of their purgatory, because when the day finally came that the Huey, boat, or plane took them from the battlefield, either whole or in pieces…. they were to face the next chapter of their lives in numb disbelief …..
Arriving back home, they had to survive new rounds of fiery darts from the jeers, the insults, the ugly, and unfounded accusations. They were spit upon…cursed; and reports circulated at times, describing bodily waste being tossed at veterans arriving home at airports … all this being a far cry from the flag-lined terminals we see today, when our Veterans return from war.

This excursion, through yet another classroom of hell, led to one of the worst kinds of loneliness of all….being rejected by the very people and the very nation that they had served with their lives… surviving physical, mental, and emotionless states that could never be understood or even explained with words …unless they might encounter another veteran who had also been there. But who would be able or willing to speak about the unspeakable? Because, for many years, few talked out-loud  about “Nam,” and with no “welcome home,” many simply hid their uniforms, threw on civilian clothes as quickly as they could, tried to blend into the crowds as they made their way through to “somewhere”….but where?…. Between the outer calamity of rejection and inner unspoken grieving and rage, between the fog of war still lingering in their brains and the cultural war zone at home, many became “standing wanderers,” seeming to be present, while on the inside, they were “anywhere but here”….

And after years of damming up the unshed tears; and after waiting more years, even decades, for help from government agencies, which they hoped might address their wounds…at least some of the ones on the outside… a question burned in their souls….

How can you come home when you don’t know where your home has gone?