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   Memorial Day is a time to pause and give deserved recognition to those who served in the Armed Forces of the United States. It is a day in which the whole country may say a silent "Thank You" to the young men and women who fought for their country.

    Veterans went to war because their country gave the order.  Whether they believed it was right or not made little difference. A country can only be as mighty as the people who band together in the military ready to carry out the orders of the President of the United States (Commander In Chief). He has sworn to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and to follow these orders with pride and dignity, to the death if need be.

    Freedom has a great price. The veterans know this to be true.  The fifty-eight thousand names on the Wall in Washington D.C. are the men and women who were led to believe they were giving their lives so that all Americans could enjoy  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

    A civilian can walk away from a job. The military, however,  operates upon a unique set of rules known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A soldier cannot quit, unless he would rather be dishonorably discharged or land up in a federal prison. I saw firsthand the mistreatment of soldiers by the military police. I can assure you I would rather be in combat, where I have a fighting chance of survival, than under the direct control of the MPs.

    When I was in high school I heard much talk about how cruel the soldiers were to the Vietnamese and how, since it was not a declared war, the soldiers should just stop fighting no matter what their superiors ordered them to do. Only a lunatic could possibly entertain this line of thinking. Military life and civilian life are contrary to one another. It is easy to tell a private to think like a general. Just open your mouth and wag your civilian tongue. Some may think you are smart and can think for yourself. It is another thing to be under the authority of a general order and not carry out your assigned duty.

    I went into the Army when I was eighteen and turned nineteen in Vietnam. We were all young kids who had enough training to know we had a job to do and I was going to do my best.  I wanted to get back to the "world" with all my body parts attached. What the people back home thought about Nam did not mean anything to me. I had a lot more to think about than their personal opinions. They were not in Nam and had no conception of the mental stress that we had to endure, not to mention, dodging bullets, stepping on land mines, sleeping in the rain, walking in the jungle, no showers for days and no local McDonald's for some good hot chow. War is hell by any stretch of the imagination.  The rule of survival is simple, kill or be killed.
After I did my tour and returned to the states I went back to Nam a few months later. "Why?", you might ask. Well, I like many others, was something of a nervous wreck. I felt out of place, a square peg in a round hole when I returned. My gut was in knots and my head was swimming with the fast paced world in which everything was obviously distorted. The America I was taught to fight for had changed. I didn't die but the America I had come to love had seemingly died while I fought like hell in Indo-China to preserve it. I felt like I had stepped on foreign soil - a stranger in my own land. I was treated like I was the enemy. So, like I said, I returned to the war zone. It was not until I set foot on the soil of Vietnam that my body relaxed. At least there I wasn't the enemy.

    A piece of me, like every other soldier, will remain where ever it is that he served. I do not believe that any soldier feels right after war. Add to this the fact that people who do not know what a war does to a man ridicule him for doing his duty and you have a situation that is often too much for the soldier to endure.
A boy goes off to war and a war torn man returns home only to find that his girl or wife leaves him because he is not the same person she knew.

    How in hell can a man be the same when the blood of another man is on his hands?

    A car driving through a hail storm is not the same afterwards, the shine is missing, the pits have made their mark. The same is true for the soldier who has entered battle. He isn't the same either. He was stripped of his boyhood and the beast usurped the throne of his manhood while the rule of the jungle played havoc upon his mind and heart. The psychic scars are embedded, very much like the hail stones that mar the shiny surface of the car.

    I had to push a Vietnamese soldier who couldn't have been more than twelve years old out of our helicopter because he did not want to go into the jungle to fight.

    When I am haunted by the memories of the war I look back and ask, Why didn't I die instead of my buddies? What if? What if? Oh, my God, what if?

    Life can be very disturbing to a soldier who loves his country. All the psychiatrists in the world can't put a man back together who hated to kill but did because he felt he couldn't let the kind of war he was in ever come to the shores of his own land. He must live with it. He must bear his cross with the same dignity and respect of others who went before him. Once you kill, believe it or not, from that time onward it is a "one on one" with your Maker.

    I died a thousand deaths on the battlefield of Nam. I was not alone. Millions died a thousand times like I did. I suspect the others are like me. We keep wondering where are the 58,000 men who gave up their life so I could be here to share this story? Where are my buddies? None of us are the same. We must grieve to relieve the pain that only we have courage to face. Millions of Americans are running away. They did then and they do now. We answered the call, "Ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country."

    Who was right and who was wrong doesn't matter anymore. Everyone has their own score to settle. I did my bit. I loved my country and I feel the hell of doing so. I am not alone. I have brothers I haven't met. I know they feel the pain of millions who turned their backs on them. The Vietnam war isn't over. It lives in the memories of millions of soldiers who bear the living hell of its scourge. Only the Judge Advocate of the heavens can set us free from the internal agony of seeing death, smelling death and participating in bringing death upon others.

    I get choked up when I think of Memorial Day. Tears come to my eyes and I just want to let them flow when I picture the Vietnam Memorial in my mind. All the blood was shed and what was the profit? It was not the soldiers fault. Why should we be condemned for carrying out our mission? We didn't lose the war. We were prevented from fighting the war to an end. The politicians put us into combat with our hands tied behind our backs. We are American soldiers. The best fighting force in the world. No! We didn't lose the war. The politicians lost the war. Most are dead now. We have to face what they started and left to us as a legacy.

    Memorial Day is a time to remember the men and women who served and are serving their country. Whether the orders that sent them to war were right or wrong makes no difference. You must know someone who served or is serving, a friend, a relative or friend of a friend.  There must be something inside you, some spark of human decency, that can understand what a soldier's life must have been like, and how he or she is often haunted by the memory of the war.

    I was taught that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for another. That love is expressed in stone. The next time you look at the Wall begin to realize that those men and women upheld the tenets of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights that we all are enjoying today. When a man dies the  planet becomes much darker but heaven brighter because he died by laying his life down so others could learn by his way of serving his God, his country and his fellow man. He may not even have known it at the time. It doesn't matter. I know he did. And now that I've written the story, so do you. Do you love your God? Do you love your country? Do you love your fellow man?

Well in case you don't, there are fifty-eight thousand names written in stone to help you remember that you still have time to do it.