Blog

As popular opinion waned and prospects for victory faded America began the process of disengagement from the tragic debacle that was Viet Nam. Sadly, as America pushed away from the war it turned its back on the sons and daughters who were sent there to fight and die.
You are never safe from us. We are everywhere. We live next door. Across the street. Under the freeways. We marry your daughters. We collect your trash. We may look the same as before but you won’t know us. We’re the people who’ll never return. We’re offered belated words of honor and respect. But inwardly you fear us. Because everyone knows. After sending us into the combat zone things are never the same again.
Only after years of denial did our government finally admit what we knew all along. Post traumatic stress. A disorder that won’t let your brain reset. Reluctantly acknowledging the facts only after the plight of the latest victims from Iraq and Afghanistan brought the matter into greater focus for the entire country to see. Along the way enduring years of cynicism, skewed evaluations and patronizing remarks. Motivated less by a sincere desire to help than to avoid political embarrassment. And the need to recruit fresh bodies for their continuing wars. All along knowing they were turning men into monsters for the killing they wanted. Then calling us criminal when we ripped apart at the seams.
In every broken Viet Nam Vet I saw a bit of myself. Each in our own way coping the best we could. Dragging along our wounded hearts. Carrying the back breaking load of misery that lived on like ghosts in our ghastly memories. When it was all said and done, when all the war protesters left the streets, cut their hair and moved on with their lives, we were what remained. We alone were the conscience of the nation’s greed and collective exploitation. Left to ourselves to sift through whatever remnants of sanity we could find while trying to reconcile our adjustment and reintegration into a society that was content to push us off into the margins.
When you see my brother out there, walking alone on the shoulder of the road, his head down, do you care what are his thoughts? Out on the streets of the bustling cities. As you pass him by what do you think? Do you wonder what it might be like to live in his world? Or do you instead look away, pretending you don’t see. But you do see. You pass the same abandoned souls every day. Their lives in disarray. Living on the streets, in deserted shacks and under bridges. Their disheveled presence bearing witness to the disconnect between our government and the special people we are forever obligated to serve and protect. Because America ordered him to the other side of the world. For a cause so urgent it required a war. A cause that with the passage of time lost relevance and was abandoned. As were the men who fought for it and spilled their blood. Read the stories of T.A. Drescher: www.100monkeyz.com