Two brothers, traumatized as children by seeing their father
murder their mother’s parents. Then as young adults, both serve in the Vietnam
War.
When I began work on Memories
of Jake, my intention wasn’t to write a book about the war. But what I’ve
learned has become an important part of the book: it wasn’t possible to
separate Andrew’s and Jake’s life experiences from the impact of their time in
Vietnam.
I have a family member who served as a Marine, and it’s
taken him decades to deal with what the war and its aftermath meant in his
life. And I have come to believe he is a typical veteran of the Vietnam War.
This nation, it seems to me, has still not really reached an understanding of
what that war did to us. It divided the country as nothing has since the Civil
War.
So writing about Andrew, the artist, and Jacob, the warrior,
meant I needed to find out as much as I could about how their time in Vietnam changed
each of their lives … and find a way for them to deal with that. Hundreds of
hours of research, many first person accounts (books and articles), videos,
films. We Were Soldiers is very
powerful, and from what veterans tell me, very honest … the first time the U.S.
military really understood what they were up against.
Many members of the military found themselves conflicted by
the experience. While fighting hard while in country ─ not just against the
enemy, but against the climate and the terrain ─ they did everything they could
to follow orders and to function as warriors. As the years passed, these
warriors began to question why they were there and what they were fighting for.
Some veterans returned home to be actively opposed to the
war. They had seen too many young men die. They were against this country
continuing to send more recruits into what began to be seen as an “unwinnable” conflict.
Many draft dodgers fled to Canada, where they found refuge. Some returning veterans
could not adjust to civilian life and made their way into wilderness areas of
this country, avoiding civilian life sometimes for decades.
Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with a remarkable
soldier, a veteran of both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Lt. Col. Charles
Vincent (U.S. Army, retired) was kind enough to agree to read those portions of
the book in which the war is important and offer me suggestions and
corrections. Yet after all these years and a full life as a civilian, he
admitted reading the passages from my book meant loss of sleep … Vietnam is
still with him.
Vietnam is now a part of me as well. While I have come to
believe the war was a mistake made by administrations dating back to Harry
Truman, I grieve for the nearly sixty thousand lives lost, and I salute the
veterans with utmost admiration. We need a strong military to defend this
country. I fervently pray for our troops currently deployed.
War is hell. Mankind
can’t seem to stay out of it. Let’s all honor our veterans and pray for peace …
constantly.
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