I'm Sorry...

The war is over and I don't have anywhere in particular to go but home to my father a fellow veteren. We share war stories, and I tell him how i have seven count them seven war rewards. I tell him how I almost won the Silver Star if only I had grabbed Kiowa's boot and pulled him from the S*&t field. But I didn't and now he is dead, gone forever. I grab the keys for my father's big Chevy and drive the seven mile loop around the lake, I keep going around and around I pass the same kids 43 times, a motor has stalled on the lake. After a while I pull in to the A&W for a Mama Burger and a rootie-tootie (rootbeer). I think on the letters i have written back and forth between myself and Tim about Kiowa and the shit field he is writing a book about the Vietnam war and us so i ask him if he is speaking of courage in his book. It is 1979 and iI am at the YMCA playing some basketball with some boys and well I just couldn't take it anymore I'm sorry...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Kiowa...

It was a horrible place to bed down for the night and everybody knew that. Everyone and Lieutenant Cross knew it and he didn't do sh*& about it. All of a sudden there was noise and gunfire and the muck seemed to absorb everything making things worse. Men were burrowing into the muck because there was no other cover for us, Kiowa being one of them deeper and deeper in the muck until you could no longer see him. He was crouching near a boy or someone. In the morning Kiowa was missing so a search was needed, we searched and we searched until the light was gone and could not search anymore. The next morning one of the men found Kiowa's pack in the muck about where he went under two nights before so from there that spot to the river. In the distance we could see the lieutenant sitting on a rock writing a letter to Kiowa's father writing to tell him that Kiowa is MIA (missing in action). I was in the river searching for Kiowa when I saw a boot wedged in between the rocks in about two feet of water. I grabbed hold and pulled but it was stuck and attached to a upside down body, Kiowa's body. I signaled to Henry Dobbins and Azar to help me pull him free. We found Kiowa and carried him to land where we let the Lieutenant know we had found Kiowa as well as a chopper to take him home to his father. If only I had grabbed his boot to keep him from  sinking in to far its my fault he is dead, If only i had grabbed his boot he would still he alive but its to late for If only and what ifs.

Dancing Girl

Today we came across a village that had been burned to the ground by the cross fire of us and the North Vietnamese. The village was still burning and this girl was dancing in the middle of the square, she must have been the only living being around. She looked to be 14 her feet were bare and she had her hands covering her ears as if she was trying to block out the noise of the guns and fire. Her family was in one of the huts they were dead all of them and this young girls was dancing in the middle of the the village. We had to search the other huts and whatever else that was remaining and add to the fire. Later that night Azar and the men were mocking this girls dancing which brought chortles from the us myself included when Azar started dancing as well in mockery of the girl when Henry Dobbins and large man started dancing with him, doing twists and turns and leaps: when he asked Azar if he wanted to be dropped in the water well. He (Azar) said no and they quit dancing and we marched on to another village. Everyday its the same we march to some distant place firing, pillaging and taking night watches over and over again. There is talk about how the was will be over soon and we all can go home, but the thing is not all of us will be going home some of us will going home in pieces and in coffins in a sense that is not really all of us going home again. There is a lot of talk about home and what we will do when we get home. I have no idea what I will do when I get home, my father is at home waiting for me to come home again to share war stories to and compare stories to see which one of us had the best ones. Is this what waits for me?, telling war stories, sitting in a bar telling stories recalling what things we did in Nam.

Norman Bowker's Diary

Today I was presented with a thumb necklace from Mitchell Sanders. It had been cut from a VC boy of 15 or 16 he had been badly burned with flies in his eyes and mouth, we had found him in the bottom of an irrigation ditch. I guess he thought it was a sign of luck or something the men were always carrying things of superstition. For example Lieutenant Cross carried a good luck rock presented to him from his pen pal Martha an English major at Sebastion College in New Jersey. Another Comrade Dave Jensen carried a rabbits foot, many of the men and my comrades carried things like these to not get killed. I carried this thumb given as a gift from Mitchell Sanders it weighed about 4 ounces at most it weighed the least of what we normally carry depending on who we are but we are ALL called grunts who carry ammo and M-14s, RPGs and the like. Most of what we carry weighs at most between twenty pounds to at least thirty and then there are the small things we carry like tobbacco, safety pins, flares, candles, canveses of soda pop, iced beer and canteens of water to keep ourselves hydrated, and many more. Some carry things that remind us of home like the Lieutenant he carries what he likes to pretend are love letters from Martha in New Jersey. We all take turns carrying the ginormous scrambler radio which was 30 pounds with the battery.