Memorial Day 2016 I haven't posted here for some time, and for some reason, I was compelled to post the following to my Facebook page. Several people suggested I write a book, and as I replied, every day could be its own book. Anyway, here it is - please feel free to share it with your vet family and friends. Forty-seven years, one month and 30 days ago, I stepped off the plane at O’Hare, returning from the military for the last time. There was no jet-way, so we walked down the mobile staircase to reach the tarmac, and before entering the building, I actually kissed the ground. I often heard of such things, but never thought I’d be one of those odd balls who did such things. After the nearly 3 years in Vietnam, and knowing I’d NEVER have to return – that action made perfect sense. My mom was waiting at the gate to greet me, and I spotted her immediately. I went to hug her, but she recoiled – because I was so dark from all that time in the sun that she didn’t recognize me. My mom was my anchor during the whole time I was away. Regular letters (including those from my German Shepard – complete with paw print signature), news from the home front (I couldn’t figure out which war THEY were reporting on, because I was in a lot of the places reported in the news, and according to them, we hardly EVER sustained the casualties that I witnessed! Then there were the chocolate chip cookies, packed in miniature marshmallows to prevent crumbling in transport – and a hit with my buddies during mail-call, and even Chicago water! (The water in Vietnam was so bad, we often joked we should just pour it directly into the toilet and bypass the torture of passing it by our taste buds, and actually, since drinking our own urine was one of the practices in survival training to avoid dehydration, it seemed like a good idea, since the urine was far cleaner than that water!) Tomorrow (May 31) would have been her 101st birthday. The past 48 hours were mostly a blur. Forty-eight hours earlier, I had boarded a helicopter in Nha Trang, to catch a flight in Cam Ranh Bay headed for Fort Lewis, Washington for final separation. I had extended my time in Vietnam so I wouldn’t have to be stationed again anywhere in the South, and so I wouldn’t have to attend Reserve trainings after being discharged. The weather was stormy – a typhoon brewing, and we were being told that it might be too hazardous to fly, but the pilots, seasoned both, said that given the nature of our flight – getting the fuck out of Vietnam, they would make sure we made it. It was a kind of honor flight. I knew I’d been up a long time – I thought 2 days and nights straight, I later did the math and determined it was 4 days and nights. It was pure adrenaline – as when getting to be a “one-digit-midget” (a short-timer’s determination for having fewer than 10 days until leaving the country for good), statistically, the most dangerous time in country was the few days before going home – I knew far too many who died or were killed just before going home, and I was determined to NOT be one of those. I’d had a couple of “going home parties” with the few black comrades I’d served with – consumed vast quantities of alcohol – but no intoxication, as something about war and the brain’s capacity for survival-driven function kept me alert the entire time. It wasn’t until we lifted off from Nha Trang that the fatigue started to sink in. We flew over the ocean to avoid sniper and rocket fire, and due to the fierce wind, we were flying with the doors open to minimize the drag on the aircraft. I strapped myself in and drifted into a coma-like sleep. The short flight normally only took a half hour, and that was due to the evasion route. This day, it took over 2 ½ hours. Upon arrival at Cam Ranh Bay, I instantly recalled the first time I saw this place – my first experience of landing in Vietnam. There were people walking around in shorts, playing basketball, volley ball, there was a miniature golf course, and rock and roll music blasting through the P.A. system. I thought, this wasn’t like any of the training films and war games I’d seen and been through prior to getting there. It was grossly misleading, and in NO WAY represented what I was about to see and experience in the days and months to come. Anyway, unlike my first time in Cam Ranh Bay, where I had to wait days before getting a flight to my duty station, it was only a few hours between the helicopter flight and setting foot on the Northwest Airlines flight heading home! After many, many days and nights of wondering, “what if I die here,” now I had another concern – “what do I do now that I lived?” I had survived being shot, stabbed, having a grenade go off 3 feet from me with the only injury being the (what turned out to be temporary) blindness and loss of hearing, and now I’m going home – to the girlfriend who wrote to me regularly, who I’d spent nearly 7 month’s pay to purchase an engagement ring for… When I arrived at Fort Lewis in Seattle, it was freezing to me – the temperature was 35 degrees, and I’d just left 110 with 100% humidity and wearing summer jungle fatigues. Off in the distance, I saw men playing football – in shorts and no shirts – THEY had just arrived from Alaska, where the temperature had been 25 Below! So, it’s all relative. I was grateful to be on American soil again – with all my limbs the same way as when I left. I didn’t know about the PTSD, or traumatic brain injury and survivor’s guilt that I’d be dealing with for the next 2 decades. My body was home, but the rest of me was still thousands of miles away. I’d made many friends while there – fellow Army and Air Force comrades, the Vietnamese civilians who worked on our base, the barber who could duplicate ANY haircut we showed him in Ebony magazine (he also was my ping pong teacher and partner – I never knew his name – we just called him “papa san.”), the Buddhist Monk who befriended me, took me to the movies, introduced me to his family, wanted me to marry his sister, and invited me to his ceremonial self-immolation (I had NO IDEA what I’d been invited to until it happened – and then after seeing that, I was certain there was a whole lot of stuff I’d not been told), the French/Vietnamese bar maid who, because I didn’t treat her with disrespect like the majority of my Southern comrades, became my intelligence source for when our base was going to be attacked, in short, the people who contributed to what bit of sanity I had left. Much had happened while I was away – I felt like I’d been on another planet. I thought, if I just got married and settled down, everything would be OK! Such was not the case! I didn’t know the degree to which I was no longer the person I was when I entered the military, and furthermore, I never WOULD be! The toll of the four wars I’d been in was far greater than I knew at the time. (YES, FOUR wars – Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and the Klan members, disguised as U.S. Military – who celebrated with the news of Dr. King’s murder!) In the years since that April, 1969 date, I’ve had a varied and extraordinary life, to which I owe the most to the work of Werner Erhard and the courses and seminars of what’s now known as Landmark Worldwide. (www.landmarkworldwide.com) If any of the readers have friends or family members who are current or past military, you should know that the main reason why they don’t talk about their experiences is feeling that no one would understand the depths to which they were affected, and don’t want to burden their loved ones with that tornado of emotions – many of which they haven’t sorted out for themselves yet. Have them do the Landmark Forum – you and they will be damned glad they did. Happy Memorial Day!