Reply #6: We will get over VietNam the same way the US got over the [View All]

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

Civil War... with the death of the last VietNam vets, or the children crippled by their father's exposure to agent orange.

No, we are NOT over VietNam. We still have nightmares. Our pins in our previously broken bones ache when it rains. Our severed limbs, buried in unmarked pits somewhere still feel phantom pain. Many of us can't give blood because of exposure to malaria, hepatitis, or agent orange. Lots of us limp. Some are blind.

And we are the ones who came home.

We came home to a country that was ashamed of what we did. Embarassed that we lost a war, as if it was the fault of the average GI. Confused about what the Government said, and what was obviously the truth.

Others of us came home with psychological disorders. We became outcasts in society. We took drugs, stole things, and lived in the streets. We drink too much. Sooner or later, if we did not die in the process of growing older, we cleaned up, found God or fellow vets and councilors.

We still take our medications. We pay more and more for them at the VA hospitals. The service at the VA got better, and over the past three years, got worse again.

No. We are not over VietNam.

I am still breathing, and I have to face going to sleep every night. And most every night I still see the faces of old friends now long dead and the face of a young Cambodian boy that I had to kill to save my own life so long ago.