Vietnam: A Civilian’s Memories and Reflections

PART I / A Civilian’s Memories and Reflections

Homeless Vietnam vet friend at Memorial Day service in Key West cemetery

A recent article in the Key West Citizen about local efforts to remember Vietnam war veterans in Key West let to my jotting down some of my own civilian memories of and reflections on that war and what came from it.

I cannot relate to a Vietnam veteran’s experience, because I never was in the US armed forces and I did not go to Vietnam.

I do remember, however, President Lyndon Johnson on national television solemnly promising America that he would never send American boys to die in a war in Asia. Then, he sent hundreds of thousands of American boys to Vietnam to die or be physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually maimed.

Two of my college fraternity brothers died over there, and when I was in Washington D.C. in 1990, I went to the black wall and found their names on it.

A law school buddy, who was in the Marine Corps reserve, was activated and left law school and went to Vietnam for a year and came back with a messed up leg.

A lawyer friend, before I knew him, served in Vietnam as an artillery officer. He came back and started protesting the war. He has protested every American foreign war since. He was in my last dream before dawn this morning, telling me we were going somewhere together today. I did not yet know about the Key West Citizen article.

Without planning it out in advance, I stayed one jump ahead of the Vietnam war draft by getting married in 1964. In 1966, my wife got pregnant and delivered a boy in July 1967. While she was pregnant, they started drafting married men. I was in law school, they were not yet drafting students, and they never would draft fathers. I was doubly protected from the draft.

My son died seven weeks after he was born, of sudden infant death syndrome. By then, they were drafting students. I was exposed to the draft. I wavered between enlisting in the Marines and applying for a student deferment, the quid pro quo for which was I would be inducted after graduating from law school. Finally, I applied for the student deferment.

My wife got pregnant again. I went back to the draft board to try to get my father deferment reinstated. I was told the student deferment was irrevocable, there was nothing that could be done. But wait, I had applied on the wrong form; I would have to reapply for the student deferment. Thanks, but no thanks, I would go with the father deferment. I left the draft board knowing I had experienced a miracle.

Only a couple of years ago, I was told by a younger woman whose father was a Birmingham lawyer I knew somewhat when I practiced law in Birmingham, that her father’s mother had worked at that draft board and she had heard many stories like mine of her father’s mother helping young men avoid Vietnam.

In the summer of 1988, the CEO of the National Geographic spoke to the Birmingham Downtown Rotary Club. I was there as a guest of my father, a WW II Army Air Corps B-29 combat veteran.

The topic of the Geographic fellow’s talk was getting to know our neighbors. He said the Geographic had done a study and had learned American students are woefully ignorant of other countries. I think he said the study revealed that 90 percent of American high school students could not locate Vietnam on a map.

After he completed his presentation, he took questions. Someone in the audience asked what was the Geographic’s position on Vietnam?

He said the Geographic had correspondents in Saigon when a huge street demonstration occurred. Masses of Vietnamese carried signs begging America to intervene and save them. Signs in English. He said that demonstration was widely played on American television and turned American sentiment from not intervening to intervening in Vietnam.

He said the Geographic’s correspondents spoke French and Vietnamese and they talked with many demonstrators. The demonstrators did not read or speak English, and they did not know what was on the signs they carried, or why they were demonstrating. They lived in the countryside and had been paid money and were bused into Saigon by the South Vietnamese government to demonstrate.

He said, later, the Geographic dug into it and learned the money for the demonstration had been given to the South Vietnamese government by the US military and US corporations which stood to make money from the US intervening in Vietnam’s civil war.

Nearly all of the older male Rotary members were WW II and/or Korean war veterans. Some of the younger male members were Vietnam war veterans. You could have heard a pin drop in that room. My father looked like he was going to throw up. We had driven to the luncheon together in his car, and he was very quiet on the drive back to where we had met to go to the luncheon together.

Flash forward to maybe 2004 in Key West. I was going in and out of being homeless. I had met a number of homeless, or near homeless, Vietnam vets living full or part time in Key West. I was attending a weekly afternoon meeting at the Unitarian Church, which group was called The Seekers. People interested in stretching the envelop a little.

One day, a fellow who had been attending the group said he was in the CIA, stationed in Vietnam, when France went back into Vietnam and tried to reclaim what the Japanese had taken from them during WW II. He said it was his CIA group’s mission to covertly support Ho Chi Minh and help him defeat the French, so America could get Vietnam’s rubber trees and other natural resources, which the French once had enjoyed. He said in Washington D.C., America was pretending to support Charles de Gaulle and France’s effort to get Vietnam back.

I was stunned. I looked a the other Seekers to see how they were taking that news. I saw nothing to indicate anything unusual had just happened. I asked, “Did you hear what he just said?” No response. I said, “Don’t you understand the import of what he just said?” No response. It was as if there were only two people there, the fellow who told the story, who still is on my email contacts hit list, and me.

Even before that Rotary luncheon in 1988, I felt terrible for anyone who had served in Vietnam.

Even before that luncheon, I was not able to sympathize with vets who glorified their service in Vietnam. I felt it was a terrible, evil war, as far as America was concerned.

After the Rotary luncheon, I knew it was a terrible, evil war. I got a double tap on just how terrible and evil that war was in the Seekers meeting.

I got triple tap in 2004, when I met a fellow in Key West who was a very good chess player. He was a recovering alcoholic. He was on disability. He lived in a Housing Authority subsidized apartment. He was well-liked at Anchors Away (local AA/NA meeting hall facsimile).

As I was getting to know him, a very good friend of his died at home and was not found for days. By then his corpse was rank. My friend was in on the finding and was in on helping his friend’s family wind down the decedent’s affairs. It threw my friend for a loop. His post traumatic stress was fully reactivated.

Post traumatic stress caused by his having been put in a federal prison at age 18, for three years, because he refuse to be inducted and fight in Vietnam.

Post traumatic stress, which compounded after he got out of prison, when he and a woman he liked got cranked up on booze and another drug and went swimming in a river and they got sucked into a hydrolic and she drowned. As he was giving up the ghost, he heard, “Dive to the bottom,” so he dove to the bottom and the deeper current swept him downstream and he survived with a heap of survivor’s guilt.

As he marinated in the massive flashback caused by his good friend’s death in Key West, Anchor’s Away decided it would apply for grants, which meant they had to keep their books differently. No more cash payments to my friend for his work at Anchors Away. He would be paid by check. He could not take checks, which would affect his disability payments. He quit working at Anchor’s Away. He quit attending meetings.

He relapsed, big time. I don’t expect to see him go back on the wagon.

I said to begin this telling that I am not able to relate to Vietnam vets’ experiences in Vietnam, because I was not there; I did not have their experiences.

I had my own Vietnam experiences, and I believe to this day that God did not want me to go over there.

I believe to this day that God wanted me to hear what the National Geographic CEO had to say about how America was duped into intervening in Vietnam.

I believe to this day that God wanted me to hear what that fellow told the Seekers group in the Unitarian Church in Key West.

I believe to this day that God wanted me to meet my friend who was put in a federal penitentiary at age 18, for three years, because he would not fight in Vietnam.

I feel the same way about America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I feel about America’s war in Vietnam. I simply do not understand how any American can feel good about any of those wars. Nor, about the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait.

I hope God gives Vietnam war vets, and all American war vets, whatever help they need.

I hope God gives America whatever help it needs.

I hope America gets out of Afghanistan.

I hope America stops getting into foreign wars. It has all it can say grace over within its own borders.

After writing all of that, more came to me.

PART II – America’s Vietnam War Karma

None of the National Guardsmen were prosecuted for shooting and killing and/or wounding a number of unarmed students protesting expansion of the Vietnam war into a neighboring country.

President Lyndon Johnson decorating American Vietnam troops he had solemnly promised on national TV not to send to die in a war in Asia.

Vietnam war memorial in Washington, D.C., which contains the names of 58,000-plus American boys President solemnly promised on national TV not to send to die in a war in Asia.

Robin Williams plays popular outrageous radio disjockey in “Good Morning Vietnam” slam, from which I hijacked the names of goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com.

Vietnam draft dodger Republican presidential candidate beats decorated Vietnam veteran Democrat candidate who had returned to the States and denounced the Vietnam war.

Wolf in sheep’s clothing promised hope and change then accepted Nobel Peace Prize for continuing Vietnam war draft dodger’s Vietnam Deux and Trois in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another of my law school buddies, who was a year behind me in grade school, enlisted in the Marines and did two or three tours of duty in Vietnam. He came back really trim, wiry physically. I saw him at a rugby match, he was just watching. I could not fathom what he had experienced over there. Later, he went to Wharton School of Finance, he was very smart, and then he moved to California and started writing script for comedians and eventually became a stand-up comic himself. He came back to Birmingham and did a performance at the Birmingham Country Club, where he and I had played many rounds of golf together during our formative years. He brought down the house. Not much in his act about Vietnam. Later, I saw him on a national TV show doing his act. I heard from his father, who was a very good friend of my father, that he started up a cookie company. And even later, that he was having lots of emotional problems. Sounded like he had gotten involved in the encounter group/human potential movement, which had a large presence in Esalen, California, some ways below San Francisco. That was a long time ago, in a universe far far away, years before I was abducted by aliens and turned every which away but lose in my own personal internal version of Vietnam perhaps.

I never held it against Vietnam returnees for fighting over there. I did wonder what possessed them to do second and even third tours of duty. Back then, I was still wondering what was going on, feeling survivor’s guilt for not having gone over there myself. It was not yet clear to me just how wrong that war was, probably because I was preoccupied with other worries and pursuits. It was a very dark time for me, and for America.

I later met and married a woman who was one of the Kent State students the Ohio National Guard opened fire on and pursued, shooting them as they caught up with them. She veered off from the main group of fleeing students and was not followed and she escaped unhurt, so to speak. So freaked out was she that she became an explosives carrier for the Weathermen. She hauled their explosives from one place on campus to another, in her day pack. Then, she realized that was not right and she stopped doing it. She was left with a lasting distrust and fear of government, military and police.

Quite a few Obama supporters and I went round and round about him before he was elected the first time, and afterward. What else could I do after being told in my sleep before he was elected the first time, that he had the potential to be the Anti-Christ. Which, alas, he proved when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize while still carrying on George W. Bush’s wars.

Obama had no military experience and now he is the Commander-in-Chief of the biggest, deadliest human military force by far in the history of this planet. Obama seemed to learn nothing from Vietnam, which replayed in Iraq and again in Afghanistan. Hate to think what Syria and Iran might prove to be for America, while many Americans wave their little stars and stripes and chant, “Honor the troops!”

My view –

Ever since getting beat in Vietnam, America has been trying to atone by winning a major war somewhere.

The way to honor the troops is to get the ones still in Iraq and Afghanistan out of there before they get killed or maimed and further messed up mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

The way to honor Vietnam veterans, and Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, is to give them all the help possible, and to use their horrific experience to do all possible to keep that from further happening.

I wish America’s generals and admirals had the balls to tell Obama, either he pulls American troops all the way out of Iraq and Afghanistan, or they will.

I wish America’s generals and admirals had the balls to tell Obama, Syria, Iran, are not America’s fights. Let the UN and Israel deal with that, or not. Let Israel try proving it is God’s chosen people, a modern Joshua, and see how that goes, see if God is still on their side.

The angels told me a week after 9/11 that the US should pull out of the Middle East altogether. Pull out all American military presence and all Americans who work for the US Government. And to stop supporting Israel, and to let Israel and Islam either work it out or shoot it out.

During the night of 9/8-9 2001, I was asked by a familiar voice in my sleep if I would make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity? I awoke, startled. I asked for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity. Soon, I knew why I had been asked to make that prayer.

A year later to the night of that request, I was asked in my sleep if I would make the same prayer, which I did, but that time in my sleep, and I ended it with, “And let it begin in me!”

Yoweee!!! Was I ever turned every which a way but loose, again.

Around last Thanksgiving, I was asked to make a prayer for a Divine Intervention of the feminine into USA. I made that prayer.

I hate to say it, but so far, I can’t say that I see any evidence of any improvement in America, or in humanity, since I made those prayers. To the contrary, I see what looks to me like evidence of further decline in both America and humanity.

I hope I’m going in a different direction, but I imagine the jury is still out on that.

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As if by chance, if you still believe in such, the day I wrote Part II above, I received a ping-back to a nearly six-year-old post at goodmorningkeywest.com:

War Memorial

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007