Scrolling through Facebook tonight… up pops my cousin’s comment. Fifty six years ago today, on patrol in the jungle of South Vietnam, he was gut shot. At eleven in the morning, he fell with the first bullet. I had to reply to him tonight. His story was a very vivid memory for my little nine year old self. It started me thinking…
We’re now of that age, I guess, when first person memories of such incidents surrounding the Vietnam War are slowly disappearing. I really felt compelled to share my tiny story on how his injury impacted me. He lived in Oklahoma and I in Alaska, eleven years difference in age, and I wrote him letters while in Vietnam. My mother probably encouraged that… This was the cousin who people told me I looked like… which I didn’t appreciate since I didn’t want to look like a boy! On visits to Oklahoma, he was much more interested in anything else than this little blond haired brat wanting to tag along. But we had a bond…
Before you read my reply to his post about his anniversary of being wounded… I wonder. How many of you have bits of stories about the Vietnam War. What do you remember? If you’d like, feel free to share.
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56 years ago minus a bit, my parents told me the news. It was a bit much for my 9 year old brain. Weeks later, when we received a copy of the newspaper article about you, I remember taking it to school for show and tell. I read it in front of my class. I was so proud of you, reading that you were a SOLDIER. When I read (as best I can relate) that you “yelled for the medic and yelled a bunch of other things too”, my voice broke. My class snickered as their third grade brains wondered what those “other things” were… but it hit me. You were *REALLY HURT*. It wasn’t a story, it wasn’t make believe, it was real. I looked at my teacher who was silently wiping tears from her cheeks. I don’t know why I can remember this moment in time so vividly, but I can. I’ve thought of it and you often. To my young self, this is how the Vietnam War touched me. Hearing statistics on the evening news and reading your article. Too young for understanding any of the complexities, all I knew was that my favorite cousin who I had written letters to, was a lucky young man. I’ve always been grateful for your return. I remain proud that you served. I was happy to have you “home”. My only regret… I should have kept writing you… With much love, respect, and a brain that does still wonder what those “other things” you yelled were… your cousin. ❤️
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Thanks Carol and to everyone for sharing your stories!
My boyfriend at the time had a brother killed there.
I remember wearing the POW /MIA bracelet. I still have it somewhere.
Mine never came home! Thanks to ALL our Veterans and active duty service members! Your sacrifice is never forgotten!
Even though I lived across the pond this war had its impact on me in my late teens. I was enjoying the late 60’s (mini skirts, the Beatles, Rolling Stones & boys!!!) whereas my American friend never mentioned ‘boys’. Most had been drafted to fight in the war and many did not come home. Each evening the BBC would update us. The sound of those helicopters stayed with me and I only realised this when seeing the musical Miss Saigon in London in the 90’s when they had a helicopter on stage. The sound of the engine ………. I was transported back to those BBC news updates.
I was sitting in class in Ten Sleep High School and vividly remember hearing the 21 gun salute for Sammy Dellos at the Ten Sleep cemetery
Thank you for this heartbreaking but beautiful tribute to your cousin, and to all of our soldiers who served in Vietnam.
I was a Wyoming National Guardsman from 1981 to 1987. When I was first in the Guard, it was packed with Vietnam veterans, and the entire time I was in, there were at least a few. Indeed, one who had been a combat infantryman in Vietnam would remain in all the way through a deployment to Iraq.
When I was first in, we actually had one soldier who was a World War Two veteran as a young man.
Anyhow, I note this as it really impacted the unit. It was full of combat veterans from all the branches of the service, and they knew a lot. One friend of mine in the unit I recall actually shaking from PTSD when we deployed to South Korea for a war game, due to the smell of the wet canvas tends where we were first posted. It was an honor to have served with them.
I’ve lost track of all the VN vets in that unit, save for one. Two have passed, one who was a combat Marine and one who was a naval aviator. Even though I’m well aware of it, it’s hard to grasp for me that they’ve grown old.
On remembering the war itself, I was ten years old when we pulled out in 1973. The US going into Cambodia is something I can recall watching on the news, as well as the “Christmas bombing” of North Vietnam. The POWs coming home I also recall. My father was in the Individual Ready Reserve of the Air Force right up until the end of the war, and was a Korean War veteran, but I recall him feeling the Vietnam War was a mistake. In 1975 as the end came, I tracked the frightening profess of the North Vietnamese Army on a National Geographic map on my bedroom wall, an odd thing I guess for a 12-year-old to do. A few years later, at age 17, I had a summer job for a garage running parts and worked with a mechanic who had been an engineer in South Vietnam, the first refugee I ever met.
Carol, I was also in uncle Sam’s tropical paradise 50 plus years ago. I was in battalion recon and I can relate to your memories. I didn’t get wounded but it wasn’t for lack of the bad guys trying. I “only” had malaria. The older I get the more the memories appear. I told my kids if they had questions about my time there just ask, last year we had what I call show and tell. They heard things I hadn’t told in those 50 +years. Amazingly I felt better after telling someone because no one ever wanted to hear it.
Yes, memories of a best friend’s brother that was open about his breakdown, while serving in Vietnam. After returning home, a very different man, lived a life full of challenges. Also a cousin, who was a medic. Never shared war stories, but was grateful to be alive. I was also a ‘young self’ that remembers writing letters, sending boxes of homemade cookies & candy, in support of their service. The war was on every single evening news report, along with the protests against the war, here, in our homeland.