THANKS

FOR

CARING

G. LUSBY

Published by Gary Lusby at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Gary Lusby

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author/

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 - The Beginning

Chapter 2 - Christmas in Nam

Chapter 3 - The Reality of War

Chapter 4 - Mail Call

Chapter 5 - A Pabst Blue Ribbon Day

Chapter 6 - My Southern Belle

Chapter 7 - The Sounds of Death

Chapter 8 - The Loss of a Friend

Chapter 9 - The Longest Days

Chapter 10 – The World

Epilogue

Dedication

To my parents Alice and Leonard, who also suffered through a tour of duty in Vietnam; and of course to Patty, without whom this book would never had materialized. It took many months of work, spanning a year, to pull the happy letters and sad memories out of my mind and onto the written page. Many times it hurt deeply to write about my fallen comrades, but writing it down eventually game me the feeling of dedication, so this is also my written memorial to them.

PREFACE

In March of 1965 the very first United States combat troops landed at DaNang Air Base in South Vietnam, catapulting us into the longest full-time war our country would ever know. By September of 1968 our troops in Vietnam would total 537,800 men, the largest number of U.S. forces to be in combat there. On August 12, 1972 the last U.S. combat forces left Vietnam, turning the war over to the Vietnamese people. During that time period, the United States would spend approximately 150 billion dollars supporting the war. Our military arsenal would be reduced by some 4865 helicopters and 3720 aircraft, all lost in battle. Our bombers would release a total to exceed 8 million bombs, while our artillery would expend an average of 10,000 artillery shells a day. In the field, a total of 2.9 million men and women would fight in the war for the United States. Of that number, 57,939 U.S. soldiers lost their lives for their country, 300,000 were wounded, 75,000 were permanently injured for life, and 2500 were missing in action!

I don’t believe any of them really wanted to be there. I don’t believe any of them were gung-ho enough to like the Vietnam war or why it was being fought. From the time we got our orders to go to Nam, we hated it. When they shot out bodies full of immunizations and sent us into combat, we hated it. When we killed other people and watched ourselves being killed, we hated it. When we left Vietnam without a victory, we hated it. And when we got home and saw what America thought of us, we hated it.

Those of us who were lucky enough to make it home after 395 days in Nam, came home to hatred and bitterness. We were veterans and proud of it, but there was no one to listen. Our country was ashamed of the role it played in the Vietnam war, a war that America chose to fight in, but Americans wanted no part of. We didn’t want any part of it either. On July 8, 1959, Major Dale Buis, the first American killed in action in South Vietnam didn’t want any part of it. On January 27, 1973, Lt. Colonel William B. Nolde, the last American killed in combat didn’t want any part of it. None of us did. But we went, we fought, and over 57,000 of us died. From the moment that Major Dale Buis fell to the ground giving his life for his country, we were committed to make it worth his life. We fought our hearts out for our country and America spit on us. They called it a rock-and-roll war, fought by teenagers who were alcoholics, dope addicts, and murders. Well, they were right!

We were different than other veterans. We were teenagers told to fight a war in a country we never heard of, for a cause no one could explain to us. We were rock-and-rollers from the baby-boom era who wouldn’t think twice about putting our lives on the line for our country, but this wasn’t our country or our war. Our music was our lifestyle and it’s what we related to best, but they took away our radios and handed us rifles, so we fought our battles with the music as our spirit. Given the tensions and stress of war we celebrated daily with a reward of alcohol. We used its medicinal power to congratulate ourselves for making it through another day, to soothe the worry of what will happen tomorrow, and forget the pain of killing while being killed. Some guys coped in other ways, one of which was marijuana, but they too had their own inner battles to deal with. They too were surrounded by a hostile environment closing in daily, torturing with barbaric tactics and leaving your comrades lifeless. We were each plucked out of our homeland, away from our families, and asked to fight, yet criticized for the way we handled stress or had some fun. Half of the American students are smoking grass with no stress at all in their daily lives, why are we pointed at and not them? Is it really us, or is it the war we’re participating in that irritates the American people.

And murderers? How many times do we make a judgment without really knowing the facts. We won’t deny we did some innocent killing, but we also won’t deny we were tired of putting the bodies of our comrades in bags to ship home. How many times could we watch innocent women and children give us gifts that would blow up in our faces; how many times could we defend a village and its people only to find then harboring caches of weapons and supplies for the enemy; how many times could we watch a friendly villager by day become an enemy infiltrator by night. It doesn’t take too long before you become bitter and lose your compassion. We saved the lives of many, many innocent women and children in village after village, and these occurrences far outnumber the incidents of innocent killings. There were never killings without a purpose. Are we to believe that throughout our two world wars that no innocent citizens were killed for any reason. Is it really that these few incidents happened, or is it the persistent hatred by the American people of this war and therefore a hatred of everything associated with it.

We were rockin’-and-rollin’ teenagers who sang, drank, smoked, and killed, but we were also teenagers who matured overnight as we were killed, maimed, and tortured for nothing. Killed to help a people and culture that could really care less whether we were there or not. They had been at war for twenty years so we were just more troops to inhabit their land and destroy their environment.

We really didn’t ask much in return -- a reason to fight, a little support and encouragement, and a lot of mail. Mail was our connection to home, a home we needed to hear from. Our letters kept us aware of our situation on the home front, a situation that was filled with demonstrations and peace marches. A home that was filled wit hatred. We needed some encouraging words to help us keep our sanity and not give up, the way it seemed most Americans had given up on us and our cause. It was written all over their faces when we returned. We didn’t return as “war veterans”, we returned as the Vietnam kids who killed innocent people, smoked pot, drank booze, and went over to take part in a war that nobody wanted to be in. The heroes were the guys who fled to Canada and dodged the draft, the heroes were the peace marchers and the students who talked against the war. We were the outcasts!

There were no parades for Vietnam vets. There were no welcome home banners and celebrations except for the families who suffered with us. When people talk of wars we fought throughout history, Vietnam is called the “ugly” war, not because the brutality of the war was deep and endless, but because it was the war no one wanted. The war America fought in and chose to forget.

Ten years after the United States pulled its troops out of South Vietnam, the United States government, with the forceful effort of Vietnam Veterans and their families, decided to recognize the war heroes of Vietnam. On November 13, 1982, the United States dedicated the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. to finally pay its respects to those 58,000 men and women who sacrificed their lives for their country in that ugly war. Twelve years after we left Vietnam, on November 11, 1984, the United States erected a monument dedicated to those Americans who fought in our country’s longest war; a statue of three U.S. soldiers to overlook the Vietnam Memorial Wall and remind us of the countless individuals who risked their lives for that ugly cause. Also in the same year, 1984, a body was placed in the Arlington National Cemetery. An unknown soldier from the Vietnam war took his final resting place at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers of World Wars I and II, and the Korean War. Thirteen years after we all came home, the people of the United States finally remembered us. In May of 1985, a national Vietnam Veterans parade was held in New York City honoring the veterans who fought in the Vietnam war. The parade and welcome home they never received finally took place, over a decade later.

I’m sorry America….you’re too late, the wounds are too deep. Yes we want to pay our respects to our 58,000 comrades who died at our side for their country. And yes we want to recognize our 375,000 comrades who brought their suffering back with them and in many cases are paying the highest price a war can inflict, they need our help and our understanding as they tackle their pain daily. And yes we want you to find our 2500 missing comrades who are still over there and may well be paying the biggest price of all, if they are still alive. But basically, you’re too damn late! We needed your support then, much more than we need your support now. We needed the support you gave to our World War I, World War II, and Korean war vets, who fought their hearts out not just for 395 days, but for years in battle without coming home. America was behind them and they knew it, we knew the opposite.

Vietnam was ugly. But it was the war that was ugly, not the men who fought in it. Did we deserve to eat the mud and dirt of Vietnam for over a year of our lives fighting a battle our country put us in, then come home and be ignored, ridiculed, and forgotten. Ask a Vietnam vet, he’ll tell you Nam was ugly, but America was uglier.

This book is dedicated to the Patty Chapmans of the world, the people who took the time to care, when they really didn’t have to. She wasn’t involved in the war. The families of the American soldiers fighting overseas were involved in the war, they had a stake in it. But not the Patty Chapmans! She wrote to me because she cared about me. She cared about the guys around me and what we were doing. Sure, maybe she hated the Vietnam war too, who wouldn’t hate a war, but that didn’t stop her from caring about the guys who were from her country, fighting a war they didn’t want to be in either. Was she really so different than anyone else, who knows, but she took the time to care.

I have no doubt in my mind that I survived the Vietnam war and came home to my family because of Patty Chapman. Her letters took me through times that I never dreamed I could survive. The pain of a war and the suffering both mentally and physically is insurmountable. Ask any vet from any war. Times that I suffered the most from losing my buddies; my life was at an all time low. It takes an overwhelming force to pick you up and tell you that you must go on, you must continue, it will be over soon. That force was a Patty Chapman letter. Her dedication, to not only write me continually for a year, but to do it almost daily, is astounding.

She is a remarkable woman and to her I owe my life. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was needed, the parades were appreciated, but the Patty Chapmans are to be saluted. This book is my memorial to her. Thanks Patty, Thanks For Caring!

Chapter 1 - THE BEGINNING

Why is the beach such a beautifully quiet, exciting place for two people to share their enchanting moments together? It seems the emptiness of this vast stretch of desert is overflowing with the romantic qualities necessary for an intimate evening. Two figures can be seen silhouetted against the falling sunset as if they were placed there for the purpose of adding meaning to the word beauty.

The orange-redness of the warm misty sky completely outlining two shadows of nature which are silently conveying more intimate messages than a book could hope to reveal. Hand in hand, only their silence comes between them as they walk mile upon mile, yet meaning has replaced tiredness.

The atmosphere of the entire environment is a perfection no man could ever hope to create himself. The long white empty beach lying helpless as the coldness of tons of ocean water crash down upon it, creating surf which dissipates into the sands’ warmness. Sand, cold in the night, as your footprints compress the water out with every step you take. Sand that oozes between your toes by day as you scamper across its scorching hotness; but becomes hard and cold with the downward movement of the sun. The complete silence of this world interrupted only occasionally by the echoing of the waves striking the beach….a sound which only enhances the entire scene more.

Suddenly with this sound, all nature is alive and all the world has meaning. Two figures gazing at each other for the first time, introducing themselves to each other through the silence of their touch. They meet, eyes focused in each other’s stare, they join hands and become united as one. Their warmness and breathing communicate their inner feelings as words could not hope to. The pounding surf interrupts the silence but enhances the meaning as suddenly the entire atmosphere is perfect and the two silhouettes become one. The dream of mankind is captured is this one moment as man and woman are one, together.