Once upon a summertime, some forty years ago, a playful picture was made of a man and his son fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. This seems a proper way to spend a day in the good ole summer time even though on the next Wednesday, this man left his children, his wife and his country. He left to return to Vietnam. His country needed him there. Again.
Someone gave me a card today. It said “Thanks for serving our country. Our veterans are our true heroes.” I didn’t know what to say. I was actually shocked. I wasn’t expecting it. I was kind of embarrassed. Such a thing had never happened before. The last time someone commented about my service to my country was when I returned from my second tour in Vietnam. A wealthy-looking guy in San Francisco airport, wearing a hound’s tooth cap with a red feather in it, spat in my face, and he got away. Next day two people got up and walked out of my church when I attended. One of them called me “Baby Killer!” The priest said I was a hero. I had eight days before I was to return to Vietnam for another tour. Since then there haven’t been any more comments. it has been a form of don’t ask - don’t tell. I don’t tell them I am a veteran and they don’t say anything nasty. It has worked out OK. I don’t need to say anything. Or do I? There are some issues. Here are just four of them.
1) Of those who saw combat in Vietnam, 85% later divorced, leaving their children to swim in uncertain waters and to change plans they had made all their lives.
2) That tonight, like every night, some 100,000 veterans are homeless. Spending the night in shelters, under bridges, on streets, in public parks.
3) That some 2,200 veterans died in 2009, as in every year, simply because they did not have access to health care - that’s six a day, one every four hours. Because they can’t get medical care in the country they served.
4) That in America, which has more people in prison and jail than any other nation in the world, one out of every seven inmates is a veteran.
Military service to one’s country can be fatal. Sometimes it leaves a person maimed or seriously injured. Injuries to the body can be understood by Americans, because they can see and react to that to a degree. Injuries to the mind and spirit and to the soul though, are to be hidden. When they become evident they are seen as a weakness in character beyond hope or care. They obviously can’t be helped, they don’t get better and may get a lot worse very quickly. The proper response seems to be punishment or isolation. And if those people will stay out of our way, and hide and say nothing, we will continue to ignore them and pretend they really don't exist. For one more day.
Happy Veterans Day.
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