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The Enemy

I haven’t lived well because I didn’t know until recently who the enemy was. I thought the enemy was outside, somewhere far removed from me — the communists, the Serbs, the Muslims. I didn’t know that the true enemy was much closer at hand.

The Cantor’s Birthday

Before they kissed, they cried. With her head against his shoulder, they ended the war. With his lips brushing her eyelids, they ended the war. With her fingers mapping the lines of his face, they ended the war. With his knees tucked into the hollow of her knees, they ended the war.

Solitaire

He would look into the pits the SS left behind and see the grabbing hands and slippered feet, the bloodstained clothes and pale limbs, the wide and frightened eyes covered with a film of dirt.

Crimson Tide

We’re standing in the drizzle — me and Uncle Oscar and Daddy and the chaplain and two soldiers who look like they’ve marched right out of the toy box. I half expect their feet to be welded to plastic platforms wedged into piles of sand.

Sunbeams

All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it.

Michael Herr

He Said In The Hospital It

The Beat Goes On

During the Vietnam War I asked one of the wise men of the peace movement, a kind of renegade Jesuit, if there was any force on earth that could end our love affair with war. “Only education,” he replied. “There has to come a time when they beat the drum and no one marches.”

A Vietnam Diary

One of the more shocking things about Vietnam is the number of people with serious war-related injuries: a woman with her face half burned away, men without legs, children with significant birth defects due to fetal exposure to Agent Orange, which remained in the food chain long after the fighting had stopped. Yesterday I counted seven people. Today I counted four more.

Beside The Tracks

There are only two decorations in Tommy’s room, unless you count the beer cans, which you don’t. You simply trash them every morning like clockwork, after you’ve cleaned up the breakfast dishes, put away the sticky cereal boxes, swept the sandy kitchen floor.

Vietnam

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, conscientious-objector declaration, the Tet Offensive