Nobody

After coming home from my second combat tour of Vietnam I was done with my enlistment. In other words, I had served my time and was now free. Free is the other four letter word starting with “F.” For those who have not served you are put in harms way and it is up to you to make the best of it. Another way to look at this is that you are put in charge of extinguishing a forest fire of great magnitude with a small glass of water. That one can go through this and remain a living person is remarkable. It sets a marker in the brain for what is and what is not important in life. This is a marker reserved for those who have spent a lot of time trying not to die. It cannot be compared to civilian life in any form including that of a police officer. It is a small miracle to come home unscathed.

Further, to come home from war and be ridiculed because you went to war is further denigration that sets ones mind in a sullen position. You did what you thought was right at the time and paid a lifelong price for that decision whereas so many went to war afterward and came home being called hero’s.

No, I am not complaining but I am telling any who read here what it is to be a Vietnam vet. We were lied about in the press, called “baby killers” and various and sundry suspicion was laid at our feet. We went to war. War is not pretty but we were Americans, not other people of other nations who have no moral boundaries. Oh well, life is never a promise of goodness now is it?

Life since then has been wonderful, once the furor of that war receded. I come to this website, “Xog Yeti,” with a sense of humor and a large portion of forgiveness to those who denigrated all of us who served back in that era. The bible is the book that brought me back from a darkness I felt from the time I left the service and had to put up with shear ignorance from those who stayed home and dropped acid and smoked pot and then went out and demonstrated against us who served. A fine kettle of fish by anyone’s standard. I never dropped acid which I now look back on and am thankful that my faith spared me from altering my mind so seriously. I know, this is a lot to digest in a single article.

This is the way I write, the way I think, and the reason that I write now as mine is a perspective of opposites pulled together into cohesion. Not an easy task but a necessary task to stay alive and survive a deep and abiding depression after war. Faith in God, Jesus and the hereafter is what saw me through. In short: the bible. A not overly large book of strange ideas and directions that, once understood, provide peace in a way the human race cannot. No amount of psychiatry can give you peace the way the bible can. I found this out and it has steered my course to this point of sobriety, peace, and love of my neighbors as we are all in this together.

Human causes are so much bluster. Gods cause is direct and without ego. The choice is yours. Me? I am nobody.

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