Leaving Vietnam

“Get your crap together, we’re leaving,” were the words but the Cobwebs in my brain block out who said them. We started throwing things, clearing out as dumpsters arrived with the Vietnamese. We throw in and they take out just as fast. It was better than Macy’s or Walmart for them. Gone are my boots, turned almost white. My camos, faded and weathered were gone in a flash, my bush hat, gone with the names of friends and the calendar with my days marked off. Gone was my mattress and it’s sand, quickly hauled away on a bicycle. My little brush broom I used to sweep the sand out of my bed, tossed was The Stars and Stripes, the Military Newspaper and the picture of Actress Jane Fonda committing treason against her fellow Americans. I cleaned it all out. . There was laughter and merriment, the war was to become a bad memory, we were zealous in our leaving. No more Band of Brothers of canned chicken, cheese and crackers, Hamburgers and steaks danced in our heads. The souvenirs I had saved meant nothing to me. I left the AK standing in a corner of my room, taken off a very young Vietnamese soldier, “Death of a Boy” another memory to take my thoughts through the years. I left the memory of the little “Angel in Rags" Who would later come back and haunt my sleep. We left our friends, with never a thought, who departed in flag draped caskets, we left it all. We brought them back with us and honored them on "the Wall" and in the dreams of "Old Soldiers" and the guilt of "Why Thee and not Me?" We brought their faces and personalities back with us never to leave. We hurried to leave but we knew in a very weird way there was almost a sadness leaving there too, as we flew out, we looked down from the air, there were the rice paddies floating away as I gazed down making out places that I marked with my cans of trash, the only sign of my own little war effort. I hated leaving others behind. I thought nothing of it until I was in the air, flying away, flying back to the world. Vietnam was just as black as the POW flag, seeping into every pour of the body, every memory ambushing dreams. Vietnam, never defeated, just a killing field but also welded a brotherhood, never to dim. The last we’d see of Vietnam. We made it and came back with our honor in tact. Though suspect with many at home, a war fought from Washington by politicians who never saw war and never meant to win.We knew, we did the best we could with our hands tied and shackled under the rules of appeasement and bad leadership.