|
|
|
A forgotten man, one of many
by Helen & Harry Highwater, Unknown News
Aug. 9, 2005
I remember my Uncle Jeff’s dog and his car, but I don’t remember my Uncle Jeff. He had raised the dog from a pup, a scraggly flea-ridden mutt who wanted to lick all humanity’s hands. He’d bought the car used, and it soon stopped running, and sat ignored in the garage for years after he died. |
|
|
My uncle went to war, and never came back. We got his body, his personal effects, and an American flag as a lovely parting present. He was my mother’s brother, and she inherited the car and the dog -- Pepe, a lovable little ball of fur and energy that faded and died ten years later, at about the time I dropped out of high school.
My Uncle Jeff was the only casualty of the Vietnam war I knew personally, but I was so small when I knew him, he’s been completely forgotten by me. I remember talking about him, but I don’t remember him. We have pictures of Uncle Jeff, of course, but even in the pictures where he’s holding me, all I remember is looking at the pictures. He was 19 and I was 7 when he went into the Army. I was 9 when we buried him. As I was growing up, we talked about Jeff less and less.
I wonder about him sometimes -- what he was like, and why he followed Uncle Sam’s orders into the military at a time when so many other young men were going underground or running to Canada. I asked my mom about that once, and she quietly told me that her brother was an old-fashioned boy in a difficult time, and she didn’t think he had ever really questioned the Vietnam war. He got a letter telling him where to report, she said, and he did what he was told. Then my mum said nothing for half an hour, and I learned not to raise the subject again.
He left us a dog I liked a lot and a junker car I sometimes sat in and listened to the radio when I needed to be alone. I once briefly met a woman he’d dated in high school, but my Uncle Jeff is just an abstraction to me. Thinking about him is like wondering about my great-great-grandfather, or any other stranger related only through the family tree.
My mom loved him, and her parents always seemed heartbroken. They said he’d wanted to be a teacher, of math or science. But that future was never his. No future was his after the day he got that letter, except the new, shortened future that made him one more name etched in granite on the memorial wall in Washington.
Uncle Jeff was just one of about 55,000 Americans whose lives were wasted killing about 2,000,000 Vietnamese people in the 1960s and ‘70s. Someone once told me in all seriousness that my uncle had died defending America, but I just laughed, and that wasn’t even a political response. I chuckled because anyone thinking my uncle died defending America had to be crazy or joking.
Long before I was old enough to even be political, I knew Vietnam was a country of primitive huts and farmers growing rice. It wasn’t Red China or the Soviet Union. Vietnam was never the slightest threat to any Americans -- except Americans like my uncle, sent halfway ‘round the world to find a war. So my uncle died for nothing, unless you think reigning grief down on Vietnam was a worthwhile cause.
What does it mean to die for your country, when your country cares so little about you it sends you to fight and kill and die in an irrelevant war? A war where nothing’s at stake, except the soldiers fighting for that nothing? It’s a riddle wrapped in a conundrum, encased in 55,000 caskets.
What about you? Did you know someone who died in Vietnam? Or did you know someone who served, and came back alive? Did you ever know anyone who knew anyone who was touched by that futile war?
I’m not quite old enough to remember my Uncle Jeff, but with 55,000 Americans killed in Vietnam, in a war that ended only three decades ago, you’d think a lot of the dead would still be remembered. You’d think Americans might respect the memory of their fallen family and friends, their classmates, their children, their loved ones.
You’d think they’d remember the funeral, the little folded flag, and the plain fact that someone they’d loved had died for a big muddy pile of nothin’.
You’d think the parents, the siblings, and everyone else who remembers the dead might have a little déjà vu in the here and now -- watching a new crop of youngsters be harvested, and sent off to die for a big sandy pile of nothin’.
You’d think someone might give a damn, someone might stand up and say no to the stupidity and waste of sending American soldiers to kill and die for diddlysquat. You’d think, but ... no.
So make way at the cemetery, Uncle Jeff. Here comes the next generation of the dead for nothin'.
© by the author.
What do you think?
|
|
What does it mean to die for your country, when your country cares so little about you it sends you to fight and kill and die in an irrelevant war?
A war where nothing’s at stake, except the soldiers fighting for that nothing?
It’s a riddle wrapped in a conundrum, encased in 55,000 caskets.
|
|
|
I can't afford therapy, but boy do I need it. So as an affordable alternative, I've decided to start pounding my anger into a weekly column here.
Fair warning: My parents were repressed -- using any bad words would get my mouth washed out with soap, literally. I still remember the sickly flavor of DoveTM. So as an adult, vulgarity helps with the healing. If naughty language offends you, beat the rush and get offended now.
This page is for my own good, not yours, so you may not like it, but I don't care.
About the authors
|
Helen and Harry Highwater have published Unknown News since 1997. We're a married couple sharing a byline à la Lennon and McCartney, and "I" can be either of us, or both of us. If you're consumed by curiosity, it's safe to assume the more boisterous and aggressive bits come from Helen, and anything ladylike or demure is probably Harry's work.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
