THE WALL OF FACES

You and I were great childhood friends. Your folks often took me along to the cabin in Arrowhead. I teased you because I was born one day before you were. I was home from Vietnam for just a few days when I heard you were MIA.I knew what that meant. My PTSD was so opressive I could not go to your funeral. Danny, I won our bet because I made my million dollars first. But that "victory" is dust in my mouth.

It all seems so unnecessary, tragic beyond expression.

We, the "Baby Boomers," or whatever name is assigned to us,

will, surely, be marked as the generation that paid heavily for

this controversial war. Each generation has it's burden, if you will. This is ours.

When you first see these thousands of names of young

Americans, 19 years old, 20 years old, 21 years old, it hits you all over again, like a ton of bricks. Images of our youthful buddies faces stick in our mind. The laughing,

the times shared, good and bad. College years, High School years.

Dan was my car buddy. He and I restored a 1923 Model "T" Ford together in 1966. We shared friends, pushed

cars, laughed. Dan lived on Balboa Island, and attended Orange

Coast Jr. College, in Costa Mesa, California, before going on to the University of Hawaii.

This young, linky, red headed, freckled, round faced friend of mine was shot in the back of the head, during an ambush, while trying to carry a fallen comrade from their tent.

As in life, so in his passing, there is a lasting gift. A gift of perspective... an indelible wisdom.

In life, we, all, have a God given responsibilty to

consider each other. Do a little something for someone else. Dan did. Under the seige of gunfire, amidst a hell

we can only imagine, Dan turned to his fellow comrade.

Surely, you and I, amidst our routine day, can consider someone next to us today. It'll be a better world for it.

 

FOREVER REMEMBERED

"If you are able, save for them a place inside of you....and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go.....Be not ashamed to say you loved them....
Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own....And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind...."

Quote from a letter home by Maj. Michael Davis O'Donnell
KIA 24 March 1970. Distinguished Flying Cross: Shot down and Killed while attempting to rescue 8 fellow soldiers surrounded by attacking enemy forces.

We Nam Brothers pause to give a backward glance, and post this remembrance to you, one of the gentle heroes lost to the War in Vietnam:

Slip off that pack. Set it down by the crooked trail. Drop your steel pot alongside. Shed those magazine-ladened bandoliers away from your sweat-soaked shirt. Lay that silent weapon down and step out of the heat. Feel the soothing cool breeze right down to your soul ... and rest forever in the shade of our love, brother.

From your Nam-Band-Of-Brothers