Why War Era Veterans & their Families do not want more War. Pain comes home.
As I have dedicated many years to creating possible solutions for the veterans who come back only to kill themselves at insane rates, I must speak to the cost to families of wartime vets.
Joseph, a person commenting on my initial statement, seemed to think you had to be there, in the bloody battles, to comment on this subject as a vet of that era. I truly know the cost. As I look at your picture, Joseph, my comment was amended so you would not be angry. I did not suffer there, too. The picture on your FB indicates you are the only one my age or older. I remember the only photo of my brother, sister, and me because it was our only time together with my father after I was 14. He was 70, and it had been 35 years since we were together. Divorce after his second tour was a blessing for the kids.
My mother and I, with my son, brother, sister, or father, never had a picture together. She lived into her 80s. I did not wish to see her for the last 50 years of her life. I did not go to either parent’s funeral. My siblings did not go to my dad's. My son passed before my mother, who never spoke to him or her 4 other grandchildren for more than a few hours in her lifetime; none ever knew her, though she lived near my brother for years.
The cost to families of vets who cut down their buddies strung up and skinned alive comes home with them to burn through their families in forms of alcoholism acceptable to the US Army as a painkiller. I wish I did not have to go to Vietnam to know the prices of my friends who did die within months of graduating high school year after year before my turn at the draft came up... and it stopped. I joined anyway... but I was lucky. My dad served there for me instead. I hope your life in the service skipped the alcohol part. Thank you for your service, the hardest of all if you were there. Kudos that you have a family intact. Brad W. Kittel
My original comment…
As a Vietnam Era vet, it has been a sad legacy to see how forgotten, disregarded, and unrewarded my generation was for sacrificing lives and families, lost to corporate causes, tricked into believing it was for spreading democracy. It was genocide under orders no one was allowed to disobey once there.
Modified: Not to be misinterpreted as one tried to do in comments... Joseph S. Lania, my son created music for my poem about saving the past, the part that appears dead, like trash, and see the treasure hidden within. With the right Light, that of Love, a brand new life can be created. Why don’t more people try to help others salvage their lives?
Salvaging lives that started in trauma, anger, and feeling like no one really loved someone as a child is hard. My life as a veteran started before joining the US Army in 1973. My dad, served two terms, one medivac, the other flying Schnooks into the fire zones with guns on board instead. I grew up from childhood in the pain of war at home, grabbing my ankles to take beatings from an angry father teaching me to be hardened to take my beatings, crippled as I was, and believe I could achieve.. a high school degree. I did, then joined the Army at 17, entered by 18 as my dad was being Rifted, and my friends who had already been or died, still returning, destroyed. My father died of cancer from Agent Orange, as did my friends, and I got out due to a fluke 2-year enlistment as the draft was ending, two active army, two active reserve/two inactive.
The sins of thy father play out on the sons: Instead, my son, Adam, died in Paris at the hands of kids his age who had been bombed out of their homes, families killed, and they squatted in the slums of Paris where he was lured.
One generation pays for the next, and the senseless world goes onward. I moved 17 times and changed schools 13 times for the US Army to use my dad to kill from Bolivia to Vietnam, all for corporate causes, though he did not understand till near the end, at 70 from lung cancer, he had been used as a tool of power for resources. Sad, most vets are.
Brad W. Kittel
By the time I got out of Crypto computer school, we were pulling out of Nam; I went back to Germany, where I was born... a GI last date in a car with a drunken girl in the back seat, Michigan circa American Graffiti days. His climax left a gift that was remembered long after they left this life. I literally grew up Army and it is a life I would not trade. But, likewise, I would not wish such trauma upon anyone else.