...Because I completely forgot to acknowledge Veterans Day at all this year, a repost:
November 10, 2005
Veterans Day 2005
Every year as November 11th nears I wonder how to acknowledge the day for my father, who served in the army in Vietnam. I’ve bought cards, but it’s kind of an odd thing really, handing someone a greeting card thanking them for changing the course of their entire life for struggles between governments near and far. “Here’s a piece of really nice paper and look, they found something to rhyme with ‘war’!” Don’t get me wrong, I’ve sniffled my way through a store full of touching Veterans Day cards and I figure it has to be better than nothing, right?
Earlier this week I was going through a box of photo albums and other memorabilia because my kids wanted to see yearbooks and pictures from my school days. I came across an old photo album that was my parents’. I’m not entirely sure how it came to be in my possession, but I prefer to stick with the “it got mixed in there when all my stuff was still at their house” theory rather than the “I stone cold took it” theory. It contains pictures from my dad’s army days – mostly taken at a base somewhere I think. A soldier putting on his tie, another standing next to a jeep, my mom next to my dad in his full dress uniform, several soldiers with toothbrushes in hand in front of a row of sinks, and an outside shot of an almost empty street running between barracks. In the distance on the street is one lone soldier walking away. It reminds me of something I heard somewhere about how odd it is that soldiers spend so little time completely alone yet it’s the loneliest place to be or something like that. I suspect in some ways, it’s as lonely or even lonelier in the aftermath.
Yesterday, I inadvertently came across a documentary on HBO called: Unknown Soldier: Searching for a Father. I only caught the last half or so, and I cried my way through most of it. It’s made by a son; born to the wife of a Vietnam Marine a few weeks before the soldier was killed in action. He was days away from leaving Vietnam to see his son for the first time. John Hulme interviews his own family in an attempt to understand whom his father was before he left for Vietnam and who he seemed to become as he was there. Like many of us born around that time, he took a pretty active disinterest in the entire period for much of his life, so as you watch the documentary you can see changes in him as well. He also locates men his father served with and interviews them. I’ve watched a lot of shows covering Vietnam veterans (and maybe this goes for veterans across the board, I don’t know) and the one constant among them is very few have ever discussed with their own families the things they’re willing to discuss with an interviewer. It makes for some very moving moments on camera and allows the viewer to truly understand how much these men keep inside. I was interested enough to discover that the documentary is playing on Comcast OnDemand through the first week of December. I went back and watched the first half, which is more of the personal groundwork of that particular family, but still interesting nonetheless.
A couple months ago I saw a Dateline NBC (Long Way Home) story about a Vietnam soldier who disappeared the day he was supposed to return home from his tour of duty. Thirty-three years later, he’s located (through all sorts of weird occurrences) and reunited with his grown children and his mother (who he seemed distinctly afraid to face, as I’d think most of us would). It was interesting for a lot of reasons, but the part that really sticks with me is how the man looked when they located him in New Zealand and how he looked a few years later after he’d met with his children and his mother, and after he’d met with the army and made right on his desertion. The change was amazing; he looked twenty years younger. He had no real explanation for his absence, and I suspect he was one of the unlucky ones that had pre-existing conditions that didn’t allow him to deal with all he experienced, or maybe “set aside” all he’d experienced would be a better way of putting it.
In one story I saw, a wife of a veteran said that while the subject of the war wasn’t necessarily taboo with her husband, she felt that bringing it up and asking him questions might make him uncomfortable and that was the last thing she wanted to do. So she doesn’t. Yet when Mr. Hulme was doing his interviews, the wife of one of his father’s army buddies told the camera man that her husband had never talked of his time in Vietnam but when Mr. Hulme called, he said that he though he had a letter that might be of interest to the son seeking information and he knew exactly where it was in his basement. She seemed shocked that even though he doesn’t talk about it, it’s obviously not far from his mind. Much like losing a loved one, you may move on – work around it, but it’s always there. And I suspect most soldiers that returned home, did so without a part of themselves that they had left home with a lifetime before.
When their turn at war was over, those lucky enough to return amongst whatever acceptance or political turmoil of their time, came home to continue to fight their own personal battles, in many cases. Much like the circle of life, the very thing that caused them the hardships when they returned to civilian life might also have taught them the beauty of survival.
Count me among those that are eternally grateful. War is never welcome and most of us will never understand the ways in which it changes our world. Out of it come changed men and women, who in turn influence the world on a one to one basis, through their families, their hardships, and their stories. We can all learn something integral by looking in the face of a veteran telling his story, and I’ve yet to see one that doesn’t also tell the story of those that are not able to. The fallen are always there, in every face, without fail.
To those still battling the inner demons, we can offer prayers for peace. To those who’ve learned to live with the demons, I suspect the prayers for peace are still in order. For those that never returned, and for their families, know that we see you. Every time we meet the eyes of someone that was there, we see you.
To my father, a special thank you for your strength. November 11th is also the day I celebrate the anniversary of the first date I had with my now husband. On that November 11th, sixteen years ago, I don’t recall giving a thought to veterans at all. Mostly I was worried about how my hair looked and if he’d show up in a cool car to pick me up. Now every November 11th it’s easy for me to put things in perspective. I am who I am partly because of a veteran and every influence he carries with him. Good and bad, it makes up my life and therefore brought me my own wonderful family. I’m sorry for every battle you had to fight, far and near, but I’m proud of who you were and who you are.
This Veterans Day while you’re praying for the soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere around the world, and while you’re praying for peace, also consider doing something that can make it personal for you. Read a soldier’s story, watch a documentary, and find a way to truly see a veteran’s face and all that it can teach. And keep praying for the boys of todays military, even after they return. The end of a war is not always the end of a soldier’s battle.
