Reply #140: Just found LZ English -- WOW! [View All]

[Mabus]

LZ English 2 days after VC attack — June 67

My hats off to you.


The carnage reminds me of my dad's photos from the Korean Conflict. He's got this huge photo album that has the most ghastly pictures in it from his service. That photo album was something that mom used to hide on a top shelf but my dad would (and perhaps he still does) pull it down and look through it. He would talk about his fellow Marines in the pictures - what their names were, where they were from, what foods they didn't like, stupid things they did. The pictures and my dad's stories made each of the men come to life.


About halfway through the album the theme changes from light hearted photos to post-battle pictures. My god, the things that can happen to a human body when it is struck by different types of artillary. I cannot imagine, nor do I want to, what that would be like to have been there. I'm grateful that the pictures are all black and white because I don't think I'd want to see what that camera captured, as it was, in full living color. I've carried those pictures in my mind since I was a kid. Most of us (my brothers and sisters) suffer from a vicarious form of PTSD along with my dad.

When we sat at the dinner table watching the nightly coverage of Viet Nam and they would talk about the number dead and wounded that day and the various totals since Jan. or the Tet Offensive (or whatever arbitrary timeframe that was used by the reporter to emphasize the point) I thought about how each number represented a human being. Then, as today, those photos in that album flash through my mind. I look up at the TV and see the number of the official death toll climb. I think about those men, women and children who are dead. Each one of them was a human being whose loss leaves a hole in the lives of those they left behind. So many promising futures, so many dreams unfulfilled. They didn't ask for it. No one in their right mind would.