The student demonstrations getting crazy after Kent State and me hiding out in my apartment, afraid I'd get killed in the streets. Me working in a drugstore downtown while the marchers passed by my door, how loud they were - by then I wanted the war to stop but I was also afraid of the chaos.

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napalm agent orange unfamiliar jungle rice paddies
villages burning dirt tunnels helicopters moaning
children born with their intestines on the outsides of
their tiny bodies. i heard about artwork engraved on
the cigarette lighters of servicemen found in postwar
vietnam. one said: death is my business and business
has been good.

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when I was in college a guy recently back told me a story about having to kill his pet monkey before he could return to the states. It left me clammy and a little frightened and a little in awe of him. He had kept this monkey as a pet and good luck charm for the last 2 years he was fighting in Nam, but he knew it couldn't survive without him and he couldn't bring it home. tough choices.

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The Viet Nam war always conjurs up memories of Johnny Gulden, who was the oldest of seven kids over on Oakley Ave. He was three years older than we were, but he would often play football with us out in the street where one end zone was 91st Street and the other end zone was the alley, three complete for first down. He died after he jumped on a live grenade to save his buddies. I spent a lot of time wondering if I would have done the same thing in that situation. I wonder how long he had to think about it.

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Burning child – running on an unpaved road. Screaming. Black and white. On a personal note – my father didn’t actually serve in the Vietnam war or any war as he was let out after basic training for some minor medical issue along the lines of flat feet but his mother and sister inexplicably had “Vietnam veteran” put on his tombstone. . .true story.

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My dad was in vietnam when I was born. I didn't meet him until I was one.

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As the A-7 was hooked to the catapult and at full power on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier, the signal was given to launch but nothing happened. With the single engine jet screaming with all its energy, the sailor went under the aircraft to release a jammed pin and having successfully done that, he inadvertently stood up in such a manner that the aircraft’s air intake sucked him into the engine. The whole episode took less that 30 seconds and all that was left to send home to his family was one leg, from the knee down.

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I actually witnessed this happen and filmed it with my Super-8 movie camera. They took my film and I never gave it back, however they used it for training to emphasize what can happen when you don’t stay alert at every moment in that situation. It was not a pretty site. They ultimately scuttled the entire engine, into the water somewhere off the coast of Vietnam. This happened in 1971.

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Walter Chronkite daily evening news on a black and white tv... Burning Vietnamese villages... My parents cursing Nixon... My first demonstration in DC (in 6th grade) with my parents... Jane Fonda.... Weather Underground.... Napalm... Burning draft cards... War is not healthy for children and other living things poster in my room... Make love, not war

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Sometimes when my 5 yr old daughter stands up naked in the tub, that image of the girl fleeing a napalm bombing with her clothes burned off flashes through my mind. I try not to imagine being her mother. listening to the news every night about how many thousands of people were dying over there and wondering if my brother was one of them.

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I must've been about 5 years old. (I was born in 1965.) I remember frequently picking up and looking at my mom's paperback book (that was kept in the bathroom for bathroom reading!) that collected letters from children to Hanoi asking for the release of their fathers. I don't know what the title of the book was, but I was able to read the simpler words (in children's handwriting) and probably asked my mom to read me some. I understood that it was awful that these kids were without their dads and that they didn't know when they would see them again. Some awful man was keeping the dads from being able to go home, but I didn't know why.

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In 3rd grade a classmate Rosemary's dad was killed in Viet Nam. She ended up moving to be closer to her Grandmother. She had long straight hair, and I'll always remember the look on her face the last day I saw her at school - shy with a slight smile, but sad. A mysterious stream of blood and guts coming from the television in my mom and dad’s darkened bedroom. The only light in the room coming from the 5 o’clock news.

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Terror, fire, despair, heat, my cousin "never being the same" after coming back from the war, my friend's father, a Vietnam vet., drinking
himself to death......