cincibuck
You kids stay off my lawn!
April 29, 1972, the day Saigon fell. I remember walking around a condo complex in Hilliard, west Columbus, on a gray, damp, late afternoon in '72, my mind deep in thoughts about Vietnam while church bells tolled, joylessly, in the background. Twenty-five years later I was celebrating spring break, golfing at Ft. Knox, staying in a cabin in Otter Creek Park. Pre-dinner cocktail hour, a glass of wine down and a second one in hand when NPR ran a story on the fall of Saigon and I began to weep. After dinner I sat down and wrote the first draft of this:
T - Shirt
I bought a T-shirt at a tent next to The Wall in November of 1984.
Across the top, in bold letters, it read:
PARTICIPANT
South East Asia War Games
And underneath, a medal and the words
SECOND PLACE
There was a map of Vietnam in the background.
A line ran through it like the bar in the middle of a fraction,
cutting the land in half.
I?d look at the map before putting the shirt on
starting at that place we called the DMZ,
where a fraternity brother,
Marine Lieutenant Al Lofton,
was shot down, his chopper exploding into flames.
Dead less than thirty days into his tour,
leaving a war bride back in Toledo.
A dot that marked Da Nang..
where my neighbor and fellow college prankster,
Specialist Bob Fox,
spent his nights listening to the enemy talk to their soldiers in the South.
When he came home the jokes and laughter were gone from his voice,
replaced with a bitter cynicism.
The thin central part of the country,
the area where my junior high teammate,
Private First Class Doug Knott,
was killed.
I remember how the coach used to scream,
"Get after it Doug! Be aggressive out there!"
But Doug could not find it in himself.
I still wonder what he was doing with a rifle in his hands.
And then down to Lai Khe and Saigon where I spent my year.
I thought the shirt was funny.
It helped me laugh at things that were too painful to remember;
the stuff they didn?t tell us in basic training:
flag draped coffins,
the wounded with their morphine faces,
the way the sight of a legless boot gets inside your head.
how a year of boredom,
punctuated by seconds of terror,
becomes the most important in your life.
A friend, a well-meaning war protester, wanted the shirt.
She wanted the "Second Place,"
the I-told-you-so part,
I wouldn't give her the shirt,
but I couldn't wear it anymore either.
T - Shirt
I bought a T-shirt at a tent next to The Wall in November of 1984.
Across the top, in bold letters, it read:
PARTICIPANT
South East Asia War Games
And underneath, a medal and the words
SECOND PLACE
There was a map of Vietnam in the background.
A line ran through it like the bar in the middle of a fraction,
cutting the land in half.
I?d look at the map before putting the shirt on
starting at that place we called the DMZ,
where a fraternity brother,
Marine Lieutenant Al Lofton,
was shot down, his chopper exploding into flames.
Dead less than thirty days into his tour,
leaving a war bride back in Toledo.
A dot that marked Da Nang..
where my neighbor and fellow college prankster,
Specialist Bob Fox,
spent his nights listening to the enemy talk to their soldiers in the South.
When he came home the jokes and laughter were gone from his voice,
replaced with a bitter cynicism.
The thin central part of the country,
the area where my junior high teammate,
Private First Class Doug Knott,
was killed.
I remember how the coach used to scream,
"Get after it Doug! Be aggressive out there!"
But Doug could not find it in himself.
I still wonder what he was doing with a rifle in his hands.
And then down to Lai Khe and Saigon where I spent my year.
I thought the shirt was funny.
It helped me laugh at things that were too painful to remember;
the stuff they didn?t tell us in basic training:
flag draped coffins,
the wounded with their morphine faces,
the way the sight of a legless boot gets inside your head.
how a year of boredom,
punctuated by seconds of terror,
becomes the most important in your life.
A friend, a well-meaning war protester, wanted the shirt.
She wanted the "Second Place,"
the I-told-you-so part,
I wouldn't give her the shirt,
but I couldn't wear it anymore either.
