Forty-Three Years of Aftermath

     Some things a man just can't leave alone and some things just won't leave a man alone.  You serve a full tour as a grunt in Vietnam and have nightmares for the rest of your life.  You get pulled out early and have to live with guilt.  Seems like if you fight in a war, and I mean serve it as a grunt, you're damned. Simple as that.
     When I returned and in all the years that followed I never seemed to fit in.  I was anti-war.  Even marched and demonstrated but was a member of no organization.  Not a member of the Vets against the war, just wasn't my cup of tea.  Attended a meeting or two with the old line protesters and they seemed to be arrogant assholes of the first order.
     On the jobs I held I seemed to see life through a different peep hole than the people around me.  Outspoken? You betcha. Always seemed to have my ass in a bind with management.  But I went to work, did my job and did it well.  That was a given.  When you're stirrin' up shit you best cover all the flanks.
     But all that is the subject for another story.  Short and sweet, there was a time in my life when I had to do a lot of things I didn't want to do and had my life on the line for a half year.  Unlike a lot of others, I was lucky, or blessed, and have had a good life.  As I see it, not a one of us is a hero.  We just do what we have to do and with a little luck, wake up the next morning and do it again.  That doesn't really cover it all but it'll have to do for the moment.