Vietnam
| March 31st, 2008A few weeks ago I made a new friend. She told me about life being married to a soldier in Vietnam.
Naomi: It was a very different time. These days, the country supports the troops. It wasn’t like that when my husband was in Vietnam. Troops were yelled at, spit on, all kinds of things when they returned.
I lived in Memphis at the time. I didn’t tell anyone where my husband was. I just let people think I was a single mom raising 3 kids on my own. I knew army wives who were recieving hate phone calls.
People called them “baby killers”
Me: Why? Where did that term come from? What sparked that?
Naomi: Well, there was a picture that came out of Vietnam. It was a picture of a of a young girl running down the road, her clothes burned off by the napalm, screaming in horror. People reacted.
I knew the Vietnam War was unpopular. But, I had never considered what it was like in the U.S. for the spouse of a soldier fighting in Vietnam. The war in Iraq is unpopular, but nothing like what Naomi described to me. I wonder, could it get that bad?
My Papa (mom’s father) fought in Vietnam as a Marine and when I was younger I couldn’t believe when she told me how people reacted when they came home. They weren’t honored with crowds of on-lookers and people thankful for their service other than their family members. They were threatened by protesters. It made me sad that my Papa had gone over there and risked his life for his country, whatever the cause, and he and his family were being “blamed” for it. It makes me sad. When he passed three years ago, he had a military funeral and I’ve never felt more patriotic than when the Marines folded the flag and knelt down to give to my Grandma: “Ma’am, on behalf of the President of the United States of America…” I didn’t hear the rest because I and everyone else was weeping.
Wow. That’s really crazy. I thought some other folks might have heard similar stories. It struck me because I was just unaware of all the stuff that went down. I didn’t know that the soldiers were being targeted.
My best friends dad was a Marine 2 tours in Vietnam and to this day sometimes he will wake up in the middle of the night screaming out. It is haunting and sad. He has some truly horrific memories of there and coming home to hatred.
Susan and Ryan, in my Papa’s last days, he was plagued by night terrors and bad memories. I wouldn’t call it shell shock, but he was definitely having horrible memories while dying of cancer. It may have been survivor’s guilt and it may have been the disappointment of his fellow countrymen and women who didn’t support the military. Anyway, he was a brave man, an awesome man. He used to show us slides of his tours in Vietnam, Okinawa, and the Philippines. We loved hearing his stories and he always remember which men came home and which men didn’t. It was definitely a brotherhood.