Reading for Insight after 45 years

              Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about his decision to comply with the notice from his draft board, though he was no more a soldier than “a man in the moon.”  Within a few months, he and Company A were assigned to an area in southeast Vietnam. Their losses and their lives while in Vietnam, provide the characters/individuals for the stories of memory, imagination, catharsis, and some semblance of truth. 

June, 1968- Tim O’Brien’s draft notice arrived.

The little I know about the Vietnam War can be summarized somewhere between the grief-filled silence within the Henderson State student union and the deafening WHOPWHOPWHOPWHOP of helicopter blades providing background for the evening news report.

            One of HSTC’s ROTC commissioned 2^nd lieutenants was listed under casualties in the morning newspaper that was being passed from table to table. He had been a handsome fellow with fraternity leadership skills and a beautiful sorority girl for his bride He died, anyway.

            Stories and letters, news reports from reporters in the trenches catapulted legions of soon to be college graduates into the long lines to join the National Guard or the US Reserves. Grades stayed high because repeated appearances on the academic probation list brought an immediate exit along with an invitation to enlist rather than be drafted.

            My ex-husband's ability to improvise and exaggerate his skill on the typewriter sealed his next four years in a Reserve Ordinance Unit. His brother enlisted and became a door-gunner on a rescue helicopter. I had briefly dated a guy who said he was a Vietnam veteran, in college with the GI Bill, having just returned from Nam and serving with the elite Green Berets, a fact I doubt. My best friend’s husband spent his years in Vietnam as a Texas A&M commissioned officer. I never asked Pat or Bill or Jim how they felt or what they experienced. Vietnam was mysterious, malevolent, and murky in politics. 

            My brother's age group was part of the draft lottery and his birth date was drawn in the last numbers, the war ending before “his number came up.” He had once told Mother he did not want to grow up and go to war and get killed. She said she’d drive him to Canada herself. 

           I watched the final caskets come home and watched the war declared "over" 1975. I've participated in Welcome Home, Vietnam Veterans activities and paid respect at the Vietnam Wall memorial but after reading O'Brien's collection, I find myself embarrassed by naivete.

        Returning veterans did not want to talk and, it's highly probable I did not want to know.