Milestones

Milestones are funny. Some like birthdays are celebratory. Weddings. Births. Graduations. And then there are those we dread each year. Dates loved ones died. Dates of illnesses or accidents. For many combat veterans there are dates they never forget for the remaining years of their lives. Dates they surrendered their morality and faced the darkness of true war. Not those imaginary wars of the X-Box or the phony politicians talking about fighting for peace. Not those television wars where the battle gets wrapped up neatly in an hour. Movies like PRIVATE RYAN or PLATOON are mentioned as "good war movies". Why? Because they come close to capturing the sounds and sights of war as perceived by even guys like Oliver Stone, a veteran. But they don't capture the sounds or sights. They don't capture the smells of burnt flesh. Or the thick petroleum smell of napalm. Or the feel of the dead right at the moment of the last breath. The coldness of skin when the blood stops circulating. The tears of friends in the battle or parents, wives and husbands, children back home. The real wars are never captured except in the minds of those caught in the trap of blood and broken dreams. Even the worst expectations of a new grunt can't prepare them for the horrible reality of the movie captured by their brains to be played over again and again on sleepless nights. Until I became a parent, I never realized the nightmares of parents and loved ones waiting at home to hear word but not wanting to answer doors or phones. I still can't imagine the feelings a woman in the combat area has with the tiring and intense pressure of harassment or the memories of war and sexual trauma. And how could we who were the occupiers and aggressors ever know how the innocent victims of our actions feel? On Jan 30-31 I'll mark 44 years since the true beginning of my war, the beginning of the '68 Tet Offensive. I still have the old reel of the same sad movie running around in my mind and it never ends differently. Some years I remember more intensely. Those are the ones I try not to self medicate. My memories are always about young eighteen, nineteen or twenty something guys brought together for insane reasons, not patriotism or some noble cause. Those who died are truly "forever young" in my mind. But I'm always old in the memory even if I look young. I forget what it felt to be twenty. I'm not sure I ever was. Next thing I know, I'm 62. Don't get me wrong, I was one of the fortunate ones. I survived and found some happiness. Learned important lessons. Try to communicate them on occasion. But every year as the end of January comes around there has always been a part of me that didn't want to survive another milestone. Not to worry, though. I plan on surviving another one. I only wish so many of my young brothers and sisters didn't have to go through milestones such as these. I'm so damned tired of the realization so many humans around the globe have to have such memories because we never seem to learn. I remember looking into the faces of young troops at a local military base right before the Iraq war started. They stood across the wire of the gate apparently prepared to shoot me if I entered their base as an act of protest. That didn't phase me as much as the youthful faces I saw. My God, I thought....we are sending kids to fight our wars! It was a stupid thought because that dynamic never stops. We send kids to fight wars. And then their childhood is gone.