Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam Page #6

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It"s ridiculous.

I seem to be crying

all the time lately.

I hate this place.

This is now

the seventh month

of death, destruction

and misery.

I'm tired of going

to sleep and listening

to outgoing and incoming

rockets,

mortars, artillery.

I'm sick

of facing every day

a new bunch of children

ripped to pieces.

They're just kids.

18, 19.

Their whole lives

ahead of them cut off.

I'm sick to death of it.

I've got to get

out of here.

Peace, Linda."

Kent State University

in Ohio has had campus violence

for three nights,

causing the National Guard

to be called in.

And today the guardsmen opened fire

on the students, killing four of them,

two young men

and two young women.

The National Guard was called in over

the weekend by Governor James Rhodes.

Today when 1500 students

started an antiwar rally

on the commons,

the guardsmen

surrounded them.

Then when some students

started throwing rocks,

the guard moved in

with tear-gas.

"Dear Editor...

This letter is

from the men

who daily risk their lives

in Vietnam.

In regards to the recent killings

at Kent State University,

we are... we are sorrowful

and mourn the dead.

But it grieves us no end

and shoots pain into our hearts

is that the, quote,

biggest upset is over

the kids who got killed

at Kent State, unquote!

So why don't your hearts

cry out and shed a tear

for the 40-plus thousand

red-blooded Americans

and brave, fearless,

loyal men

who have

given their lives?

During my past 18 months

in hell,

I've held my friends during

their last gasping seconds

before they succumbed

to death.

Do not judge us wrongly.

We are not pleading

for your praise.

All we ask is

for our great nation to support us,

to help us end the war.

Damn it!

Save our lives."

At Clark Air Force Base

in the Philippines

there were no speeches,

no bands, no bunting.

Homecoming was gentle.

The first man off was

Captain Jeremiah Denton,

a man who had been

in prison so long

his own teenage son

had grown up,

gone to Vietnam himself,

served and gone home again.

And only now was his father

coming home

after eight years.

We are honored

to have had

the opportunity

to serve our country

under difficult

circumstances.

We are profoundly grateful

to our Commander-in-Chief

and to our nation

for this day.

- God bless America.

- God bless America.

"Dear Bill,

I came to this

black wall again

to see

and touch your name:

William R. Stocks.

And as I do,

I wonder if anyone ever

stops to realize

that next to your name

on this black wall

is your mother's heart...

a heart broken

15 years ago today

when you lost your life

in Vietnam.

And as I look

at your name,

I think of how many, many times

I used to wonder

how scared and homesick

you must have been

in that strange country

called Vietnam.

And if and how

it might have changed you,

for you were the most

happy-go-lucky kid in the world,

hardly ever sad

or unhappy.

And until the day I die,

I will see you

as you laughed at me

even when I was

very mad at you,

and the next thing I knew

we were laughing together.

But on this past

New Year's Day,

I talked by phone to a friend of yours

from Michigan

who spent

your last Christmas

and the last four months

of your life with you.

Jim told me how you died,

for he was there

and saw

the helicopter crash.

He told me how your jobs

were like sitting ducks.

They would send you men out

to draw the enemy into the open

and then they would send in

the big guns

and planes to take over.

He told me how after a while

over there

instead of a yellow streak,

the men got a mean streak

down their backs.

Each day

the streak got bigger

and the men became meaner.

Everyone but you, Bill.

He said you how stayed the same

happy-go-lucky guy

that you were

when you arrived in Vietnam.

And he said how

you of all people

should have never been

the one to die.

How lucky you were

to have him for a friend.

And how lucky he was

to have had you.

They tell me the letters I write to you

and leave here at this memorial

are waking others up

to the fact

that there is still

much pain left

from the Vietnam War.

But this I know,

I would rather to have had

you for 21 years

and all the pain

that goes with losing you

then never to have had you

at all.

Mom."

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