Even though my dad doesn’t talk very much about the war, I still know he went through a lot in Vietnam. I remember when my dad told me he had been shot twice in Vietnam. The First time he had been shot during a battle by Tri Binh, he said his friend “Rat” Kiley, the medic, was there for him. “Rat” was a god send he said. Dad told me that during the battle, rat would come and check on him ever one and a while. He said that took a lot of courage. I knew dad had a lot of respect for his friend “Rat”. Sooner that later though Kiley got wounded and was shipped out. Dad said a new medic took his place. His name was Bobby Jorgenson. When my dad was shot for the second time, he said that he almost died of shock because, as he put it, the SOB was incompetent and green. He said that he Bobby didn’t know how to treat the wound and half of his butt rotted off because of it. Dad said he spent his whole recovery thinking about how he was going to get the SOB back. So evidently my dad played a trick on Bobby to get him back, but it didn’t go as planed. In the end, dad said he and Jorgenson had reconciled their differences and became friends.

I remember my day took me to Vietnam the summer of 1998. We toured and had a great time but there was one outing that has stuck in my mind ever since. Dad said we had to stop at this one place before we went back to our hotel. I didn’t want to go and pouted all the way there. I remember us stopping at this nasty big field that smelt like feces and rotting human flesh. It was basically a big, poopy, muddy, water whole. We sat their in the jeep with the interpreter staring at the field for what seemed like hours. Then my dad got out of the jeep and walked over to the edge of the muddy nasty field. He just stood there. After a while I got tired of sitting in the jeep, and got out to go stand by dad. I asked him if we could go but he said not yet. He went back to the jeep and got a bag wit his friend Kiowa’s moccasins in it. What happened next it couldn’t even believe, he took of his clothes and waded into the muddy, poopy, water with Kiowa’s moccasins. When he was in the middle, he sat down in the water! I remember him talking to himself out there. He shoved his friends shoes in the sludge, and then waded out. I’ll never forget.

i remember once asking dad if he ever killed someone.

he didn't say anything for a long time. it made

me wonder. I'm sure dad killed someone though. i mean,

isn't that what you do in wars? plus, my teacher back then

said he probably did. she told me that every solder kills,

and that's what makes them bad. i was young, i

didn't understand at the time. i didn't think my dad

was bad though. mom always told me that he went

over to Vietnam, because he loved America and wanted to

keep Communism from coming to here. i always wondered what

communism even was. i didn't understand why the president just

didn't keep it out. but now that I'm older, i

can wrap my head around the Vietnam. from what i

can tell, it seems that Vietnam was a political war

more than anything.

Wow another story about my dad i Vietnam remember thinking. all i heed was story's about that war. all mom did was sit at home drinking lemonade on the porch and and doing laundry waiting for dad to come home. how boring! i didn't understand when mom told me people were marching up and down streets with posters and signs. one day my mom said when she was walking home, a lady stopped her and told her that my daddy was a bad person and killed babies. she said that she said people like that go to hell and mom would too. my mom said that everybody thought it was the soldiers fault that there are Vietnamese people are moving here, and that the war was wrong. she said they also thought that the solders should stay their after all they did that was bad.

New Blog!!

wow im so exited to start this blog! woo-ho