5:41 p.m. - Wednesday, Feb. 05, 2003
Ms Leslie Can't Help Driving in the Mirror Today
I�m coming back. I really am.
In spite of my best intentions, I think I let my anniversary carry me away. Actually, it�s not my anniversary of being wounded. That�s today. I think it�s the anniversary that comes just a day or so before that.
I have two distinct holes in my memory. One of those, I�m still not able to talk about in the open. But the other, I think I can start to address.
I have long remembered taking over a marine position not far from Quang Tri, north of Hue. I can remember the sandy soil and the fact that Craig and I shared an excellent deep foxhole for several nights running. I can also remember being caught on the open, inside our perimeter sometime just after dark by a rocket attack. I remember it because I dove into a shallow ditch-like hole that someone had begun but not finished digging. As I did, I felt someone land on top of me and for a moment, we struggled; each trying to get under the other. After that, for years, my only memory has been of sometime the following day. I can remember gathering equipment off the ground and stacking it near where the helicopters would land.
When I finally attended a reunion of my old army unit a couple of years ago, I was stunned to find a couple of the guys who had been there at the same time I was. We were able to talk about some shared memories. And then my former X.O. related to me what happened on the night I can�t remember. According to him, our perimeter was overrun that night, with the NVA force breaking through first platoon, my platoon�s position. He told me how they didn�t realize at first that the perimeter had been breached, and that it wasn�t until they called for flares dropped inside the perimeter that they were able to see and engage the enemy soldiers that were attacking us from inside.
I�ve tried not to remember that night. Beyond confirming and verifying that I was there, I have this tremendous desire not to remember. But little by little, I get fragments coming back. And I get a horrible panicky feeling about the whole thing.
I remember losing my rifle. No, more correctly, I remember having lost it. I don�t remember losing it, but I do remember being without it and feeling very desperate to find it or another. And I remember taking another� from someone who was dead.
But I don�t remember anything about firing my rifle or any kind of fighting I might have done close up. I don�t know who was in that partial hole with me or how it ended, or how I got from that moment to the moment I was picking up canteens and rifles and helmets. But I�m starting to have feelings that the struggle was for more than shelter from the rockets, and that thought disturbs me a lot. I wonder what happened, yet I don�t want to know what happened.
Being wounded 35 years ago today was traumatic. It was painful and sad. But I�m only now beginning to realize that it wasn�t the most traumatic thing. The most traumatic thing was a terror I haven�t been able to acknowledge, much less deal with for all these years. And now, when it shouldn�t really matter any more anyway, I find the feelings and some confusing and disturbing images returning to me� and I don�t want them.
I know too that this will pass. I need to remember my own advice and really try not to look too hard in the rear-view mirror. It�s just hard on certain dates, and today is one of them.
The entry above has been sitting on my computer all day. Since I wrote it, Ann has been by and taken me around town, to lunch at the Tres Amigos, where I indulged in a big margarita, and to Sam�s Club, where she bought a new TV. It was good for me to spend time with someone else today. We laughed a little and fussed like we always do.
For those who continue to read my diary, please, just for today, don�t write to me to say thank you for being in the military. I�m humbly grateful for all those who have said exactly that in the last few years, but today isn�t about that for me. Today�s about talking to myself more than it is about anything else. It�s not about wanting recognition, or thanks, or sympathy.
What it IS about, maybe, is just a simple understanding that not all the damage from wars and other violence comes with blood, and not all the damage ever heals. It�s a serious business for young people to be called to. Too serious to be asked in the name of better business or a grand career as a military leader. Now I see on the TV, youngsters serving in the very same division that I once served and my heart breaks for them. They�re so proud and so determined to carry out their mission. They don�t realize yet what price they will pay in their service.
I love them, and I support them. I think this time our leaders are right. But I hope we all realize that some of these young men will come home broken too. They�ll live out their lives running from the shadows of memories and feelings and never knowing why. And in the end, they�ll realize too that they gave their lives in battle, just as did their friends who didn�t return home. I think that�s very sad.
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