The Mark of War

“People didn’t want to remember Vietnam. The friends that I had...I could no longer connect with. For two years I’d either been in training or been in war. The things that seemed important to other people weren’t important to me. I felt like I was about 55 years old. I feel younger now than I did then.”

“Vietnam was the defining moment in everybody’s life who went. How Vietnam affects you, I won’t know until the smoke settles, until the last day. I think it affects me a little everyday, but I don’t dwell on it.”

“He was obviously really scared. He was trembling. And all of us were scared. It seemed like everyone that I saw, I could see that in them.”

“When you go through that, nothing can erase it. It can’t be erased. You can’t erase it with pills, medication,...or good whisky. It doesn’t go away ...and I’ve done it all. It doesn’t go away.”

“The helicopters took us out as a company out into the jungle. That’s where they dumped you out — in the middle of nowhere. And you did searches and missions, and we’d stay out four, five, six weeks at a time. When it was quiet, and nothing going, on you could just hear the helicopters leaving and that was the loneliest feeling in the world.”

“I worry about the new guys. Even today, with these wars, they’re coming home in a lot worse shape and I can see that they’re doing the same things we did. They’re coming home and taking drugs or drinking and numbing out. They don’t want to accept the fact that they need help.”

“It was kind of a frightening experience for me, because I had just turned 18 years old and I had never been anywhere outside of the state of Texas. So going over there, it was lonely and it was frightening to me. I’ll admit it.”