Story of a Veteran

Because it's Veteran's Day, and I love to talk about my father, a story.

"My dad was in Vietnam." And for most of my life, those five words summed up pretty much everything I knew about it.

It surprised me a little. Dad was a great storyteller. I mean, the man really knew how to work a room. If I ever needed to find him in a crowd, it was only a matter of following the people laughing the loudest. I always knew he'd be at the center of it, telling some Big Fish tale of how he killed a river snake with a rock from the shore hundreds of feet away, or how he'd been dragged down the hallway by the ear by countless Catholic school nuns, or how he hit his brother in the back with a dart playing William Tell and how, "He would've been fine if he just hadn't moved!"

The stories were great. (And to the chagrin of his brothers and countless Catholic school nuns, all true.) But on the subject of Vietnam, he was surprisingly quiet. He had stories of joining the army, and stories of the army's plans for him - which were pretty lofty, from what I understand. But he said almost nothing to me about his time in the war, and in the naiveté of childhood, I found that very strange. Vietnam seemed like a fascinating place, and enough time had passed by the time I came along that I assumed he'd be wide open to talking about his "adventures" in the war.

As I grew up, my father did begin to open up a little more. In my late teens/early twenties I think he began to see me less as his child and more as a friend, and it was only then that I managed to ask him the right questions about Vietnam. He recounted a few tales - but even then, only things I always considered to be on the fringe of the whole story. About people he met and things that happened - one particularly poignant story of how his platoon killed an elephant, which even though he shared the story in an entertaining manner, I could tell it was something that never sat right with him. My father, reluctant admirer of creatures big and small.

It was finally my mother who opened my eyes to how deeply the war had affected him. On a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in DC, she told me, he had cried openly at what he found there. I could count the number of times I'd seen my father cry on one hand - one FINGER, if I'm being honest. And yet, this thing, decades after the fact, could still bring that man to his knees. It was no real wonder he never talked about it... An entire other lifetime couldn't erase what had happened there.

My father was so young when he entered the war. It's so easy to forget that. I'm more than 10 years older now than he was when he joined the army. And though he's not with us any more, I personally credit his death in small part to that nightmare of a war. Exposure to Agent Orange left him with a wealth of health problems that followed him his entire life. As though the mental scarring weren't enough.

I am proud of my father still for his time served. He joined the army of his own volition, did well, and got out. He went on to create a family and another life for himself outside of the military, but he could have easily stayed on and been a success. He taught me respect and appreciation for those who continue to serve, and it's nothing but respect and appreciation that I have. "Happy" Veteran's Day seems like a flippant thing to say when I consider those who fought alongside my father, whose names he found on that wall. So, instead, a "Respectful" Veteran's Day, and a heartfelt thank you for those serving where many of us could not.