Thank You For Your Service

I’m usually shy and introverted, so I seldom start up any conversation with someone I’ve never seen before, but sometimes, when I see a soldier or vet in line for a coffee and bagel I’ll forgo my personality deficiencies and at least say hello, where did you serve, are you on duty and oh yeah, I served in the Army last century in Vietnam. That usually stops the conversation, I mean, it’s all over. I’m supposed to say something as I’m courteous to strangers in fatigues, but every time I hear it, I cringe as I am deeply conflicted, okay, even ashamed at what my “service” actually amounted to. This happens a lot. It happens every time I visit with a soldier no matter how brief our time is together. I’m convinced it is part of a day of propaganda in basic training, or exit training, as every single soldier has said the same thing. But it’s getting worse as now I’m hearing it from the spouse of a soldier. I’m trying hard to remember any of my basic or advanced training in Missouri or Oklahoma in 1968. Nope, nothing….no sergeant ever said, when you leave the service and are still alive, be sure to say “thank you for your service” to anyone who says yes I was in the Army (or Navy or Marines or Air Force). No one in South Vietnam every said this as part of the introductory scare-the-living-bejesus-out-of-you with spider filament trip lines and balls of spears swinging out of nowhere if you were stupid enough to not see what’s coming. Nope, no messages of thankfulness there, either. None while we would occasionally take in mortar rounds at night, or day from Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese soldiers. Nope, not even when the company I was in was overrun in June 1969. Nope, nobody said anything like thank you for your service. The stewardesses on the flight home didn’t mention it. While serving my last few days in the States on an Army base on the West Coast, no one ever pulled me aside and said, be sure to say “thank you for your service “ if you ever talk with a living veteran. Here’s the message I did receive on returning home in 1970: Baby killer, murderer, but the other more descriptive terms I’ve since completely forgotten in some kind of PTSD of homecoming receptions. Perhaps this is why the Armed Forces decided to take a positive step, perhaps sometime in the 1990’s, and have vets tell vets something good, like thank you for your service. Just to clarify, I can’t find any of my service awards, pins, badges, fatigues or anything else I was allowed to take home with me. They’re just gone. So are most of my memories except those that put me into a mild state of shock and disbelief that I’m actually back on some hill numbered 477 somewhere in what once was South Vietnam. I’ve even lost all the pictures taken of my buddies sitting on top of bunkers looking out into the mountain ranges that stretched all the way to Cambodia. So it made complete sense that I unconsciously stopped telling anyone who I met that I had once “served” in Vietnam. My service was calculating the range and azimuths, as well as how many powder bags needed for a 105 Howitzer round to explode on suspected North Vietnamese. I’ve never tried to add up how many rounds per day times months in Nam that I actually calculated to fire on the enemy. Nope, I didn’t want to be thanked for this kind of service. Only later much later when learning about Hatha Yoga did I start to listen to my instructor read from a favorite book of hers by a Vietnamese priest known as Thich Nhat Hanh. Like a loud Buddhist gong reverberating for days in my head, I realized I could have inadvertently killed one of the world’s most revered Buddhist teachers. I’ve been in a state of regret ever since, though I’ll admit I don’t think about Vietnam as it’s now a distant nightmare that awakens me only with unexpected “triggers” that come out of nowhere, perhaps as a Huey helicopter buzzing my little village in Wisconsin, or another viewing of “Born on the Fourth of July” or any other Hollywood version of what happened over there. Nope, I’d rather just say hello, how are you, where’d you serve and can I get that coffee for you?