Jack Estes Vietnam Vet,
I don't know what's making me crazier, the war or the protesters.
Sometimes it seems like a hundred years have passed since I fought in Vietnam. But now it seems like yesterday. As our armies gather at Iraq's borders, I'm feeling the same kind of awful dread I once had as a young soldier. Back then the battlefield was green with billows of black smoke rising from the jungle. Today it's sand and cities. Weapons have changed, the terror of combat remains the same.
I was with Kilo Company, the Third Marines and we called ourselves the Third Heard.
Hundreds of us were waiting alongside an airfield, blasted out at the base of the mountains and made of mud and slats of corrugated steel. We were waiting to be choptered into battle. Our squad was lying on our packs, loaded up with machine gun rounds, rifles, grenades, battle dressing and body bags. Time slowed, everything seemed colorless. Fear was covered by bad jokes or spilled into last-minute letters home.
At 18 I could hear my heart thump and feel my stomach knot. I didn't want to die. My buddy Gurney smoked Pall Malls while I worried about being brave. All I really wanted was to go home. Perhaps we all did. And maybe all those kids lined up at Iraq's doorstep are thinking and feeling the same kinds of things. They're gripping rifles, saying prayers and asking buddies to go home with their bodies.
I remember looking at Gurney with his blond hair and white teeth. He had half of a smile turning in his face and looked so young. Even though I was surrounded by my brothers I felt alone. I felt like I was outside my body and imagined being shot in the face. Like most of our boys today, I had never killed anything before, least of all another soldier. And so I watch the Iraq reports, wringing my hands and feeling confused.
What is clear is the war is on us and nothing will prevent it. Not experts debating on CNN or all the French patriots in the world. Nothing can stop this war. Not fear or politicians or young soldiers with dreams in their eyes. The machine is rolling and soon the shouts of antiwar fervor will be ground under the tracks of tanks barreling toward Baghdad.
In 1993 my wife and children and I went back to Vietnam on a healing and humanitarian mission. We delivered medical and educational supplies to hospitals and remote villages and toys to children wherever they were. I worked through some pain as we made our way through the country and up to Hanoi. On my last night I met with three former colonels in the North Vietnamese Army. Each of them had spent 40 years fighting the French, Americans and Chinese. We talked about battles and troops and nightmares. They explained the terror of B-52s pounding their positions and the quake and thunder and concussion as bodies blew through the air. Napalm was worst, they said, bursting into orange fireballs that turned humans into charcoal.
We sipped tea and it was quiet for a while. Then I asked: What had kept them fighting when we seemed to have won every major battle? They explained that after the 1968 Tet Offensive they felt the war was lost, their soldiers defeated. The only thing that gave them hope was the antiwar protests going on back in the United States. They felt if they could hold on, that public opinion in the United States would bring down our government's will to resist.
Gurney died in that war more than 30 years ago, and for a long time I hated the protesters more than those who actually killed him. It was hard to see their side. Back then I never met a Marine who appreciated that kind of thing. We used to think, "Why not send us a letter or cookies in the mail?" We used to say, "If you flash the enemy a peace sign, he'll just put a bullet in your head."
I know it is more complicated than that. But when I hear about the plans of protest and see the placards of disdain, it makes me churn inside. It's time to put aside our fractured feelings and beliefs. It's time to support our sons and daughters, for carrying the load for those who can't, and for those who are unwilling.
I don't know what's making me crazier, the war or the protesters.
Sometimes it seems like a hundred years have passed since I fought in Vietnam. But now it seems like yesterday. As our armies gather at Iraq's borders, I'm feeling the same kind of awful dread I once had as a young soldier. Back then the battlefield was green with billows of black smoke rising from the jungle. Today it's sand and cities. Weapons have changed, the terror of combat remains the same.
I was with Kilo Company, the Third Marines and we called ourselves the Third Heard.
Hundreds of us were waiting alongside an airfield, blasted out at the base of the mountains and made of mud and slats of corrugated steel. We were waiting to be choptered into battle. Our squad was lying on our packs, loaded up with machine gun rounds, rifles, grenades, battle dressing and body bags. Time slowed, everything seemed colorless. Fear was covered by bad jokes or spilled into last-minute letters home.
At 18 I could hear my heart thump and feel my stomach knot. I didn't want to die. My buddy Gurney smoked Pall Malls while I worried about being brave. All I really wanted was to go home. Perhaps we all did. And maybe all those kids lined up at Iraq's doorstep are thinking and feeling the same kinds of things. They're gripping rifles, saying prayers and asking buddies to go home with their bodies.
I remember looking at Gurney with his blond hair and white teeth. He had half of a smile turning in his face and looked so young. Even though I was surrounded by my brothers I felt alone. I felt like I was outside my body and imagined being shot in the face. Like most of our boys today, I had never killed anything before, least of all another soldier. And so I watch the Iraq reports, wringing my hands and feeling confused.
What is clear is the war is on us and nothing will prevent it. Not experts debating on CNN or all the French patriots in the world. Nothing can stop this war. Not fear or politicians or young soldiers with dreams in their eyes. The machine is rolling and soon the shouts of antiwar fervor will be ground under the tracks of tanks barreling toward Baghdad.
In 1993 my wife and children and I went back to Vietnam on a healing and humanitarian mission. We delivered medical and educational supplies to hospitals and remote villages and toys to children wherever they were. I worked through some pain as we made our way through the country and up to Hanoi. On my last night I met with three former colonels in the North Vietnamese Army. Each of them had spent 40 years fighting the French, Americans and Chinese. We talked about battles and troops and nightmares. They explained the terror of B-52s pounding their positions and the quake and thunder and concussion as bodies blew through the air. Napalm was worst, they said, bursting into orange fireballs that turned humans into charcoal.
We sipped tea and it was quiet for a while. Then I asked: What had kept them fighting when we seemed to have won every major battle? They explained that after the 1968 Tet Offensive they felt the war was lost, their soldiers defeated. The only thing that gave them hope was the antiwar protests going on back in the United States. They felt if they could hold on, that public opinion in the United States would bring down our government's will to resist.
Gurney died in that war more than 30 years ago, and for a long time I hated the protesters more than those who actually killed him. It was hard to see their side. Back then I never met a Marine who appreciated that kind of thing. We used to think, "Why not send us a letter or cookies in the mail?" We used to say, "If you flash the enemy a peace sign, he'll just put a bullet in your head."
I know it is more complicated than that. But when I hear about the plans of protest and see the placards of disdain, it makes me churn inside. It's time to put aside our fractured feelings and beliefs. It's time to support our sons and daughters, for carrying the load for those who can't, and for those who are unwilling.