It’s become a habit,
seeing these old guys around town
as they shuffle through stores
with their Vietnam caps or T-shirts.
I can’t help myself as I ask,
“when were you in Vietnam?”
Don’t know why I ask
except, maybe, to strike up a conversation
about those days
which are ancient history to today’s youth
yet, to me, seem like yesterday.
We were draftees dragged into a reality
we wanted nothing to do with,
confronting enemies we had not created
and losing friends over a nebulous cause,
one created by members of that “Greatest Generation”
who failed to notice that the world they knew
had changed
and that we could not ever win
these military excursions with such flimsy excuses..
These soldiers and sailors are proud of their service
and rightly so in spite of the protests,
and the antiwar rallies of the 60’s and early 70’s.
It’s a fraternity of aging warriors
who become instant friends,
perhaps, to heal the wounds that were never treated.