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>Don Poss >Expression: >Post Icon: >Subject: Re: Memorial Day Story - Catch The Wind.... > >Harry: One follow up observation regarding Catch The >Wind, and your bulletin board response: “It makes me >wonder, will it ever get any better? Will I always >break down and cry when I remember my radioman buddy >who left the safety of our bunker to find our duty >replacements and consequently died in my place when >the mortar barrage suddenly started? Probably.” > >I got to thinking about that and it reminded me of the >news a few years ago. TV crews were at Normandy beach >with several of the old WWII veterans who landed there >60 years earlier on June 6, 1944. The vets were >pointing out their landing, that many were sea sick, >the floating bodies, and running ashore past wounded >and dead. One described how they took a terrible >pounding by German machine gunners, and how finally >they overran them. The vet was very strong voiced and >descriptive, and when he pointed to where he went >passed the dead Germans he described his buddies, >whose spirits remain at Normandy to this day. His >voice suddenly froze with emotion, and you could see >in his tearful eyes that he was seeing that battle >before him as it once was, with his friends laying >dead. > >I realized that if the WWII veteran, sixty years after >the war, could not talk about the war without publicly >grieving without shame, then Vietnam will never “get >any better” for us, just as his memories of war would >never “get any better” for that WWII veteran. I did >not feel comfortable with that realization, and begin >trying to find the answer, the solution, for “making >it get better.” My thoughts on that prompted writing a >story called “Airplane Hill” >(http://www.vspa.com/dn-poss-airplane-hill-1966.asp), >which in part brought me to remember my returning home >after DERSOS, and the realization “Vietnam was driving >me crazy. I couldn’t let it go -- It wouldn’t let go >of me. I realized if I didn’t get hold of Vietnam -- >Vietnam would indeed get hold of me... forever.” >Nothing has convinced me otherwise from that >understanding. In part, that is why I started >War-Stories.com and VSPA.com in 1995, and continue >with both to this day. > >Don Poss
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