Blog 133 – 10.7.15

When I was a little boy like it is for many little boys my mother reigned supreme as undisputed queen of my world. I remember Mother’s Day always meant my best drawing and seeking throughout the neighborhood for wild flowers to pick a bouquet for mom. There are many beautiful flowers that people cultivate and that florists arrange but I have always thought wild flowers were the prettiest probably because my mama made such a fuss over my bunches of wild flowers like they were orchids or the most beautiful long stemmed roses.

In the early 1960’s many younger and perhaps wiser soul’s who saw through the patriotic slogans to the money making schemes behind the war in Vietnam were busy with sit ins and singing songs to protest the war. I don’t think we have seen such a wide spread opposition to war before or since. I was not a part of that movement. Perhaps because I was too young or because I was raised in the sleepy South, Tennessee in particular where young men were taught to answer their country’s call no questions asked. Perhaps that is why older men let the young men fight and die to make other men rich because they don’t ask a lot of questions.

Did you know that the Vietnam War created more millionaires in the United States than there had ever been before. I served in the U.S. Army in South Vietnam in 1970 and no one wishes more than I that I could believe that the lives of over fifty thousand U.S. military personnel and close to a million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died for any other reason than to make more millionaires, but I do not. No smarter than I was at nineteen years young I had a hard time believing that any vital U.S. Interests other than Business was served by our presence on the other side of the world. I know many of my brothers will disagree with my assessment of that particular war and all wars. But they always end the same way with people sitting across a table signing agreements. And somebody gets richer blowing things up then even richer building them back. Even the marble monument makers get rich.

One of the early protest songs of that war was, Where Have All The Flowers Gone. And the lyrical answer was, “Gone to grave yards everyone. When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn? The rich people are rattling the swords again but they won’t fight and die and few if any of their children will fight and die. Oh, perhaps a few with political ambitions. Bill Clinton and Barak Obama are the only two Presidents in my life time that did not wear the uniform of this country and George W. Bush was in the National Guard and missed a lot of meetings. Maybe at least the richer more affluent among us are learning what a sixties song says better than I, “War, good God y’all, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it. Say it again.”

Your friend, fellow traveler, and war weary Vietnam Vet,
David White