V.
K. Inman served as 3rd Platoon Commander of Echo Company, 2nd
Btn, 5th Marines from November 1969 to March 1970 near Da Nang.
V. K. kept
himself busy as a teacher for the deaf, a novelist, and has remained active in
the Marine Corps Reserve where he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. V. K.
published a booklet of his poetry and audio tape entitled: Our Most Noble
Victory?Poems on the Vietnam Experience, produced by Westminster
Media.
Sixteen years too late,
a visitor in a country club locker room,
the words slipped from my lips,
"When I was in Vietnam?"
"You were in Vietnam?"
Words tinged
with a little astonishment.
"Yes."
A hand was extended,
Thanks, thank-you for fighting for our country."
What do you say?
A moment of shock,
then up-bringing kicks in.
"Your welcome."
Fighting for our country?
You rich country club boys,
you never went to war.
Ernie, over there,
screening sand in the ash trays,
he was in 'Nam.
But he doesn?t know
why he fought and limps
on a prosthetic leg.
You can be damn
sure it wasn?t for you.
Do you think we fought
so that you could play golf?
Do you really think Ernie
thought no more of his leg than that?
This nation visits the Wall and reads the names?
gives free care in a hundred hospitals?
remembers Veterans Day?
Does trying count?
When will you ever begin to understand?
It was not for you.
It was for us we fought and died.
You do not honor the dead
with your talk of the unjust war.
Though some things about it were.
Poor boys fought together
from West Virginia, Main, Watts, Harlem
and the Ponobscot Indian reservation.
How wrong it seemed that we sent only our poor,
for the rich were in college
and the National Guard
doing their six and six.
You do not honor the dead,
when you call them victims
of a bad society gone worse.
When you expose the hoax of Tonkin,
tell it all;
not just the self justifying truth
to ease the consciousness of rich boys
as they explain to their grandchildren
why they didn't go.
Talk of our nation, of laws and obligations,
talk of
expatriates and LSD spaced-out hippies.
Tell how some men wore hard hats,
waved flags, and served in the Guard,
and other men screamed "Hell no?,"
and dropped out.
And talk of men who believed in integrity
and saw the way out as only straight ahead.
Tell the Afros, Navahos, Chicanos and Rednecks
often afraid to give their reasons, served-
drafted we did not resist,
or volunteered preempting the inevitable-
covered each other's ass,
stopped each other's sucking chest wounds,
and even picked up our buddies' pieces
trying our best to stack
the right livers, limbs, and severed heads
with their owners' disemboweled bodies.
We were not poor boys and victims.
We were America's best.
Christmas eve,
Two dead, two mutilated,
From our own grenade
With a one-second fuse.
I ripped open
sand bags
And spread the sand
Over the pools of blood
Where the men had died.
You wrote to me,
Any Marine, Vietnam.
I hadn't answered
That letter yet.
What do you write
To a ten year old
From Cedar Falls
On Christmas day?
I know you wanted
To cheer me up,
And I so wanted
To be polite.
I don't remember
What I wrote.
Maybe something
trite
About going home soon.
You wrote back to me
About your Christmas doll
And how you lived
Bluebird days.
I didn't write
To you again.
But I hope you still
Have Bluebird days.
He laughed and joked
And hated it all.
We knew he did.
The way he talked about home,
About his folks,
And the way he complained
About sleeping in the rain,
About eating from cans,
About killing men.
He hated it.
And through him
We all remembered that we hated it too.
He made it easier on us.
He laughed and joked and
Talked about going home.
But he never did.