Free The Time of My Life by Bryan Woolley Page B

Great War—great because it was the biggest and was said to be the last. The Dogfaces had saved the world and democracy from an even more evil threat in an even bigger war. No one called it the last war, but we hoped it was, for the atomic age had blossomed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and another world war was an unthinkable risk not only to democracy but also to the world itself.
    The action in Korea was less conclusive, but it wasn’t called a war. It was a “police action,” and an honorable one. The Americans and their allies drove the North Koreans and the Chinese back into their own countries and came home. They hadn’t saved the world for democracy, maybe, but they had saved South Korea, and the nation was grateful for that. It was still honorable to be a veteran and to join the American Legion and the VFW and march in parades and be patriotic. The country was proud of what Americans did in Korea.
    But the veterans of Vietnam returned to no parades, no speeches, no music, because there was no victory to celebrate. Their reunions with their loved ones were sober and private.
    They had fought their country’s longest war without ever understanding their mission, without ever knowing why they had been plucked from their lives and families and sent there. They hadn’t saved the world for democracy. They hadn’t even saved South Vietnam. They and the families to whom they returned didn’t even know what “save South Vietnam” meant. Who or what was “South Vietnam,” anyway? Diem, Khanh? Ky? Thieu? Was “South Vietnam” anybody other than whatever dictator American troops were propping up at the moment? Apparently not, for when the dictators and the Americans were gone, there was no more “South Vietnam.” We had fought our longest war for nothing.
    Because of improvements in battlefield medicine and the technology of evacuation, more Americans came back alive than in the past, considering the number who went. But many who would have other wise died came back maimed—physically or mentally or both.
    We couldn’t be grateful for their victory, for there was none. We had sent them to a war they couldn’t win, so they didn’t win it. But shouldn’t we have been grateful for their willingness to go, their willingness to serve, when their friends and neighbors on the draft boards demanded it of them? We probably were. Maybe we were, anyway.
    So, if we were thankful, why couldn’t we express our thanks? That, as the mayor said, is difficult to ex plain. But I think I know why.
    In all our other wars, we knew who killed and wounded our young. The enemy did. But in Vietnam, we didn’t know who the enemy was. Was it the Viet Cong? North Vietnam? The U.S. government? Truth? Untruth? God? The devil? In our heart of hearts, we fear it may have been ourselves. We feel that through some sin or terrible mistake orhorrendous accident, we killed and maimed our own. It’s as if through stupidity or error we disfigured a beautiful child and can no longer stand to look at him, for to look is to suffer again the guilt and shame of our act.
    It’s a terrible burden to bear, as crippling in its own way as the injuries of the battlefield. And we can’t ex press our thankfulness to the veterans of Vietnam because we haven’t yet asked forgiveness for the uselessness of their sacrifices.
    June, 1979

Postage to Los Angeles
    I T HAD BEEN an ordinary day, very like most days of the twenty years James Lucas has worked for the U.S. Postal Service, and the woman who stepped up to his window looked much like other postal patrons. She was in her mid-forties and, Lucas guessed, didn’t have much money. She said she wanted to mail something to Los Angeles and asked how much it would cost.
    â€œWhat is it you want to mail?” Lucas asked.
    â€œHim,” the woman replied. She pointed at the small boy standing beside her.
    Lucas looked at