Helping people each other through the web for making $$$
We Were Soldiers in Vietnam & About SSG Linder (Retired)
My name is Staff Sergeant Wendell Linder (Retired) now everyone call me, Mr. W, Wendell. I live overseas in Germany. I have been in Germany for half of my military career, so I feel comfortable living and working here.
Vietnam Veteran
I would appreciate it if you would pass my site on to our veterans, and all others that need to know...
Gary Jacobson
I’m not a Veteran from Vietnam. But my uncle David Linder served in Vietnam and I learned a great deal from Vietnam veterans from the street of Bronx, New York City at the Hunt Point Market.
I don't know that much about Vietnam, but I would like to keep the memories in other people heads. Freedom isn’t free and it has a price. I would like for you to visit Mr. Gary Jacobson home page and articles because it tells you the history of Vietnam and the pain that Vietnam veterans are suffering until today.
I wish there would be more on TV about Vietnam, how the French Indochina war started, and then extended into Vietnam. The difference between North Vietnamese and south. That is lacking in history books.
I believe we as Americans should never forgot the sacrifice they have done for our country. It’s not the time to be forgotten or wash the memories of the blood, sweat and tears my brothers and sister left in that war away. How Vietnam veterans still suffering from PTSD and are going to "war trauma group" session every week at the veterans Affair still today. Those who have high blood pressure diabetes & sleep disorder at the age of 25.
The darkest thoughts, which only they and their peers know. When I was a boy, I wanted to ask them this question many times "why can't you just get over it" and move on with your life.
I never know how to ask the question, so I kept my mouth closed. Some Americans cannot imagine how sizzling the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam can be or the fear to be point man during patrols, watching out for booby traps.
Anything we can do in this country to make people aware of the price that people paid on both sides is worthwhile. Too many people in this country just don't understand the costs psychologically. They don't understand the costs in broken bodies.
We still need to thank them for their service forty-eight years had gone by and we still don’t respect what they have done for us. The political pressures send them to that part of the world, but they were never given a Warm Welcome, but a hostile welcome aimed at them instead of the people who made the decisions.
Like many veterans, I had a difficult time adjusting to life after leaving the military. I am glad there are people like them that understand how to help others, without thinking about themselves. Thank you for your understanding. Duty, Honor and Country.
Please check out this website http://pzzzz.tripod.com/WeWereSoldiers.html by Gary Jacobson.
Human life is so precious; war should never be undertaken unless our rights are threatened. It is often said that our soldiers must sacrifice themselves for their country. This is precisely what we must not ask them to do. A sacrifice entails the surrender of a greater value for a lesser one. But if a man loses his life on the premise, "I would rather die than live in slavery," it is a tragic loss--but it is not a sacrifice. Such a man is acting in his own interests, to protect his most precious values.
On the other hand, it is a sacrifice to send our soldiers to a country that has no connection to their interests and values.
Vietnam is an example of a senseless, self-sacrificial tragedy. While it was in our interest to oppose the communist threat to America, it did not benefit Americans to throw away their lives in defense of a primitive nation whose people did not value freedom.
The mere fact that they needed help should not have created a claim on the efforts and the lives of U.S. soldiers.
Our heroic fighting men and women are not to blame for these disasters. It is the politicians who are responsible. It is they who believe that our soldiers are sacrificial fodder to fulfill the politicians' desire for "prestige-enhancing" adventures.
They believe that our armed forces can be sent to any part of the World in order to be able to show the world how "humanitarian" the politicians are.
We must be proud of our soldiers, but it is equally true that they should be proud of the cause they fight for. It is terrible to die in war, but there is one thing worse: to die in a war that has no meaning, a war that offers no reason for risking one's life.
This is a great website, if you want to visit Germany in October.
I want to invite you for the Oktoberfest. Please inform me which weekend you will choose. Details please see attached link http://www.oktoberfest.de/
Retired from the United States Army 1 January 2001
On 17 March 2002, I start working as the Official Mail and File Clerk, Administrative Assistant and S-1 Assistant Human Resource
Born in Desoto, Georgia on 18 June 1960 & was raised in the South Bronx, New York City.
Permanent Residence: Giebelstadt, Germany
Graduated Park West High School, Manhattan, New York City (1979)
Have some College credit
Married (1985); Sigrid (Wiesbaden, Germany) Been with her since 1981.
One Child: Marc 29,
United States Army: Enlisted in the United States Army in September 1980, as a Nike Hercules Crewmember. Attended Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Bliss, Texas.
1980-2000 (PVT-SSG)
Air Defense Branch: HIMAD - High-to-medium-altitude air defense. MOS: 16C 1980-1985 SHORAD Short Range Air Defense MOS: 16R and 14R 1985-2000
Army Assignments:
Germany: First assignment was 3rd Battalion 71st Air Defense Artillery Battalion, Kornwesteim, Germany. (1981-1983)
Fort Bliss: McGregor Range Command, Texas (1983- 1985)
Fort Hood: 2nd Battalion 5th ADA 2d Armored Division (1985-1987)
Kitzingen, Germany: 3rd Battalion 67th ADA 3d Infantry Division
(1987-1990)
Kitzingen, Germany: 4th Battalion 3rd ADA 1st Infantry Division (1990-1997)
Fort Hood, Texas, 4th Battalion 5th ADA 1st Cavalry Division (1997-1998)
Balkans Region: In support of Stabilization Force, supporting the 10th Mountain Division and 49th Armored Division, on Eagle Base. (June, 1999- September 2000)
Fort Hood, Texas, 4th Battalion 5th ADA 1st Cavalry Division Fort Hood (September to December 2000)
I am on a journey to change my attitude to a more positive one, meeting new people and hearing about their experiences. I am friendly and an open minded person trying to learn more about life and my calling. My true passion is communicating with other cultures.
I’m trying to learn more about forgiveness -- for myself, as well as others; 20 years 3 months and 29 days in the Army, left me bitter inside.
I am seeking friendship with others open- minded people so, that I can move on with my life. I believe we can make difference in someone life, if we just talk.
I have always been a leader who understands that leadership is a demanding job, tough and sometimes a lonely position. I was never in the popularity business and most of my soldiers know that although I am very demanding, fair, and approachable and will not tolerate any nonsense.
I was and am always willing to:
Put my neck on the line for soldiers when they were either right or wrong.
Make tough decisions regardless of the consequences.
Take responsibility for everything that happened or didn’t happen when I was in charge.
Sacrifice my career to protect and preserve the dignity of my soldiers.
As a leader and a father figure to my soldiers, I feel my role is to guide, direct, counsel and sometimes reprimand them. As an avid reader, I came across a quote that I embraced and would like to share with you.
A leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. In the end, leaders are much like eagles...they don’t flock; you find them one at a time.
Wendell,
MY FRIEND
Thank You for your letter, and the sentiments expressed. I am truly honored to meet you, to read of you, and to talk with you ... and I give you my permission to use any of my pictures and poems on your website ... for in doing so you will help promote an understanding and compassion for the Vietnam vet that is still lacking among so many today.
I too feel moved to tell stories of healing to veterans ... mostly through the medium of poetry. My poetry deals with the great conflicts of the body, soul and mind brought about by war. These demons do affect many, and change these warriors forever.
My name is Gary Jacobson. I served with B Co 2nd/7th 1st Air Cavalry '66 - '67, as a combat infantryman ... we called ourselves "Grunts," operating out of LZ Betty near beautiful downtown Phan Thiet, Vietnam. Mine was the same unit depicted in the Mel Gibson movie, "We Were Soldiers," only one year later.
Vietnam changed us all indelibly and forever. I'm now on 100% disability rating with an extra hole in my head, covered by a 3X4 inch plate, shrapnel the size of a quarter currently imbedded three inches into my brain ... this all compliments of a trip wire booby trap that triggered a grenade, that in turn detonated an artillery round ... and in the process completely ruined my whole day ... April, 22, 1967, receiving a traumatic brain injury during combat operation, in the boonies near Phan Rang, Vietnam.
Me, the morning of the day I bit the dust... just after I had first been shot at, and hours before they "got me" ... the two M-40 tanks patrolling with us blew the treeline away where the sniper was ... but there were no blood trails, so he who would kill me must have got away ... lucky he was a bad shot, but alas, he would have other chances that day... and his persistence would pay off.
Due to my wounds I was in four hospitals, from the aid station at Nha Trang, to the 106th in Yokohama, Japan, then to Brook at San Antonio, then to Ft Sill, Oklahoma to be close to my parents... a total of 14 months that determined my life. I was pretty much out of it at first, for a couple months, mentally and physically ... but have regained many things ... among them a passion for telling the story of war in Vietnam, and war in general ... but still, I cannot write of Vietnam without crying rivers of tears as I write.
A Vietnamese legend says, "'All poets are full of silver threads that rise inside them as the moon grows large.' So, when I write, it is because these silver threads are words that are poking at me and I must let them out." ...Gary Jacobson
My silver threads are: Many have asked for a book of my poems ... well, here it is!
My Thousand Yard Stare, 200 color pictures and beaucoup poems from the heart of a soldier in Vietnam that thousands of veterans tell me expresses what Vietnam was like for them, containing beneficially healing words to bless them. Buy the book at this link through the convenience of PayPal, or your choice of credit cards. http://namtour.com/marketplace.html
Or simply send check or money order to:
Gary Jacobson, 6325 south Old Hwy 191, Malad, Idaho 83252
Please tell me if you wish it signed.
Also, I am currently writing a novel of memoirs of Vietnam, titled, "Just A Walk In The Park," ... also a second poetry book, "Sweet and Sour Poems." is in the formatting stage.
Webmaster of "Vietnam Picture Tour," pictures of a walk in "the park" grunts called Vietnam, with the 1st Air Cavalry on combat patrol. Experience chilling reality to leave the sweet and sour taste of "the Nam" pungent on your tongue, the smell of "the Nam" acrid in your nostrils, and textures of "the Nam" imbedded in you as though you walked beside me in combat. My personal pictures are all in this "Vietnam Picture Tour,"
http://namtour.com/namtour.html
My Poignant poems index, http://namtour.com/nampoemsNpix.html
each with more combat action Pictures, artwork, and stirring music, each portraying an aspect of life in the Vietnam war I felt so heavily embedded on my soul, entangled in me, and around me, the average American boy next door at war...
Methinketh many believe I am too serious, but my site, "Realm of Poetry" http://namtour.com/P/RealmOfPoetry.html predates my Vietnam writings. It deals with poems of love and the heart of romance, spirituality and meditation, an Angel's Message, Golden Oldies, comedy, Quests of the regal knight Richard Lionhearted to the crusades and seeking the Holy Grail, dueling dragons, frolicking fairies ... tributes to my dear mother, including a treatise on that profane Alzheimer's disease which took her sweet life ... and also links to my site when I rode that foul ogre, a bestial carnivore called war...
Service on the point of the spear in Vietnam is a source of great pride among we warriors who fought in that sweet-and-sour land far away. But PTSD haunts many veterans with faces of brothers-in-arms who didn't make it back, and of those who were changed forever! I am not promoting war in my web site devoted to help give an understanding of the terrific price of war upon the warriors ... just relating realities that war is not the antiseptically clean affair media presents ... but death down and dirty in the mud and the blood.
"Learn what the warriors learned, for indeed, it is warriors who have first hand seen the evil and devastation of hatred, who first hand know the value of peace, love, compassion and harmony among men." ...Gary Jacobson
War exacts a terrible toll, and though we answered the call to duty for God and country, we did so because, in truth, we had no choice. We in this noble generation had been raised and taught by goodly parents, society and church that we could with honor do nothing else when our country called, though many of us would much rather not have had to go to fight, and perhaps to die.
I do believe Americans should be ready to defend our country when called, but war should be the very, very last alternative to solving political problems ... and too often it's not! In the past we have been too ready to use the war tool because our leaders did not understand its horrifically senseless cost to entire generations of family ... fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, and all who love those who fall, eternally scarred in forever sore afflictions that last a lifetime. Betimes our leaders are too tainted with the political illusions of power, or corporate gain, so in my small way I am trying to help more understand what war is in reality ... so we can make more informed choices and avoid mistakes in future decisions.
The Nam was terrible, turbulently turning upside down all concepts and upsetting values taught by goodly and loving parents and Christian society that in my young life had heretofore held me in their respective arms, teaching and guiding me. Now on my own and far from those loving arms ... Nam tested me, flaunted me to and fro, shook me to the core, and though it took awhile to sink in, Nam also taught me a lot.
I call the process of hate and destruction I went through in Vietnam, my "refiner’s fire." The "refiner’s fire," is a process whereby the finest stainless steel cutlery is subjected to intense heat. Steel with flaws and imperfections break and crumble under this incredible strain of the hottest fire, but the steel cutlery that makes it through this final testing process is hardened with remarkable and unexcelled quality, its worth enhanced greatly by the "refiners fire."
Vietnam was like that for me. It was my "refiner’s fire," and I came within a hair of breaking. So though I would not wish Nam's daunting task on my worst enemy, Vietnam made me stronger, though it took awhile for the lessons to take, and many years of reflection for me to figure them out. Nam revealed more to me of the true values and concepts of life and death than most will ever know.
Nam embedded in me a new set of senses, an appreciation for the simple things that most mortals take for granted. The memories of that action still bear hard on my soul, making me see the whole world cast in a different hue, harder as the buried demons come back to haunt me. I have more of an understanding of what is real and eternal than most just going about their lives without a clue as to what is important...what is lasting ... what is life and death.
How did I fall?
I took this picture only minutes before I was felled, on the fifth day on patrol in the boonies we grunts called "the killing zone." I was walking at point on the right flank of our company sized operation. A sniper had shot directly at me two different times that morning ... shooting at anybody, but I happened to be closest to his line of fire every time, lucky me, so his bullets whizzed by my ear and pocked the dirt at my feet ... lucky me! Yeah, lucky ... lucky that he was a bad shot!
But Charlie and his merry band didn't give up trying to kill me, and shadowed our patrol all day, learning of our direction of march, and they set up the trip-wire booby trap that got me at midday. It was blazing hot as we marched, and we grunts were all dog tired, so when our company commander signaled for a lunch break.
We immediately began to move into a big circle to form what we call a defensive perimeter, to all guard outward, watching one another's backs. I had my eye on a shade tree to sit under, and was moving towards it, already thinking of chowing down on those yummy C-rations. I closely scoured the horizon as I walked, really looking intensely at surrounding bushes anxiously to see my little friend waiting to have another shot at me ... when I tripped a piano trip wire booby trap. That detonated a grenade that in turn set off an artillery round...and ruined my whole day! It literally blew my soul out of my body ... I describe it in my poem "I Felt I'd Died," http://namtour.com/died.html .
As soon as I was hit I blacked out. My soul was blown out of my body, and I remember an out-of-body experience. I felt nothing, knew nothing, feeling no pain, having heard no explosion. I was in a coma for about three weeks, then when stabilized, they sent me from the Nha Trang aid station to the 106th in Yokohama, Japan. My medical records say I had substantial brain damage. I didn't know much for a couple of months...and couldn't do much. I had to learn to walk again, had to learn to talk, even write. It's like when you zero in at the rifle range ... my shot would have been so far off target it would have made the sergeants in the conning observation towers jump. Everything was off kilter. I was sprayed with shrapnel from head to foot. My left leg was swollen like a balloon from shrapnel that severed my tendon ... but no broken bones ... yeah, lucky ... and they had to give me shots in the stomach twice a day for one month, to relieve resulting blood clots in the leg.
The doctors that look at me now cannot understand why I'm here, because when they follow the path the shrapnel took into my head they feel I should have without doubt, and without any chance, either been killed, or made a human vegetable for life. But I'm not! And they wonder why. And sometimes I wonder why too. Some say it was so I could write healing messages for my brothers-in-arms.
Of the four hospital neurological wards I was in for 14 months, of all the head trauma patients no matter how small a wound ... and mine was a pretty big hole, I feel humbly that I retained more of myself from before the wound than any of them. If Nam was hell, then my months in the hospital was truly Hell's Hell. But it did teach me compassion ... for during that time I couldn't feel sorry for myself! Oh no, not a whit! I couldn't feel sorry for myself, because I couldn't look around without seeing many so very much worse off than I ... so many times worse off than I. Did I tell you I was lucky?
It's like the parable, "I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet." Just being there kept me humble, and thankful to have and retain what I did. I saw some real horrors there...both in my neurological ward and next door in the burn ward. I saw big, strapping, good looking men ... relegated for the rest of their lives to slumping and slobbering in a wheel chair with vacant, mindless expressions. I saw families come in and tend to their son strapped to a bed in endless coma for the rest of his life. I saw men in the burn ward who literally looked like creatures from the black lagoon...all flesh charred like a bubbling black ash, without ears, no nose, no hair, no features...only a hole for a mouth, holes for ears, and slits for eyes. Oh no, I couldn't feel sorry for myself. I empathize with some who feel the ones who died were the lucky ones. Yeah, Nam was hell!
"I Sincerely feel that most Vietnam veterans realize that there are no real war survivors. For the living, there can never be real and complete peace. We can’t help but look back on an event that impacted our lives so completely ... changed us so completely. We’ve seen too much ... done too much ... had too much done to us. Many veterans of war just cannot talk about the horrors they've seen. It brings up too many bad memories. I'm not afflicted that way, because I was trained as a journalist, and feel I must tell the story whereas so many can't, for some reason or another. My poetry is my vehicle to transmit a compelling message about war's reality paid not only by those who died, but also by those who do come home, but are changed, never the same by doing what most Americans can never imagine. The families of these men deserve to know. America needs to know!
Though Nam was indeed hard physically, that was a piece of cake compared to the mental and emotional baggage the Nam left us with ... and the baggage (call it PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is real, it's still there, still weighing many vets down ... still rising from the depths of our being where we tamped it down so long ago because we could not deal with it then, not when we had our duty to do, not when we still had to walk that trail, and be alert ... or go crazy with the anxiety.
These old memories still torment veterans with devilishly haunting memories of battles, faces, dates we still find hard to cope with, still walking those devilish trails in their dreams. Our body remembers! Our mind tried to forget, but we saw and did things that were hard to reconcile.
We saw ordinary and beautiful things in-country Vietnam blown away .. our brothers blown away, dying a horrible death in our arms. Brotherhood relationships were mixed with horror, grim death all around, unrelenting fear wall-to-wall, every minute of every day, knowing death could come swiftly any moment of the day, any minute, any second ... maybe this very second!
That bullet with your name on it could come flying any moment, and it comes fast. With anxiety we feel the specter of it hovering over us still, haunting us ... still, we were always looking for it, expecting it to come calling! The bullets we hear are real, and they sing death's song, high and shrill ... the blood they drill from men red and sticky.
"How deeply war experiences affect veterans from war's conflict, depends on how much blood he got on his hands, in direct proportion to how much of the blood was his enemies, his buddies, or his own." Gary Jacobson
Even today, it's hard to shake, the anxiety when we walk into a strange room, scan crowds subconsciously for men who hate us, or down the street hear loud sounds that take us back to that jungle war.
We all knew our purpose in "the Nam" ... to kill! We suppressed the obvious fear of imminent death that darkened our lives, ignoring the fact we could die without warning anytime, anywhere, behind that next bush, around the next bend in the trail, as we ate, as we slept tonight ... who needs sleep? It's highly overrated. I still can't get a good sleep.
We always knew that men hating us with every fiber of their being shadowed our every move, just out of sight, just waiting, following, watching for their chance to kill. It's hard not to hate them, these men, men in the shadows preoccupied with our death, dedicated to reuniting us with the dust from whence we came.
But we couldn't really think about it then, or we literally could not have taken that next step...we would have literally gone crazy. Think how hard that knowledge of impending doom, death and disfiguration can mean to you. It stays with you, clings to you, forever embedded in you ... even today!
We got to know fear and death up close and personal, till they were constant companions. We tried to act natural as if we were just a group of guys on a big campout, lost Boy Scouts, but always death was lingering in the shadows, stalking us, waiting, waiting... so close you could taste it!
Knowing our death would make someone's day is hard to live with ... and it is hard to live down. We tried to ignore this fear in the Nam, for thinking about death hidden in the ground, or hiding as snipers in the treeline, and watching for the assorted booby traps they may have set for us, would maybe make us hesitate to take that next step, or approach that next bush along the trail a few yards away from which our death might come.
Examine carefully every step, look up, look down, look left, look right ... good thing you have two eyes, right! Examine the tree line on the horizon for snipers, strain to see around the corner of the trail, to prepare yourself for what might be lurking there ... steel yourself ... but get a move-on, and nobody has that many eyes.
Besides, if you thought about the unthinkable too much you would go crazy...so we buried it deep where we would not have to think and deal with it then, though we knew we would pay later when the repressed thoughts rose to haunt us.
Now we're having to think about it, the fears arising as nightmares from the past torment us anew...they keep coming up...some worse than others...but all of us who walked combat know the demons intimately. For in fact, we still deal with them today. That is the source of PTSD!
My greatest motivating desire in writing about Vietnam was first a cathartic one, to heal the demons of war within me from where I'd stashed them from so long ago, bringing them out and confronting them so I could deal with them, looking them in the eye.
I know everyone is not the same, and everyone is not ready for this...but writing about it helps me heal...and I have received so many letters from brothers-in-arms, like the one telling me, "Damn, you tell it just as I feel it. I didn't know anyone else thought the way I did." And many of them tell me my words are also healing to them too, like the tough Marine tank sergeant who called me, telling me he was crying like a baby that someone else understood, and thanking me. What a humbling experience.
I have also had several write me, saying they were able to talk about "the Nam" for the first time with their families, as before they had not even been able to tell their families anything about what they had seen in Vietnam. They told me that they pulled their entire families before the computer, and went through my pictures and words to show them what Nam was like for them. Parents, brothers, sisters, children, write me all the time thanking me for helping them to know their significant other better, why he acted the way he did, why he'd changed, where he'd been, what he'd experienced, for he would/could not talk about it. That my writing helped them connect, to feel closer to their veteran, is always a humbling feeling. I write for them!
I write because I feel a great need to promote a better understanding about the realities of war in those that have not the foggiest idea of what war is really all about. There is no glory in war! War isn't the clean and antiseptic fare we too often see in the movies ... it is a deep fear of lingering death in the mud and the blood that too often stays with and haunts soldiers horribly for the rest of their lives. Too many students and others just don't know the true depths and horrors of war, but they must needs know, for the specter of it is upon us now, and will be again.
War effects many in a concentric, widening circle around the warriors, for generations. Mothers, fathers, wives, brothers, sisters, children...all write me they are deeply affected. It leaves a permanent hole in their lives. War is never forgotten by those who were there! Memories constantly arise of a place that was the birthplace of my manhood, twisting and turning basic ideals in ways that have sadly stayed with us forever. War viciously tramples our very value systems, turning upside down the teachings carefully taught and lovingly established by goodly parents, church and society.
Vietnam is the root of many unanswered questions that still tug at me today, coinciding with current events of today that will not let past horrors die. That is why when I wrote a poem for the troops going to Iraq, in one line I said, "Bless them in times they do not know." I remember many of them saying in the papers just before they went over to Iraq, that they were the best trained troops ever, trained and ready to deal with any eventuality...how naive they were, just like we were once.
They're not ready! Nobody is ready for what they will find.
I called myself gung-ho naive back then when I went to war, as they are now, but when we got there we found it mentally harder than anything we could have imagined. And no, we weren't ready for it. How could we ever have thought we were?
Now, returning troops from Iraq speak of the same demons that we contended with in Nam, and in daily battles when the demons followed us home to greet our families.
Combat
By Gary Jacobson© 2003
No matter how much training you've received
How much bravado adept with weapons of war believed
When you’ve never wall-to-wall fear perceived...
Combat is something you could never imagine
Not in your worst nightmare envision...
Nothing can prepare you for that!
War’s a real attitude adjustment
Just knowing you can die at any moment
Knowing men out there plan precisely your death
Preoccupied with it
Dedicated to it...
Fear insatiable with every fetid breath...
Nothing can prepare you for that!
Before your eyes smatterings of life quickly deteriorate
Into a mushy mass life will your smoking gun obliterate.
It wears on you...
Holding a broken, bloodied, lifeless buddy in your arms
Indelibly changes you...
Forever awestruck in ways no surgeon can fix.
Lifelong horrors...guilt buried deep in your soul transfix.
Nothing can prepare you for that...
When the country which sent its young princes off to war
Was not there to welcome home our soldiers anymore
Distressed soldiers bruised by it...
Bloodied and torn in body and spirit
Found Hope dashed from princely inheritance dispirited
Hope banned by prevailing establishment disinherited...
Nothing can prepare you for that!
I had one journalist from a local paper write me that, I should really find it easy enough to get over it, because war was like a football game, where you win some and you lose some, but you have to get over it, get up and get ready for the next game. He'd seen one of my pictures where I said I'd just been shot at, and he found it hard to believe because, "You're smiling," he said.
How really ignorant are even intelligent men! I tried to tell him war was not the same as a football game...that in football you don't have to remember your bloody, dead teammates left behind on the field of battle that is why it is so easy to get up and go on. In football you are not haunted by the look of the opposing teams you've met, remembering when you took the light from their eyes with your weapons of destruction, and saw them literally blown apart, faces literally reduced to mush, never again to grace this world or rejoin their families. In football, the opposing team can all get up and go onto the next game also ... you don’t have to kill them, because that is what it is, a game. War is no game!
Of course he inspired one of my poems: "Gee Mr. Newspaperman," http://namtour.com/news.html
Writing about something so personal is hard, but I write because this current generation is of prime concern to me, with its apathy and fears of terrorism and hatreds and intolerance's ... and a mindless revival of naive and gung-ho patriotism. For how are they to know of life unless we who have walked the valley of the shadow of war and death tell them of a history that too often repeats itself? It's repeating itself now in Iraq...
I have had many teachers write to tell me that their students, "Just don't know!" about Vietnam...about war...that is why I write!
The history I try to depict among the horrors of war, is the need for peace, and brotherly love shared among all peoples of the world. I am not a pacifist, for I fought and almost died for my country, but I do believe strongly in the brotherhood of man, abolishing all hatred and war. I believe in peace, though there are men who would not let you have it, hating you just because you are...like the 9/11 terrorists, who showed hatreds and intolerance that mere words cannot alleviate. I believe there are madmen in this world who good men must step to the fore to stop, routing them out by whatever means it takes...force if necessary...to defend our homes and values.
All the people of the world continually need to understand how important an event war is. War will always be a determining factor of not only who we are, but will determine our very futures, as well as whole generations surrounding us. War dictates the futures of wives and children, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers, friends... War changes everything, as it indelibly changes us who fight its battles, as each soldier's circle of influence is irreparably damaged. I sincerely hope we will not doom our children to fight senseless battles as did we, shackling them to similar fates suffered by their fathers in the latest in a series of "war-to-end-all-wars!" If we do not learn the history of war and its terrible implications, learning there is no glory in war...only death, sheer destruction of values and misery, then we are doomed to repeat it! And the next war will inexorably come! Sometimes there are madmen in this world, war a necessary evil that good men must stand to fight...sometimes not...sometimes our discernment is weak...sometimes we spill our blood senselessly in Vietnam! Sometimes there's Iraq! My fervent wish is that we will come to understand the horrors of war that we can work for peace evermore, making war-no-more!
Perhaps one reason I took the war so personally, so sensitively, is that I was drafted into the army shortly after serving a two year mission as a minister for the Lord Jesus Christ in The Northeast of England for two years, '62-'64. From teaching Christ's gospel of love and peace, I was handed a gun, taught to hate and kill, sent to Vietnam where I was baptized by fire and brimstone. This was a hard transition I've never gotten over. What a turn-around!
Actually, when I was wounded it was front page news in the major papers in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where I was born and bred. For in Vietnam I had penned 55 articles for "The Oklahoma City Times," as a combat infantryman/part time correspondent in a series of articles entitled, "From the Front." Many times I wrote articles from the field on cardboard C-rations boxes, or whatever scrap of paper I could find. I was sports editor of my college daily newspaper in Provo, Utah (BYU's Daily Universe), majoring in Journalism when I was drafted...but, like so many others, Nam succinctly ended my dreams and plans, changing the direction of my life indelibly and forever. Nam embedded my soul with a new set of senses to still haunt me...forever!
I am now living in Malad, Idaho, with my wife Terrie Kay, having raised four children ... three of the four having birth defects due to my exposure with agent Orange toxins.
I attended four universities, The university of Oklahoma, Brigham Young University, Southern Utah University, and Utah University, graduating in 1972 with a BA in communications and Journalism.
My poetry has been read all over the USA at Memorial and Veterans Day commemorations, even in a cathedral in France. My poetry has been featured by the American Legion in membership drives, and has been published in two volumes by the International War Veterans Poetry Archives Poems of Distant Wars, and two Jan Hornung books, "Angels in Vietnam, Women Who Served," and "Helicopters in War." Two hundred of my poems are featured on the web in "Vietnam Picture Tour, and in the International War Veterans Poetry Archives on the net.
***************
Below are a few of my poems now online, my memories of that time when ... I thought I'd Died.
"My Thousand Yard Stare," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/stare.html
"A Combat Soldier's Prayer," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/prayer.htm featured by the American Legion.
"Portraits of Heroes," by the artist Kasiah, http://namtour.com/heroes.html
"It Don’t Mean Nuthin’," http://namtour.com/nuthin.html
"PTSD," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/ptsd.html
"Welcome Home," http://namtour.com/welcomehome.html
"War’s so different, yet somehow still the same," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/different wars.html
"I’m no hero," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/hero.html
"Soldiers Of The Wall," http://namtour.com/wall.html
For our POW/MIA's "The Yellow Rose," http://namtour.com/yellowrose.html
"Feel their spirits lingering in the wind," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/spirits.html
"Agent orange," and "Feral Stalking Night," http://namtour.com/AgentOrange.html
"Wife of the Man, From Vietnam," http://namtour.com/wife.html The message here applies equally to wives of men from Iraq.
"A Mother Lost Her Son To War," http://namtour.com/MomLost.html
"LZ Snoopy And The Red Baron," http://namtour.com/snoopy.html
"Airborne, Hill 875," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/Airborne.html
"The Sound Of Guns," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/guns.html
"Song Of Napalm," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/napalm.html
"Just Before The Battle Mother," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/battlemother.html
"Just Marchin’ Through The Nam," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/march.html
"A Shau Ripcord," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/ripcord.html
"Rockets Of Tet," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/tet.html
"Dawn Patrol," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/patrol.html
"Once We Were Young," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/once.html
"How Can I Keep From Singing," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/singing.html
"War’s Carousel," and "War And Peace," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/carousel.html
"We Were Soldiers," and "Eye of the Tiger," and "Combat," http://namtour.com/WeWereSoldiers.html
"One Day at a Time," and "The Hill," and "The Homeless Vet," http://namtour.com/day.html
Special tributes to 9/11:
"Terrorism," and "A New Awareness," http://namtour.com/terrorism.html
"We The People," http://namtour.com/wethepeople.html
"Roll Up Your Sleeves," http://namtour.com/rollupyoursleeves.html
Tender Love In Dreams Doth come," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/DreamLove.html
"Moon River," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/moon.html
"Before The Next Teardrop Falls," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/teardrop.html
"If Tomorrow Never Comes," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/tomorrow.html
"Kissed By A Rose," http://themecca.tripod.com/kiss.html
"Love’s good Vibrations," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/vibrations.html
"Stardust," http://Knight_and_LadyKaye.tripod.com/stardust.html
"An Affair to Remember," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/affair.html
"I’ll Love You Forever," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/forever.html
"For No One," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/no_one.html
"Sometimes I Cry," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/sometimesIcry.html
"True Love Blooms, When A Man Loves A Woman," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/manNwoman.html
"First Kiss," http://Knight_and_LadyKaye.tripod.com/firstkiss.html
"Your Kiss," and "Some Say Love..." http://Knight_and_LadyKaye.tripod.com/somesaylove.html
"Golden Oldies Tour," http://Knight_and_LadyKaye.tripod.com/lava.html
"Drive In," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/drivein.html
SPIRITUAL AND MEDITATIVE
"Heavenly Message." http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/message.html
"I’ll Walk With God," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/God.html
"The Hand Of God," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/hand.html
"Somewhere Over The Rainbow," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/rainbow.html
http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/rainy.html
"Just A Closer Walk With Thee," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/closer.html
"Compassion," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/compassion.html
"Choose The Right," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/right.html
"One Day At A Time," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/oneday.html
"Penney’s From Heaven," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/pennies.html
"Day Dawn Is Breaking," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/morn.html
And many more on my website. It's so hard to pick, for my poems are my children you know...so please treat them kindly. I would appreciate it if you would pass my site on to our veterans, and all others that need to know...
Gary
Gary Jacobson
Vietnam Veteran
I would appreciate it if you would pass my site on to our veterans, and all others that need to know...
Gary Jacobson
I’m not a Veteran from Vietnam. But my uncle David Linder served in Vietnam and I learned a great deal from Vietnam veterans from the street of Bronx, New York City at the Hunt Point Market.
I don't know that much about Vietnam, but I would like to keep the memories in other people heads. Freedom isn’t free and it has a price. I would like for you to visit Mr. Gary Jacobson home page and articles because it tells you the history of Vietnam and the pain that Vietnam veterans are suffering until today.
I wish there would be more on TV about Vietnam, how the French Indochina war started, and then extended into Vietnam. The difference between North Vietnamese and south. That is lacking in history books.
I believe we as Americans should never forgot the sacrifice they have done for our country. It’s not the time to be forgotten or wash the memories of the blood, sweat and tears my brothers and sister left in that war away. How Vietnam veterans still suffering from PTSD and are going to "war trauma group" session every week at the veterans Affair still today. Those who have high blood pressure diabetes & sleep disorder at the age of 25.
The darkest thoughts, which only they and their peers know. When I was a boy, I wanted to ask them this question many times "why can't you just get over it" and move on with your life.
I never know how to ask the question, so I kept my mouth closed. Some Americans cannot imagine how sizzling the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam can be or the fear to be point man during patrols, watching out for booby traps.
Anything we can do in this country to make people aware of the price that people paid on both sides is worthwhile. Too many people in this country just don't understand the costs psychologically. They don't understand the costs in broken bodies.
We still need to thank them for their service forty-eight years had gone by and we still don’t respect what they have done for us. The political pressures send them to that part of the world, but they were never given a Warm Welcome, but a hostile welcome aimed at them instead of the people who made the decisions.
Like many veterans, I had a difficult time adjusting to life after leaving the military. I am glad there are people like them that understand how to help others, without thinking about themselves. Thank you for your understanding. Duty, Honor and Country.
Please check out this website http://pzzzz.tripod.com/WeWereSoldiers.html by Gary Jacobson.
Human life is so precious; war should never be undertaken unless our rights are threatened. It is often said that our soldiers must sacrifice themselves for their country. This is precisely what we must not ask them to do. A sacrifice entails the surrender of a greater value for a lesser one. But if a man loses his life on the premise, "I would rather die than live in slavery," it is a tragic loss--but it is not a sacrifice. Such a man is acting in his own interests, to protect his most precious values.
On the other hand, it is a sacrifice to send our soldiers to a country that has no connection to their interests and values.
Vietnam is an example of a senseless, self-sacrificial tragedy. While it was in our interest to oppose the communist threat to America, it did not benefit Americans to throw away their lives in defense of a primitive nation whose people did not value freedom.
The mere fact that they needed help should not have created a claim on the efforts and the lives of U.S. soldiers.
Our heroic fighting men and women are not to blame for these disasters. It is the politicians who are responsible. It is they who believe that our soldiers are sacrificial fodder to fulfill the politicians' desire for "prestige-enhancing" adventures.
They believe that our armed forces can be sent to any part of the World in order to be able to show the world how "humanitarian" the politicians are.
We must be proud of our soldiers, but it is equally true that they should be proud of the cause they fight for. It is terrible to die in war, but there is one thing worse: to die in a war that has no meaning, a war that offers no reason for risking one's life.
This is a great website, if you want to visit Germany in October.
I want to invite you for the Oktoberfest. Please inform me which weekend you will choose. Details please see attached link http://www.oktoberfest.de/
Retired from the United States Army 1 January 2001
On 17 March 2002, I start working as the Official Mail and File Clerk, Administrative Assistant and S-1 Assistant Human Resource
Born in Desoto, Georgia on 18 June 1960 & was raised in the South Bronx, New York City.
Permanent Residence: Giebelstadt, Germany
Graduated Park West High School, Manhattan, New York City (1979)
Have some College credit
Married (1985); Sigrid (Wiesbaden, Germany) Been with her since 1981.
One Child: Marc 29,
United States Army: Enlisted in the United States Army in September 1980, as a Nike Hercules Crewmember. Attended Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Bliss, Texas.
1980-2000 (PVT-SSG)
Air Defense Branch: HIMAD - High-to-medium-altitude air defense. MOS: 16C 1980-1985 SHORAD Short Range Air Defense MOS: 16R and 14R 1985-2000
Army Assignments:
Germany: First assignment was 3rd Battalion 71st Air Defense Artillery Battalion, Kornwesteim, Germany. (1981-1983)
Fort Bliss: McGregor Range Command, Texas (1983- 1985)
Fort Hood: 2nd Battalion 5th ADA 2d Armored Division (1985-1987)
Kitzingen, Germany: 3rd Battalion 67th ADA 3d Infantry Division
(1987-1990)
Kitzingen, Germany: 4th Battalion 3rd ADA 1st Infantry Division (1990-1997)
Fort Hood, Texas, 4th Battalion 5th ADA 1st Cavalry Division (1997-1998)
Balkans Region: In support of Stabilization Force, supporting the 10th Mountain Division and 49th Armored Division, on Eagle Base. (June, 1999- September 2000)
Fort Hood, Texas, 4th Battalion 5th ADA 1st Cavalry Division Fort Hood (September to December 2000)
I am on a journey to change my attitude to a more positive one, meeting new people and hearing about their experiences. I am friendly and an open minded person trying to learn more about life and my calling. My true passion is communicating with other cultures.
I’m trying to learn more about forgiveness -- for myself, as well as others; 20 years 3 months and 29 days in the Army, left me bitter inside.
I am seeking friendship with others open- minded people so, that I can move on with my life. I believe we can make difference in someone life, if we just talk.
I have always been a leader who understands that leadership is a demanding job, tough and sometimes a lonely position. I was never in the popularity business and most of my soldiers know that although I am very demanding, fair, and approachable and will not tolerate any nonsense.
I was and am always willing to:
Put my neck on the line for soldiers when they were either right or wrong.
Make tough decisions regardless of the consequences.
Take responsibility for everything that happened or didn’t happen when I was in charge.
Sacrifice my career to protect and preserve the dignity of my soldiers.
As a leader and a father figure to my soldiers, I feel my role is to guide, direct, counsel and sometimes reprimand them. As an avid reader, I came across a quote that I embraced and would like to share with you.
A leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. In the end, leaders are much like eagles...they don’t flock; you find them one at a time.
Wendell,
MY FRIEND
Thank You for your letter, and the sentiments expressed. I am truly honored to meet you, to read of you, and to talk with you ... and I give you my permission to use any of my pictures and poems on your website ... for in doing so you will help promote an understanding and compassion for the Vietnam vet that is still lacking among so many today.
I too feel moved to tell stories of healing to veterans ... mostly through the medium of poetry. My poetry deals with the great conflicts of the body, soul and mind brought about by war. These demons do affect many, and change these warriors forever.
My name is Gary Jacobson. I served with B Co 2nd/7th 1st Air Cavalry '66 - '67, as a combat infantryman ... we called ourselves "Grunts," operating out of LZ Betty near beautiful downtown Phan Thiet, Vietnam. Mine was the same unit depicted in the Mel Gibson movie, "We Were Soldiers," only one year later.
Vietnam changed us all indelibly and forever. I'm now on 100% disability rating with an extra hole in my head, covered by a 3X4 inch plate, shrapnel the size of a quarter currently imbedded three inches into my brain ... this all compliments of a trip wire booby trap that triggered a grenade, that in turn detonated an artillery round ... and in the process completely ruined my whole day ... April, 22, 1967, receiving a traumatic brain injury during combat operation, in the boonies near Phan Rang, Vietnam.
Me, the morning of the day I bit the dust... just after I had first been shot at, and hours before they "got me" ... the two M-40 tanks patrolling with us blew the treeline away where the sniper was ... but there were no blood trails, so he who would kill me must have got away ... lucky he was a bad shot, but alas, he would have other chances that day... and his persistence would pay off.
Due to my wounds I was in four hospitals, from the aid station at Nha Trang, to the 106th in Yokohama, Japan, then to Brook at San Antonio, then to Ft Sill, Oklahoma to be close to my parents... a total of 14 months that determined my life. I was pretty much out of it at first, for a couple months, mentally and physically ... but have regained many things ... among them a passion for telling the story of war in Vietnam, and war in general ... but still, I cannot write of Vietnam without crying rivers of tears as I write.
A Vietnamese legend says, "'All poets are full of silver threads that rise inside them as the moon grows large.' So, when I write, it is because these silver threads are words that are poking at me and I must let them out." ...Gary Jacobson
My silver threads are: Many have asked for a book of my poems ... well, here it is!
My Thousand Yard Stare, 200 color pictures and beaucoup poems from the heart of a soldier in Vietnam that thousands of veterans tell me expresses what Vietnam was like for them, containing beneficially healing words to bless them. Buy the book at this link through the convenience of PayPal, or your choice of credit cards. http://namtour.com/marketplace.html
Or simply send check or money order to:
Gary Jacobson, 6325 south Old Hwy 191, Malad, Idaho 83252
Please tell me if you wish it signed.
Also, I am currently writing a novel of memoirs of Vietnam, titled, "Just A Walk In The Park," ... also a second poetry book, "Sweet and Sour Poems." is in the formatting stage.
Webmaster of "Vietnam Picture Tour," pictures of a walk in "the park" grunts called Vietnam, with the 1st Air Cavalry on combat patrol. Experience chilling reality to leave the sweet and sour taste of "the Nam" pungent on your tongue, the smell of "the Nam" acrid in your nostrils, and textures of "the Nam" imbedded in you as though you walked beside me in combat. My personal pictures are all in this "Vietnam Picture Tour,"
http://namtour.com/namtour.html
My Poignant poems index, http://namtour.com/nampoemsNpix.html
each with more combat action Pictures, artwork, and stirring music, each portraying an aspect of life in the Vietnam war I felt so heavily embedded on my soul, entangled in me, and around me, the average American boy next door at war...
Methinketh many believe I am too serious, but my site, "Realm of Poetry" http://namtour.com/P/RealmOfPoetry.html predates my Vietnam writings. It deals with poems of love and the heart of romance, spirituality and meditation, an Angel's Message, Golden Oldies, comedy, Quests of the regal knight Richard Lionhearted to the crusades and seeking the Holy Grail, dueling dragons, frolicking fairies ... tributes to my dear mother, including a treatise on that profane Alzheimer's disease which took her sweet life ... and also links to my site when I rode that foul ogre, a bestial carnivore called war...
Service on the point of the spear in Vietnam is a source of great pride among we warriors who fought in that sweet-and-sour land far away. But PTSD haunts many veterans with faces of brothers-in-arms who didn't make it back, and of those who were changed forever! I am not promoting war in my web site devoted to help give an understanding of the terrific price of war upon the warriors ... just relating realities that war is not the antiseptically clean affair media presents ... but death down and dirty in the mud and the blood.
"Learn what the warriors learned, for indeed, it is warriors who have first hand seen the evil and devastation of hatred, who first hand know the value of peace, love, compassion and harmony among men." ...Gary Jacobson
War exacts a terrible toll, and though we answered the call to duty for God and country, we did so because, in truth, we had no choice. We in this noble generation had been raised and taught by goodly parents, society and church that we could with honor do nothing else when our country called, though many of us would much rather not have had to go to fight, and perhaps to die.
I do believe Americans should be ready to defend our country when called, but war should be the very, very last alternative to solving political problems ... and too often it's not! In the past we have been too ready to use the war tool because our leaders did not understand its horrifically senseless cost to entire generations of family ... fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, and all who love those who fall, eternally scarred in forever sore afflictions that last a lifetime. Betimes our leaders are too tainted with the political illusions of power, or corporate gain, so in my small way I am trying to help more understand what war is in reality ... so we can make more informed choices and avoid mistakes in future decisions.
The Nam was terrible, turbulently turning upside down all concepts and upsetting values taught by goodly and loving parents and Christian society that in my young life had heretofore held me in their respective arms, teaching and guiding me. Now on my own and far from those loving arms ... Nam tested me, flaunted me to and fro, shook me to the core, and though it took awhile to sink in, Nam also taught me a lot.
I call the process of hate and destruction I went through in Vietnam, my "refiner’s fire." The "refiner’s fire," is a process whereby the finest stainless steel cutlery is subjected to intense heat. Steel with flaws and imperfections break and crumble under this incredible strain of the hottest fire, but the steel cutlery that makes it through this final testing process is hardened with remarkable and unexcelled quality, its worth enhanced greatly by the "refiners fire."
Vietnam was like that for me. It was my "refiner’s fire," and I came within a hair of breaking. So though I would not wish Nam's daunting task on my worst enemy, Vietnam made me stronger, though it took awhile for the lessons to take, and many years of reflection for me to figure them out. Nam revealed more to me of the true values and concepts of life and death than most will ever know.
Nam embedded in me a new set of senses, an appreciation for the simple things that most mortals take for granted. The memories of that action still bear hard on my soul, making me see the whole world cast in a different hue, harder as the buried demons come back to haunt me. I have more of an understanding of what is real and eternal than most just going about their lives without a clue as to what is important...what is lasting ... what is life and death.
How did I fall?
I took this picture only minutes before I was felled, on the fifth day on patrol in the boonies we grunts called "the killing zone." I was walking at point on the right flank of our company sized operation. A sniper had shot directly at me two different times that morning ... shooting at anybody, but I happened to be closest to his line of fire every time, lucky me, so his bullets whizzed by my ear and pocked the dirt at my feet ... lucky me! Yeah, lucky ... lucky that he was a bad shot!
But Charlie and his merry band didn't give up trying to kill me, and shadowed our patrol all day, learning of our direction of march, and they set up the trip-wire booby trap that got me at midday. It was blazing hot as we marched, and we grunts were all dog tired, so when our company commander signaled for a lunch break.
We immediately began to move into a big circle to form what we call a defensive perimeter, to all guard outward, watching one another's backs. I had my eye on a shade tree to sit under, and was moving towards it, already thinking of chowing down on those yummy C-rations. I closely scoured the horizon as I walked, really looking intensely at surrounding bushes anxiously to see my little friend waiting to have another shot at me ... when I tripped a piano trip wire booby trap. That detonated a grenade that in turn set off an artillery round...and ruined my whole day! It literally blew my soul out of my body ... I describe it in my poem "I Felt I'd Died," http://namtour.com/died.html .
As soon as I was hit I blacked out. My soul was blown out of my body, and I remember an out-of-body experience. I felt nothing, knew nothing, feeling no pain, having heard no explosion. I was in a coma for about three weeks, then when stabilized, they sent me from the Nha Trang aid station to the 106th in Yokohama, Japan. My medical records say I had substantial brain damage. I didn't know much for a couple of months...and couldn't do much. I had to learn to walk again, had to learn to talk, even write. It's like when you zero in at the rifle range ... my shot would have been so far off target it would have made the sergeants in the conning observation towers jump. Everything was off kilter. I was sprayed with shrapnel from head to foot. My left leg was swollen like a balloon from shrapnel that severed my tendon ... but no broken bones ... yeah, lucky ... and they had to give me shots in the stomach twice a day for one month, to relieve resulting blood clots in the leg.
The doctors that look at me now cannot understand why I'm here, because when they follow the path the shrapnel took into my head they feel I should have without doubt, and without any chance, either been killed, or made a human vegetable for life. But I'm not! And they wonder why. And sometimes I wonder why too. Some say it was so I could write healing messages for my brothers-in-arms.
Of the four hospital neurological wards I was in for 14 months, of all the head trauma patients no matter how small a wound ... and mine was a pretty big hole, I feel humbly that I retained more of myself from before the wound than any of them. If Nam was hell, then my months in the hospital was truly Hell's Hell. But it did teach me compassion ... for during that time I couldn't feel sorry for myself! Oh no, not a whit! I couldn't feel sorry for myself, because I couldn't look around without seeing many so very much worse off than I ... so many times worse off than I. Did I tell you I was lucky?
It's like the parable, "I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet." Just being there kept me humble, and thankful to have and retain what I did. I saw some real horrors there...both in my neurological ward and next door in the burn ward. I saw big, strapping, good looking men ... relegated for the rest of their lives to slumping and slobbering in a wheel chair with vacant, mindless expressions. I saw families come in and tend to their son strapped to a bed in endless coma for the rest of his life. I saw men in the burn ward who literally looked like creatures from the black lagoon...all flesh charred like a bubbling black ash, without ears, no nose, no hair, no features...only a hole for a mouth, holes for ears, and slits for eyes. Oh no, I couldn't feel sorry for myself. I empathize with some who feel the ones who died were the lucky ones. Yeah, Nam was hell!
"I Sincerely feel that most Vietnam veterans realize that there are no real war survivors. For the living, there can never be real and complete peace. We can’t help but look back on an event that impacted our lives so completely ... changed us so completely. We’ve seen too much ... done too much ... had too much done to us. Many veterans of war just cannot talk about the horrors they've seen. It brings up too many bad memories. I'm not afflicted that way, because I was trained as a journalist, and feel I must tell the story whereas so many can't, for some reason or another. My poetry is my vehicle to transmit a compelling message about war's reality paid not only by those who died, but also by those who do come home, but are changed, never the same by doing what most Americans can never imagine. The families of these men deserve to know. America needs to know!
Though Nam was indeed hard physically, that was a piece of cake compared to the mental and emotional baggage the Nam left us with ... and the baggage (call it PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is real, it's still there, still weighing many vets down ... still rising from the depths of our being where we tamped it down so long ago because we could not deal with it then, not when we had our duty to do, not when we still had to walk that trail, and be alert ... or go crazy with the anxiety.
These old memories still torment veterans with devilishly haunting memories of battles, faces, dates we still find hard to cope with, still walking those devilish trails in their dreams. Our body remembers! Our mind tried to forget, but we saw and did things that were hard to reconcile.
We saw ordinary and beautiful things in-country Vietnam blown away .. our brothers blown away, dying a horrible death in our arms. Brotherhood relationships were mixed with horror, grim death all around, unrelenting fear wall-to-wall, every minute of every day, knowing death could come swiftly any moment of the day, any minute, any second ... maybe this very second!
That bullet with your name on it could come flying any moment, and it comes fast. With anxiety we feel the specter of it hovering over us still, haunting us ... still, we were always looking for it, expecting it to come calling! The bullets we hear are real, and they sing death's song, high and shrill ... the blood they drill from men red and sticky.
"How deeply war experiences affect veterans from war's conflict, depends on how much blood he got on his hands, in direct proportion to how much of the blood was his enemies, his buddies, or his own." Gary Jacobson
Even today, it's hard to shake, the anxiety when we walk into a strange room, scan crowds subconsciously for men who hate us, or down the street hear loud sounds that take us back to that jungle war.
We all knew our purpose in "the Nam" ... to kill! We suppressed the obvious fear of imminent death that darkened our lives, ignoring the fact we could die without warning anytime, anywhere, behind that next bush, around the next bend in the trail, as we ate, as we slept tonight ... who needs sleep? It's highly overrated. I still can't get a good sleep.
We always knew that men hating us with every fiber of their being shadowed our every move, just out of sight, just waiting, following, watching for their chance to kill. It's hard not to hate them, these men, men in the shadows preoccupied with our death, dedicated to reuniting us with the dust from whence we came.
But we couldn't really think about it then, or we literally could not have taken that next step...we would have literally gone crazy. Think how hard that knowledge of impending doom, death and disfiguration can mean to you. It stays with you, clings to you, forever embedded in you ... even today!
We got to know fear and death up close and personal, till they were constant companions. We tried to act natural as if we were just a group of guys on a big campout, lost Boy Scouts, but always death was lingering in the shadows, stalking us, waiting, waiting... so close you could taste it!
Knowing our death would make someone's day is hard to live with ... and it is hard to live down. We tried to ignore this fear in the Nam, for thinking about death hidden in the ground, or hiding as snipers in the treeline, and watching for the assorted booby traps they may have set for us, would maybe make us hesitate to take that next step, or approach that next bush along the trail a few yards away from which our death might come.
Examine carefully every step, look up, look down, look left, look right ... good thing you have two eyes, right! Examine the tree line on the horizon for snipers, strain to see around the corner of the trail, to prepare yourself for what might be lurking there ... steel yourself ... but get a move-on, and nobody has that many eyes.
Besides, if you thought about the unthinkable too much you would go crazy...so we buried it deep where we would not have to think and deal with it then, though we knew we would pay later when the repressed thoughts rose to haunt us.
Now we're having to think about it, the fears arising as nightmares from the past torment us anew...they keep coming up...some worse than others...but all of us who walked combat know the demons intimately. For in fact, we still deal with them today. That is the source of PTSD!
My greatest motivating desire in writing about Vietnam was first a cathartic one, to heal the demons of war within me from where I'd stashed them from so long ago, bringing them out and confronting them so I could deal with them, looking them in the eye.
I know everyone is not the same, and everyone is not ready for this...but writing about it helps me heal...and I have received so many letters from brothers-in-arms, like the one telling me, "Damn, you tell it just as I feel it. I didn't know anyone else thought the way I did." And many of them tell me my words are also healing to them too, like the tough Marine tank sergeant who called me, telling me he was crying like a baby that someone else understood, and thanking me. What a humbling experience.
I have also had several write me, saying they were able to talk about "the Nam" for the first time with their families, as before they had not even been able to tell their families anything about what they had seen in Vietnam. They told me that they pulled their entire families before the computer, and went through my pictures and words to show them what Nam was like for them. Parents, brothers, sisters, children, write me all the time thanking me for helping them to know their significant other better, why he acted the way he did, why he'd changed, where he'd been, what he'd experienced, for he would/could not talk about it. That my writing helped them connect, to feel closer to their veteran, is always a humbling feeling. I write for them!
I write because I feel a great need to promote a better understanding about the realities of war in those that have not the foggiest idea of what war is really all about. There is no glory in war! War isn't the clean and antiseptic fare we too often see in the movies ... it is a deep fear of lingering death in the mud and the blood that too often stays with and haunts soldiers horribly for the rest of their lives. Too many students and others just don't know the true depths and horrors of war, but they must needs know, for the specter of it is upon us now, and will be again.
War effects many in a concentric, widening circle around the warriors, for generations. Mothers, fathers, wives, brothers, sisters, children...all write me they are deeply affected. It leaves a permanent hole in their lives. War is never forgotten by those who were there! Memories constantly arise of a place that was the birthplace of my manhood, twisting and turning basic ideals in ways that have sadly stayed with us forever. War viciously tramples our very value systems, turning upside down the teachings carefully taught and lovingly established by goodly parents, church and society.
Vietnam is the root of many unanswered questions that still tug at me today, coinciding with current events of today that will not let past horrors die. That is why when I wrote a poem for the troops going to Iraq, in one line I said, "Bless them in times they do not know." I remember many of them saying in the papers just before they went over to Iraq, that they were the best trained troops ever, trained and ready to deal with any eventuality...how naive they were, just like we were once.
They're not ready! Nobody is ready for what they will find.
I called myself gung-ho naive back then when I went to war, as they are now, but when we got there we found it mentally harder than anything we could have imagined. And no, we weren't ready for it. How could we ever have thought we were?
Now, returning troops from Iraq speak of the same demons that we contended with in Nam, and in daily battles when the demons followed us home to greet our families.
Combat
By Gary Jacobson© 2003
No matter how much training you've received
How much bravado adept with weapons of war believed
When you’ve never wall-to-wall fear perceived...
Combat is something you could never imagine
Not in your worst nightmare envision...
Nothing can prepare you for that!
War’s a real attitude adjustment
Just knowing you can die at any moment
Knowing men out there plan precisely your death
Preoccupied with it
Dedicated to it...
Fear insatiable with every fetid breath...
Nothing can prepare you for that!
Before your eyes smatterings of life quickly deteriorate
Into a mushy mass life will your smoking gun obliterate.
It wears on you...
Holding a broken, bloodied, lifeless buddy in your arms
Indelibly changes you...
Forever awestruck in ways no surgeon can fix.
Lifelong horrors...guilt buried deep in your soul transfix.
Nothing can prepare you for that...
When the country which sent its young princes off to war
Was not there to welcome home our soldiers anymore
Distressed soldiers bruised by it...
Bloodied and torn in body and spirit
Found Hope dashed from princely inheritance dispirited
Hope banned by prevailing establishment disinherited...
Nothing can prepare you for that!
I had one journalist from a local paper write me that, I should really find it easy enough to get over it, because war was like a football game, where you win some and you lose some, but you have to get over it, get up and get ready for the next game. He'd seen one of my pictures where I said I'd just been shot at, and he found it hard to believe because, "You're smiling," he said.
How really ignorant are even intelligent men! I tried to tell him war was not the same as a football game...that in football you don't have to remember your bloody, dead teammates left behind on the field of battle that is why it is so easy to get up and go on. In football you are not haunted by the look of the opposing teams you've met, remembering when you took the light from their eyes with your weapons of destruction, and saw them literally blown apart, faces literally reduced to mush, never again to grace this world or rejoin their families. In football, the opposing team can all get up and go onto the next game also ... you don’t have to kill them, because that is what it is, a game. War is no game!
Of course he inspired one of my poems: "Gee Mr. Newspaperman," http://namtour.com/news.html
Writing about something so personal is hard, but I write because this current generation is of prime concern to me, with its apathy and fears of terrorism and hatreds and intolerance's ... and a mindless revival of naive and gung-ho patriotism. For how are they to know of life unless we who have walked the valley of the shadow of war and death tell them of a history that too often repeats itself? It's repeating itself now in Iraq...
I have had many teachers write to tell me that their students, "Just don't know!" about Vietnam...about war...that is why I write!
The history I try to depict among the horrors of war, is the need for peace, and brotherly love shared among all peoples of the world. I am not a pacifist, for I fought and almost died for my country, but I do believe strongly in the brotherhood of man, abolishing all hatred and war. I believe in peace, though there are men who would not let you have it, hating you just because you are...like the 9/11 terrorists, who showed hatreds and intolerance that mere words cannot alleviate. I believe there are madmen in this world who good men must step to the fore to stop, routing them out by whatever means it takes...force if necessary...to defend our homes and values.
All the people of the world continually need to understand how important an event war is. War will always be a determining factor of not only who we are, but will determine our very futures, as well as whole generations surrounding us. War dictates the futures of wives and children, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers, friends... War changes everything, as it indelibly changes us who fight its battles, as each soldier's circle of influence is irreparably damaged. I sincerely hope we will not doom our children to fight senseless battles as did we, shackling them to similar fates suffered by their fathers in the latest in a series of "war-to-end-all-wars!" If we do not learn the history of war and its terrible implications, learning there is no glory in war...only death, sheer destruction of values and misery, then we are doomed to repeat it! And the next war will inexorably come! Sometimes there are madmen in this world, war a necessary evil that good men must stand to fight...sometimes not...sometimes our discernment is weak...sometimes we spill our blood senselessly in Vietnam! Sometimes there's Iraq! My fervent wish is that we will come to understand the horrors of war that we can work for peace evermore, making war-no-more!
Perhaps one reason I took the war so personally, so sensitively, is that I was drafted into the army shortly after serving a two year mission as a minister for the Lord Jesus Christ in The Northeast of England for two years, '62-'64. From teaching Christ's gospel of love and peace, I was handed a gun, taught to hate and kill, sent to Vietnam where I was baptized by fire and brimstone. This was a hard transition I've never gotten over. What a turn-around!
Actually, when I was wounded it was front page news in the major papers in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where I was born and bred. For in Vietnam I had penned 55 articles for "The Oklahoma City Times," as a combat infantryman/part time correspondent in a series of articles entitled, "From the Front." Many times I wrote articles from the field on cardboard C-rations boxes, or whatever scrap of paper I could find. I was sports editor of my college daily newspaper in Provo, Utah (BYU's Daily Universe), majoring in Journalism when I was drafted...but, like so many others, Nam succinctly ended my dreams and plans, changing the direction of my life indelibly and forever. Nam embedded my soul with a new set of senses to still haunt me...forever!
I am now living in Malad, Idaho, with my wife Terrie Kay, having raised four children ... three of the four having birth defects due to my exposure with agent Orange toxins.
I attended four universities, The university of Oklahoma, Brigham Young University, Southern Utah University, and Utah University, graduating in 1972 with a BA in communications and Journalism.
My poetry has been read all over the USA at Memorial and Veterans Day commemorations, even in a cathedral in France. My poetry has been featured by the American Legion in membership drives, and has been published in two volumes by the International War Veterans Poetry Archives Poems of Distant Wars, and two Jan Hornung books, "Angels in Vietnam, Women Who Served," and "Helicopters in War." Two hundred of my poems are featured on the web in "Vietnam Picture Tour, and in the International War Veterans Poetry Archives on the net.
***************
Below are a few of my poems now online, my memories of that time when ... I thought I'd Died.
"My Thousand Yard Stare," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/stare.html
"A Combat Soldier's Prayer," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/prayer.htm featured by the American Legion.
"Portraits of Heroes," by the artist Kasiah, http://namtour.com/heroes.html
"It Don’t Mean Nuthin’," http://namtour.com/nuthin.html
"PTSD," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/ptsd.html
"Welcome Home," http://namtour.com/welcomehome.html
"War’s so different, yet somehow still the same," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/different wars.html
"I’m no hero," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/hero.html
"Soldiers Of The Wall," http://namtour.com/wall.html
For our POW/MIA's "The Yellow Rose," http://namtour.com/yellowrose.html
"Feel their spirits lingering in the wind," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/spirits.html
"Agent orange," and "Feral Stalking Night," http://namtour.com/AgentOrange.html
"Wife of the Man, From Vietnam," http://namtour.com/wife.html The message here applies equally to wives of men from Iraq.
"A Mother Lost Her Son To War," http://namtour.com/MomLost.html
"LZ Snoopy And The Red Baron," http://namtour.com/snoopy.html
"Airborne, Hill 875," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/Airborne.html
"The Sound Of Guns," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/guns.html
"Song Of Napalm," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/napalm.html
"Just Before The Battle Mother," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/battlemother.html
"Just Marchin’ Through The Nam," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/march.html
"A Shau Ripcord," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/ripcord.html
"Rockets Of Tet," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/tet.html
"Dawn Patrol," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/patrol.html
"Once We Were Young," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/once.html
"How Can I Keep From Singing," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/singing.html
"War’s Carousel," and "War And Peace," MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "pzzzz.tripod.com" claiming to be http://namtour.com/carousel.html
"We Were Soldiers," and "Eye of the Tiger," and "Combat," http://namtour.com/WeWereSoldiers.html
"One Day at a Time," and "The Hill," and "The Homeless Vet," http://namtour.com/day.html
Special tributes to 9/11:
"Terrorism," and "A New Awareness," http://namtour.com/terrorism.html
"We The People," http://namtour.com/wethepeople.html
"Roll Up Your Sleeves," http://namtour.com/rollupyoursleeves.html
Tender Love In Dreams Doth come," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/DreamLove.html
"Moon River," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/moon.html
"Before The Next Teardrop Falls," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/teardrop.html
"If Tomorrow Never Comes," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/tomorrow.html
"Kissed By A Rose," http://themecca.tripod.com/kiss.html
"Love’s good Vibrations," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/vibrations.html
"Stardust," http://Knight_and_LadyKaye.tripod.com/stardust.html
"An Affair to Remember," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/affair.html
"I’ll Love You Forever," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/forever.html
"For No One," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/no_one.html
"Sometimes I Cry," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/sometimesIcry.html
"True Love Blooms, When A Man Loves A Woman," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/manNwoman.html
"First Kiss," http://Knight_and_LadyKaye.tripod.com/firstkiss.html
"Your Kiss," and "Some Say Love..." http://Knight_and_LadyKaye.tripod.com/somesaylove.html
"Golden Oldies Tour," http://Knight_and_LadyKaye.tripod.com/lava.html
"Drive In," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/drivein.html
SPIRITUAL AND MEDITATIVE
"Heavenly Message." http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/message.html
"I’ll Walk With God," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/God.html
"The Hand Of God," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/hand.html
"Somewhere Over The Rainbow," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/rainbow.html
http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/rainy.html
"Just A Closer Walk With Thee," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/closer.html
"Compassion," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/compassion.html
"Choose The Right," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/right.html
"One Day At A Time," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/oneday.html
"Penney’s From Heaven," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/pennies.html
"Day Dawn Is Breaking," http://dreamerzz.tripod.com/morn.html
And many more on my website. It's so hard to pick, for my poems are my children you know...so please treat them kindly. I would appreciate it if you would pass my site on to our veterans, and all others that need to know...
Gary
Gary Jacobson
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Join the U.S. Army Be All You Can Be- Go Army Strong
My name is Staff Sergeant Wendell Linder (Retired) and I live overseas in Germany. I have been in Germany for half of my military career, so I feel comfortable living and working here. I am retired from the United States Army since 2000.
On 17 March 2002, I started working as the Official Mail and File Clerk, Administrative Assistant and S-1 Assistant Human Resource Department of Defense Europe.
Born in Desota, Georgia on 18 June 1960 & was raised in the South Bronx, New York City.
Perman… Continue
On 17 March 2002, I started working as the Official Mail and File Clerk, Administrative Assistant and S-1 Assistant Human Resource Department of Defense Europe.
Born in Desota, Georgia on 18 June 1960 & was raised in the South Bronx, New York City.
Perman… Continue
Posted by wendell on April 7, 2008 at 7:01pm
We Were Soldiers in Vietnam & About SSG Linder (Retired)
My name is Staff Sergeant Wendell Linder (Retired) now everyone call me, Mr. W, Wendell. I live overseas in Germany. I have been in Germany for half of my military career, so I feel comfortable living and working here.
Vietnam Veteran
I would appreciate it if you would pass my site on to our veterans, and all others that need to know...
Gary Jacobson
I’m not a Veteran from Vietnam. But my uncle David Linder served in Vietnam and I learned a great deal from Vietnam veterans from the street of… Continue
Vietnam Veteran
I would appreciate it if you would pass my site on to our veterans, and all others that need to know...
Gary Jacobson
I’m not a Veteran from Vietnam. But my uncle David Linder served in Vietnam and I learned a great deal from Vietnam veterans from the street of… Continue
Posted by wendell on April 7, 2008 at 6:56pm
Learn more about Senator Obama
It's time that we as human beings come together and take the necessary steps to make a Change and Restore Credibility in our Leaders. As an African-American male, I see Change coming to America!!!!
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I am... African American man, crazy, chaotic, tired, happy, bored, friendly, silly, surprising, amazing, mysterious, emotional, sensitive, intuitive, insightful, MARRIED, mellow, simple, loyal, honest, active, hungry for knowledge, thirsty for a wisdom, learning, not smart enough, growing, dreamer, l… Continue
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