True Story

It’s Memorial Day and I’m feeling pensive and griefstruck.

Many, many years ago, I was living in Washington, DC while on special assignment. The movie “Platoon” had just been released and, having nothing else to do, I bought a ticket and a box o’ buttered popcorn then watched the film on widescreen with an admixture of horror and grief.

A coupla days later I had dinner with a beloved elder cousin and her husband. I blathered through dinner, on and on, about the film I just saw that had made such a deep impression. When I finished gushing/blathering my in-law turned to me and said: “I was there.”

Whoa.

Turned out he was. Turned out he actually knew Robert Stone. Turned out they both served in the Tropical Lightning Division (although Robert Stone occupied himself in the rearguard and my cousin-in-law fought on the perimeter). He showed me photographs. He revealed his scars. It was quite the evening. My in-law, the most pacific man I had ever known, revealed what he learned in Vietnam. He had never talked about that war to me before (I never even knew he had served), but he talked about his experience that night. He talked about the fear, firefights, killing and horror, the deep pits excavated afterwards to bury the dead. He revealed parts of himself I never fathomed existed.

I had cried while viewing the film.

A coupla decades later, I cry harder still.

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Just so you are clear: All the stories I post are true (as best as I can convey them).



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