by Dean Lundell

Created on: April 14, 2009   Last Updated: June 03, 2010

Choices

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. for the first time. For a veteran of that war it is a gut-wrenching, soul searching experience; for me, it was a time to reflect on the choices I have made.

I looked up at the statue of three soldiers, all bearing the anguish of war on their young faces. One black, one white and one brown; the racial divisiveness and animosity during that period seemed to melt away as it occurred to me that we all wore the same uniform and bled just as red.

People tend to remember the sixties in terms of college campuses erupting with throngs of student protesters in beards and beads. Growing up in the blue-collar, working class neighborhoods on the south-side of Chicago was quite a different picture. The standard mentality was that if you didn't go into the service, there was something wrong with you. That never received much press coverage.

The Class of `65 was like any other at Chicago Vocational High School. Your diploma was evidence that you had survived four years there. Football at CVS was more of a religion than a sport, and John K. was the captain of the football team, a prestigious position. John enlisted in the Marine Corps right out of high school. Six months later, he was dead in the jungle of South Vietnam. Eighteen years old.

Three years later, I was there, one of the "older guys" at twenty-one. I chose to enlist in the Army two years out of high school. Two years of junior college made the difference. It qualified me to receive a year of specialized training after basic. During that extensive training I married Ellen, my dear wife to this day. Looking back on it, my time in Vietnam was harder on her than it was on me. She, never knowing from one moment to the next, if I was alive or dead, always fearing a knock on the door that would bring that dreaded telegram or an Army chaplain.

Assigned to a small sub-unit of the 82nd Airborne Division, I was sent to a remote, mountain-top outpost in the Central Highlands, in what was called II Corps. There were a few villages nearby, all Viet Cong controlled. The hundred or so of us that manned that outpost were very cognizant of the threat and tactics that Charlie used. Aside from slinking through the barbed wire, Charlie would shanghai twelve and thirteen year-olds from the local villages, get them doped up on opium, then hand them a "Chi-Com" (Chinese Communist) AK-47 and tell them to go after us.

The consequence of

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>