Vietnam: The War that Never Ends

To many people the Vietnam War is either a distant memory best forgotten or something they’ve heard about in their American History class. But to me, and to many other people like me who lived through the experience, it is a part of us. The Vietnam War was one of the defining events for our generation. To most Americans the Vietnam War was limited to the conflict between North and South Vietnam. And, while most of the ground battles were, indeed, fought in South Vietnam, less heralded, but just as deadly battles, including the ones I was involved in, also took place in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, countries that were friends of America. It was a war during which friends and enemies alike were bombed into oblivion and doused with toxic Agent Orange. It was a war for which the peoples of those countries are still paying the price more than forty years later. It was a war where America’s soldiers did their very best given restrictions imposed on them by their leaders in Washington. This is not about a book about my experiences during the Vietnam War. Rather, it is about the tragedy that was the Vietnam War. It is about the tragic and continuing consequences of the war on the civilian populations. It is about the physical and mental affects the war has had on us veterans. And it is about my continuing battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.