Memorial

Today I’m thinking about three Vietnam war veterans who influenced my thinking years ago. All three suffered mental health collapses in the war. It might’ve been drugs or chemicals or traumatic brain injury or (I suspect) a combination of these. But the point is they left here as normal kids and came back and never recovered their lives. Two of them spent a substantial part of their lives living on the street. As far as I know all have died since. As a young adult I remember having the opinion that every town in America had at least one brain injured veteran living on the street downtown. I tried to be kind but not patronizing. It hurt to see how they were teased and mocked by younger kids who had not lived during war time. I had already adopted my pacifist beliefs as a child and knew that I would never serve in the military. That has never been a popular decision and I assume it never will be. But I will never forgive my government for what it did to these boys and then abandoned them in the street.