Heretical Musings – The 16-year-old Marine..

[Raoul]

During the 60’s after I left the Army the Viet Nam war was still raging. In my first job I was often sent to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital to service the electrical wiring. The hospital was the main center for amputees who lost their limbs in Viet Nam. They were all marines. I would have to steel myself before walking into the hospital because of what I saw in the various sections. I would often do my work in a zombie like state, trying not to look around at the poor kids lying in the beds, many with blood still seeping from their amputated limbs. If I began feeling anything I would go out of my mind and probably start screaming like a madman over the carnage I witnessed before me.
One day, while walking swiftly to a pay phone, I turned the corner of a main aisle and almost walked right into a kid who was being pushed in a wheelchair by a Navy corpsman. The kid had no arms or legs – he lost all 4 limbs in the war. He looked like he was only 16 even though he was probably older. His face was painted with a look of shock and bewilderment. I don’t know if he was still in shock that he had survived what should have been a quick death. Or maybe he was thinking about the life he faced confined to a wheelchair requiring someone for help in everything he had to do in order to live. He was wearing the kind of glasses that gave him a nerdy look. In another place, another world, he would have been one of those college students you see with a dozen or so pens in a pocket protector.
I moved against the wall to allow the orderly to push the kid’s chair by me. I couldn’t help it but I found myself staring at the kid. It didn’t really matter because he didn’t look at me as much as he looked through me. His mind was a million miles away. It was obvious he was oblivious to his surroundings. He wasn’t even twenty and was horrifically mutilated. And for what, a war that historians would later say was a mistake? As the kid was being moved farther and farther away from me I began to feel like I wanted to scream out in rage and frustration. I composed myself and walked quietly away.
I may have left the kid at the hospital but he never left me. In fact, as I type the words here I can see his face in front of me. And the effect is always the same – tears begin to well up in my eyes for him and thousands of others. Kids who are sacrificed by political cowards, most of whom never served a day in combat.
Every time a politician appears on television with a flag in his lapel pushing the patriotism card, I see that kid’s face in front of me.

[TomInTib]

1. Spot on, Raoul.

And those pins make me crazy.

My sweetheart always asks me to stop shouting at the teevee just because there is some chickenhawk wearing a flag pin up there on the screen.

Tom

[Raoul]

5. Are we related?

We must be related because I do the exact same thing. It drives me nuts to see them wear the lapel flag ESPECIALLY the biggest traitor of all, Karl Rove, who was responsible for outing Valerie Plame..

[ClayZ]

2. K and R

[The Vinyl Ripper]

3. K&R

[UTUSN]

4. and *I* think of Shrub's Champaigne Unit, with Shrub AWOL, & flying drug & CIA missions to S. Americ

AND I think about veterans who preferred him over ACTUAL veterans who happened to be Democrats. AND I think about how his father ditched two planes and had crewmembers under his watch die. AND I think about how Shrub sent scads of volunteers over to their deaths, not to mention hundreds of thousands others from other countries.