Destiny of Memories: Book I Fire and rain

This book is a true chronicle of what it is like to return home from war to a public that has no clue to who you are, what you feel, and how to accept you. I hope it will be of value to today’s vets who are returning. It is a long, lonely trail back to sanity.

Destiny of Memories: Fire and Rain: You could check out of Vietnam but you could never leave: Excerpt from the book: The year 1947 was also the same year that Al Capone died, the year that Jackie Robinson made history: Jackie Robinson changed everything for black Chicagoans and possibly set the stage for the struggle that lay ahead for his people. This was a year before the military integrated, seven years before Brown v. Board of Education, and eight years before Rosa Parks refused to step to the rear of a Montgomery bus.

Jackie Robinson wasn’t nudging people out of their comfort zones; he was shoving them with both hands. Some of his teammates initially refused to take the field with him, and among the Cubs as well, there was talk of a boycott.
He had served with blacks in Vietnam. Some were heroes, others were not, but all lived or died as United States Marines, and they were his brothers forever. The Marines only recognized one color: Marine Corps Green.

Now, twenty years after Robinson broke the mold, he sat in a window seat, still smelling of Vietnam. No amount of washings would ever get rid of the faint smell of death gunpowder and napalm, which was both a physical and spiritual stench. It was unusual for a Marine to be going home out of uniform, and under normal circumstance, he would be in a freshly pressed uniform, but the emergency orders that had pulled him out of the ‘Nam left no time for spit and polish. He had a short layover in Seattle where he had managed a hasty change from his jungle utilities, to ill-fitting jeans and a short-sleeved shirt too large for his shrunken frame.

Those battered jungle utilities had been more a part of him than was the city below with its sleeping hundreds of thousands; a city both unaware and uncaring that yet another Marine was coming back from hell.

They would return from Vietnam, but unfortunately, the memories would stay with them forever: You could take the marine from Vietnam but could never take Vietnam out of the marine. No one ever came back…

Now, twenty years after Robinson broke the mold, he sat in a window seat, still smelling of Vietnam. No amount of washings would ever get rid of the faint smell of death, gunpowder, and napalm, which was both a physical and spiritual stench. It was unusual for a Marine to be going home in ill-fitting civilian dress, and under normal circumstance, he would be in a freshly pressed uniform, but the emergency orders that had pulled him out of the ‘Nam left no time for spit and polish. He had a short layover in Seattle where a good Samaritan had given him some extra clothing which allowed him to  change from his jungle utilities, to ill-fitting jeans and a short-sleeved shirt too large for his shrunken frame. Those battered jungle utilities had been more a part of him than was the city below with its sleeping hundreds of thousands; a city both unaware and uncaring that yet another Marine was coming back from hell. The “lucky ones” would return, but unfortunately, the memories of Vietnam would stay with them forever.

For more hours than he could count, he had been fighting to stay awake, but kept drowsing into a limbo, which was both part dream and also part memory. He dozed for a moment and then snapped awake as he felt cold waves of fear fueling his body with a rush of adrenalin; causing him to react automatically with the instincts developed in Vietnam …instantly wary and alert. He had learned on patrol to be suspicious of anything different; anything even slightly out of place and here, in “The World”, everything was out of place, and his fear and caution made him as dangerous as he would be on patrol.

He felt naked without his rifle. How could he defend himself? The adrenaline rushes continued, and after each attack subsided, he clung to the reality that he was home now. This was the United States. He was back in “The World”. There were no enemies here. Nevertheless, even here, a part of his mind and soul remained in Vietnam, ten thousand miles away, where even in the insanity of war, there yet remained a familiarity of belonging to something that he desperately refused to let go. Only now, he realized for the first time what his old gunnery sergeant had told him was stark truth and reality; ‘you can take the Marine out of Vietnam, but you can never take Vietnam out of the Marine’.

As he saw his reflection in the port window, the memories reached out and held him like a jealous lover until his reflection dissolved into other scenes, and he closed his eyes and slipped back into the familiar and brutally beautiful landscapes of Vietnam.