WAr and the 4th of Jully

The St Petersburg times, July 3th 2009, headline read “New front in Afghan war.” I was blessed to be sitting in my air conditioned apartment In Gulfport Florida sipping coffee, as I read the newspaper. I did not see the Newspaper headlines on Feb. 5th 1971; I was part of a “New front in the Vietnam War.”
There are just as many similarities as differences in both of these war stories. War fronts far away with our Army chasing an invisible ghost of an enemy, through the mountains along the country’s borders. Today we have 4,000 Marines backed by helicopter gunships along the Afghanistan / Pakistan border. The mission is to destroy “insurgents” supply lines. Between February and March of 1971our mission was to destroy “insurgents” supply lines along the border of Vietnam and Laos. Over 9,000 members of the South Vietnamese military died in that attempt; the “official” US Military casualty list was 1,462. Some reports from that time have called the fighting along Highway’s one and nine (the supply lines for the South Vietnam forces) as the bloodiest fighting of the war. I was on those roads every day as a Battalion Mail Clerk/ Carrier working out of our Forward Command Head Quarters on Firebase Vandergrift. I cannot say if it was the bloodiest fighting of the war but I do know that it was a nightmare every day. I started each day’s run convinced that: “this is the day that I will die. “ I ended each night back in the trailer that was my mail room preparing mail for the next day amazed that I was still lucky. I never thought that I was blessed and still do not; how could any God allow all those dead and wounded but allow me to return home with all my limbs? Just a head full of stuff that never goes away, how lucky is that?
I do have a hard time focusing to often; I have forgotten why I am writing this letter to the Editor. I have sat at the Wall in Washington DC many times pondering; why? Every time I see a cheap product labeled “Made in Vietnam,” I think not. It is February 3th 2009; Tears are blearing my vision as I write this. I stare at the headlines and wish more than humanly possible that this generation of our Servicemen and Women are celebrating something that can be called ‘well worth the sacrifice” in twenty years, not “Peace with Honor”, and cheap labor. Tomorrow is another Fourth of July celebration. When I was a child I loved the fireworks, the parades, and the family fun. Today I cringe and shake when the fireworks go off; I am reminded of incoming rockets, and flares in the night skies as a warning of an enemy sighting.
I served in Vietnam under my birth name of John Joseph Carney July 70-July 71.