Well, I made it home. It really was the longest day of my life. It was an 11 hour flight from Seoul to Los Angeles and while the customs thing was a little annoying, it wasn’t too bad and didn’t take too long. The flight to Salt Lake only took an hour and a half and there was just a short layover before I boarded for the hour flight to Helena.
I really started to get emotional on that last leg. You’ve got to remember Monday, May 9th had begun some 26 hours ago and it was only 5:30 p.m. local time. So I was allowed a little liberty from flight fatigue. I pictured my wife smiling in the lobby and running into my arms. Then I would be surrounded by family and friends all welcoming me back home to Montana. I even imagined that my friends would have arranged for a piper to play a tune with my entrance. As I sat on that plane, filled with those visions, emotions started to swell up in the chest. I couldn’t wait.
The plane landed 15 minutes early. I was the fourth person off and anxiously walked toward the entrance anticipating a scene worthy of Frank Capra. But it was just like my first return 37 years ago. There was no one waiting for me then and now. Talk about a reality check. There I sat at the baggage claim, sitting on my bags, with no change to call home. It was Mother’s Day Sunday and mostly empty. About 15 minutes later, my wife and mother-in-law came through the door and laughed at the pitiful sight. Suddenly, it was my fault for arriving early. Then it was my turn to laugh. I was home and I liked that it was still the same.
Probably the most difficult thing in my life since I’ve returned is responding to these questions:
- “Well, how was it?”
- “Was it worth it?”
- “Did it help?”
It’s been two months and I still don’t know how to answer. Words don’t seem to paint the pictures or the feelings that come to mind. I think I need to tell the story. Talk about the trip and about my life. Neither is especially eventful, but the 37-year span is unique and perhaps even timely. My 2004 days in Vietnam were mostly emotional experiences of sadness and resignation. While there were a few similar reflections, the overall experience was very different. But both of the “coming home’s” were very familiar.
When I came home for the final time in the ‘60’s, our Country was polarized, angry and absent of consensus on the majority of issues. The exclusive assemblage of wealth during the Vietnam War had found the means to make their money grow while the working class were beginning to see their rise to the middle class, during the ’50’s, begin to slip away as they slid into the era of reduction in force. Social Darwinism was clothed in hipper wrappings, but it remained the underpinning of economic controls and designs.
Coming home in 2004, the same things are happening. Civility in Congress and the White House is a courtesy of the past. News show-hosts yell and call their guests gutter names. The racial factor is more prevalent in politics today than it was 1969. It’s all black and white and nobody’s allowed to play in the gray. And the youth of America is still fighting a war where they’re not sure who the enemy is and they die every day. Just like before. Uniforms die while shirts debate and defend what’s gone wrong and who’s to blame.
That’s why I think that I have to write the story in the hope that I may find and share the answers to the questions. I know now that the war in Vietnam is over. I know that Vietnamese people aren’t mad at me. I saw Vietnam in peace. It isn’t a perfect model, but it isn’t war. But here at home, war is still being waged. I think that it’s just like the one being waged when I came home in 1967. I’m afraid that America’s long lasting fight with itself has screwed me up just as much as the traumas I found in the war in Vietnam.