It is probably dangerous for self-preservation to philosophize too much while in a war, but every once-in-a-while, through the fog of my fatigue the question arose: What are we doing here?
Vietnam’s Mekong Delta
Due to the intensity of the agriculture practiced throughout the region, the Mekong Delta is both rural and densely populated. This led to a great tragedy of the Vietnam War—the number of civilian war casualties. The mix of American firepower in the highly populated Delta caused the wounds and deaths of many Vietnamese civilians, children and aged among them. Nothing impacted my own tour more than the numbers of civilian war casualties I saw and treated. Nothing has stayed with me like the scenes of our firepower landing on innocents caught in situations beyond their control. None of the excuses and euphemisms used to explain the numbers of civilian casualties ring true to me. Three-year-old children did not harbor grenades waiting to blow us up. Five-year-old girls were not waiting with rifles to ambush us.
Returning
Instead of being welcomed home, the first Americans I interacted with after deboarding my plane at Travis Air Force Base were screaming obscenities at me and 180 other veterans. Still in our jungle fatigues, we had to walk within a few feet of a chain link fence which separated us from hundreds of angry and jeering protestors. The message was clear; we were not welcome in our homeland.
On writing Poisoned Jungle
In writing Poisoned Jungle, I have attempted to express through the characters the incredible complexity of going to war. Conflicts don’t end with the last shots fired; they send tentacles in numerous directions to twist and fester and entangle themselves into lives beyond the combatants.