I live in an old house in the country, on a gravel road, surrounded by corn and bean fields. I'm in a wheelchair. My friend Snake and two of my boys built me a 20'x20' deck and ramp to get to my truck. I can get around. The VA rated me at 120% disabled. My friends are all Vietnam Vets who are dying off. I have buried 17 so far.
Anyhoo, I spoke at St. Paul's Vietnam Memorial this year. I talked about these numbers. My friend Jim, who I had spent nine years with in a Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) group, died a month after he had talked at the Memorial last year. I was going to talk about Jim, but decided not to. Most of what I knew about Jim - which was everything - came from the nine years we had spent in group. We had talked, yelled, swore at, and - it's hard to say this word - cried. Some nights there would be someone who would break down in this PTSD group. I knew if I mentioned Jim, I would have broken down, so I didn't.
At the Memorial, which has the names of eleven friends on that shiny black wall (two of them high school classmates), I talked about the statistics of the Vietnam War. The most important number is the 58,261 Americans who died there. 1072 of them were from Minnesota! California sent the largest number of people to Vietnam - 951,588 - and suffered 5,575 casualties. That war cost 352 billion dollars! We could have bought them off.
But here is the most interesting statistic - it’s from the Census Bureau: As of August 1995, 1,713,823 of those who served in Vietnam were still alive. During that same census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country was 9,492,958. As of the current census - taken during 2000 - the surviving Vietnam veteran population was estimated at 1,002,511. This means that 711,000 died between 1995 and 2000. That's 390 per day. During this census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country is 13,853,027. This means that 4 out of 5 who claim to be Vietnam Veterans are not. Damn, we are getting popular! Many Vietnam Veterans actually hid the fact because the war was so unpopular in this country. Some were called “Baby Killers” and spit upon. Now I have had people come up and say to me...let me set up the scenario: I was in the checkout line of the big box store, looking at this 17-year-old in a mini skirt. All of a sudden here comes her mama. Oh shit, I thought, she's read my mind. Anyhoo, she puts out her hand, and says “Thank you for serving our country”! This shit kind of freaks me. I think I liked it better when I was ignored. Like my buddy's hat says “Dysfunctional Vet, Leave Me Alone”. Rat
No comments:
Post a Comment