Awww!! Wildcat. *here’s a hug* Did you serve in Vietnam? This is a lovely poem. “under the cover of darkness”…ooh, I like that bit..real snoopy

yea the vietnam war was indeed a nightmare,so much those soldiers did for the cost of nothing.

Sorry to hear those nighmares still haunt you. Thank you for serving, it was a senseless war. I hope things get better for you. God Bless

Never realised you were a Viet vet old pal – I won’t attempt any humour mate – Has anyone ever made any sense of that war?
I think JFK would have pulled you out – so they killed him.
Your poem says it all mate.

That was a very telling piece. I feel you, or anyone else who experienced the atrocities of war. My heart goes out to you!

Sad and haunting piece but beautifully written!

Nicely written. I have a good friend/ tank sergeant /Ranger that served there and moved to the UK and you have just told the same dream that he told me.

I appreciate the theme you’re trying to convey, but your work kind of fizzled out. You started out good, but then you got too much into trying to tell us instead of show us. Revisiting such memories may be a difficult thing, but through such bravery comes victory over self. So, while I appreciate your efforts and the sensitivity of the material, I think you can do better. Keep going with what you started; fill it out and give it a purpose, even if that purpose is just “hey, look what I had to go through”. Keep up the effort, man, I’d like to see your creativity. Take care, talk to you soon. I gotta go.

It’s strange that I read this poem today as I had been in a conversation with an ‘old soldier’ this morning, not from the vietnam war but another, and you pretty much summed up what he was telling me. War is a terrible thing and its scars run deep in those who have been involved in them.
An emotional piece, well done.

The Vietnam war is the most misunderstood conflict in american history largely due to the liberal interpretation of events embraced by the education system. the men who fought the war served their country and the country of vietnam honorably. In hindsight it is easy to say that the war was not win able and that communism was not the evil force we imagined it to be. But at the time communism was seen by Americans as modern slavery and we decided to spend our blood and treasure to prevent its spread.

The practitioners of communism had already murdered millions of intellectuals, dissenters, people of religion, and anyone else that go in there way. The fear we felt as a nation was legitimate but imposing our will on a nation that embraced the other sides ideals proved an impossible folly.

the irony is that vietnam has now moved away from the corruption of communism and we now know that there are more effective ways to win the hearts and minds of people than to kill their brothers who we perceive as a threat.

Every soldier that went to Vietnam gave far too much of him or herself to all of us and for that I will always be grateful. the inept leadership makes the sacrifice more painful but does not diminish the gift, draftees and volunteers gave our nation.

Simple, direct, transparent, rational: Yup, I liked it.