My draft papers were on the kitchen table in my mother's hands when I got home from school 4 days later, she was crying. My dad was disappointed but he didn't give me one of his famous lectures. He said, "You had your chance, now it's time to make a decision, a decision that will be the most important of your life. What are you going to do, son"?
After a long night of drinking, pacing, and thinking and 2 hours sleep I went down to breakfast. It was a quiet breakfast with my family until I spoke. I looked at my dad and said, "I'm going to enlist today Dad, I'm going to enlist in the Army, and I'm going to be a 101st Airborne Ranger, just like you were in WWII". Mom broke down, dad hugged her and gave me the strangest look I'd ever seen. It was pride mixed with WTF are you doing? My little brother, as always, said the wrong thing, "Timmy, are you going to get killed"?. The rest is long and not interesting, needless to say, my brother had said the wrong thing, as was his forte.
When I got back from the recruiters office I had lots of paper. I left home at eight in the morning, I got back at 4 in the afternoon. I had been to people and places that were very special to me. I walked into the house and went to the kitchen, there was my father at the kitchen table. A slightly less that a full bottle of scotch and two glasses, his half full. I didn't even ask where my mother and brother was, I knew dad wanted to talk to me.
He poured me a half a glass of scotch and put 2 cubes of ice in it (why I remember those 2 ice cubes, I'll never know. Maybe because it's the first drink my Dad ever fixed me, and he was a professional bartender. He was famous for a full glass of scotch and ONLY 2 ice cubes). We talked about war, the Airborne, killing the enemy, the spirit of the Corps, the pride, the sacrifice until it was dark and that bottle of scotch was gone.
The day I left to report for duty was a real circus. My mother cried, my brother just wandered around not knowing what to do, and my dad just stood there like a great stone statue, nothing to say, and no where to move. When I boarded the bus mom was a bucket of tears, Bennie (my brother) was crying, cause mom was, and my dad grabbed me in a hug I had never felt before and said, "you come back here alive, DO YOU HEAR ME"? Then he pushed me back, with his hands on my shoulders and I saw he was crying. That's the first, and only time, I ever saw my father cry. He wasn't sobbing but the tears were running down his cheeks.
Last part of your question: did I believe in it. Answer: without a fragment of a doubt, and that's the way we fought, without a fragment of a doubt. The war in Vietnam was won by the troops on the ground. It was lost by the chickenshit politicians in the democratic party. We will not lose this one, not as long as I am drawing breath. Those troops will never feel what I felt. They will feel pride and the glory of victory and the freeing of an oppressed people. No shame, and NO SPIT. Not as long as this old Ranger breaths on God's green earth.
Happy New Year, and God Bless our troops and the United States of America!
Timy
Eagles Up!
Fightin the good fight!!