Posted on 02/08/2002 7:45:36 AM PST by NMC EXP
If you are able
save for them a place
inside of you,
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.
Michael O'Donnell, Major, U.S.Army
1 January 1970
Dak To, Viet Nam
Michael D O'Donnell is on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, panel 12W line 40.
The remains of the 7 Americans lost in this crash were repatriated on 12 Apr 1995 and positively identified on 20 Jun 2001.
The 7 men are:
Major Michael O'Donnell, CPT Jerry L Pool, CW3 John C Hosken, SFC John A Boronski, SFC Gary A Harned, SSGT Rudy M Becerra, SSGT Berman Ganoe.
The Vietnam veterans' sanctimonious peers - the powerful, egotistical hoard that reviled these servicemen in "protest" of the war - continue to bleat and whine, but time has revealed them for what they are; aging, bloated self-worshippers who tried to disguise self-love as morality. These onanistic martinets have spent their lifetimes singing their own praises while silencing all dissent, but the truth remains...
The purity of youth, the beauty of humanity, the best of the "Boom" bled in the jungles of Vietnam.
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