We Are the War

Vietnam veteran and author John Harriman returns to Mudville with the third installment of his series Warrior to Warrior, letters from a Vietnam veteran to our soldiers in Iraq. See the intro to the series here).

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DON'T FORGET THIS
By John Harriman

Dear Warrior . . .

You've a lot to remember when you go to a combat zone.

All those lessons of your training, the tactics, policies and SOPs. The tasks, skills and standards on which the army has tested you in preparation for the ultimate soldier's test.

At first you'll focus on trying to remember all that. Be prepared for an awakening.

When you get to Iraq, you'll have to re-learn much of your training and forget much of your learning. That's because training, no matter how realistic, can never quite duplicate the real world of a combat zone.

As in the Vietnam era. The army sent many of its officers and noncoms to Jungle Warfare School in Panama before shipping the men to Vietnam. We lived in the jungle for two weeks, swam rivers, rappelled, ate exotic animals, ran an evasion survival course, built stick shelters and got used to the heat of day and cold of night. If you did swim, rappell and evade well enough, they gave you the patch of the "Jungle Expert."

When I got to Vietnam, I never swam a river, never rappelled, never evaded anything but malaria and never ate a monkey. In fact I never did any of the things I trained for except swelter by day and shiver by night.

As to the Jungle Expert patch, some sixth sense warned me against wearing it on my uniform. Saved me a lot of ridicule from the veteran warriors of a far more hostile jungle than Panama's.

Other things to remember are soft skills. You have to soak up so many new things. The culture of Iraq. The differences in religion. The ethnic variations among Iraqis. The sects, the unfamiliar names, the languages. Soon you'll come face to face with all the exotic sights and sounds and find that, even with all the indoctrination, the gaps in learning are huge. It's a fascinating thing, a new culture, but too much to learn in a hurry.

So you'll be glad to hear that, with all the things you have to remember, there's only one thing you must never forget.

Simply hold to this one thing. It's a guiding principle. Stick to it as you face new situations, and you cannot go wrong: Never forget that you represent more than yourself. You are not only a member of your family. You are not only a citizen of your town, your county, or your state. No, you represent all of us, all of America.

Your enemy in Iraq must see you as America the brave, America the resolute, America the professional and America the deadly force in a relentless pursuit of a world safe from terrorism.

The noncombatants in Iraq must see you as America the fair, America the compassionate, America the humane, America the civilized.

What you show those people of you, will be all they know of our country.

So, make it your best. For the time that you are there, you have an incredibly difficult mission and a serious responsibility. You take up the torch from every generation of veterans who went before you, wearing the uniform as caretakers in the name of America.

We veterans of earlier wars know it, and we entreat you to come home safe and sound. And we beseech you, above all other things. Do not forget this. You are more than the guardians of our nation. You are more than the promise of our country. You are more than the hope and the courage of America.

You. Are. America.

God bless you and Godspeed.

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John is a veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam and a member of the American Legion. These columns are excerpts from an upcoming book of the same title. His current book, Delta Force #1 : Operation Michael's Sword is a fictional account of the 9/11 attacks and the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom.