Warrior to Warrior

Hopefully I didn't wait too long to repost this entry from last year...

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

Don't Blunder into Mother's Day

Dear Warrior . . .

Here's my Mother's Day message to all our uniformed men in Iraq. A warning, actually.

First the situation: Your wife, the mother of your children, asks you via letter, e-mail or phone, "What are you going to get me for Mother's Day?"

Next the advice: Do not blunder with your reply, as in, "What are you talking about? You're not my mother."

I know a guy who said that. I'm not allowed to be his friend anymore.

If you ever do feel an urge to say, "You're not my mother," tell it to the first sergeant. Never speak the phrase to the mother of your children. Got it?

Good, good. Now a personal war story. On my second Vietnam tour, I set out for Montana and arrived home in the dead of winter.

Sometime after midnight the temperature dropped to 40 below, a 125-degree swing from the 85 of Vietnam. This was January 14, 1972. You could look it up.

The reason I know the date so well is because it's the birth date of our third child.

The hometown doc knew I was back from Vietnam on leave, so he discharged my wife after a day in the hospital. This I remember with great joy.

All else is a blur of memory. We had children. Three, I think. Yes, three, as I recall, all under the age of four, by their birth records.

The two older children seemed nice enough. Happy, I think, even boisterous. And busy, very busy. Clingy, too. I remember the three-year-old and the one-year-old were very attached to their parents. In the sense that an octopus gets attached to a dead mackeral.

The youngest, the newborn, the infant was on a timer. You could set your watch by her diaper changes and feedings and crankiness--if you could open your eyes long enough to see the face of your watch. I think her cycle was about 20 minutes, yes, a feeding every 20 minutes.

Toward the end of my leave, I remember waking from a nightmare at 3 a.m. or so, the infant in my lap, an empty bottle still in her mouth. Both of us were soaked, and it wasn't spilt milk.

I propped this glorious child on my shoulder and coaxed a burp from her. It was a wet and wild sound I did not hear again until my son was 14, the age where he and his soccer team would each eat four burgers and drink two super-sized colas and fill the air with the sounds of bull elephants trumpeting their dominance over each other.

I changed my infant daughter's diaper and hugged her to me, worried. Worried that my wife, just days from now, would have sole care of these three children who had worn down both of us in only a week of leave.

I got to go back to Vietnam, where I could regain consciousness and get a night's sleep. She had to remain in Montana, locked in winter, locked inside that apartment.

I don't know how she did it. She herself certainly doesn't remember how--another of those blurs of memory. But, years later, the one time I said the words, "You're not my mother," something snapped in her. She made me very afraid.

And I felt ashamed that I said those words. Ashamed that I gave so little thought to her role.

Think about it. When you're away, you're not the only one in your family serving our country. Your wife, the mother of your children, is serving it as well by clearing the decks so you can serve better. She gets so little thanks for that role. She deserves better.

The least you can do is remember her on Mother's Day. And the worst? Well, now you know.

Till next week . . .

God bless you and Godspeed.

____________

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. 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.

(Original post 2005-05-04 20:10:19)