Warrior to Warrior - Father's Day

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

Try to have a happy Father's Day

Dear Warrior in Iraq . . .

A special Father's Day greeting to those of you who have children you haven't seen in far too long a time. Everybody back here should give a second thought and a third prayer to you above all others, for you are feeling the hardship more than any other of our men in uniform.

I think that aspect of your service is overlooked. Even by those among you who share in the work and danger but cannot possible experience the pangs of separation that come with leaving a child behind.

On this point, I have some experience. I went to Vietnam my first time as a married man, er kid, and missed my wife as much as I expected any man could. Until six months into my tour, when I came back from field duty to our base camp and received a telegram--no Internet back then--saying I was the father of a daughter. I remember taking that flimsy piece of paper with maybe 20 words on it back to my tent. I sat on that dusty bunk and stared at the telegram, reading those words again and again. By then, I'd been a father for almost a week, and I guess I was trying to remember what I was doing a week ago when I first became a dad. I tried to imagine my child from the description--again, no jpegs as attachments, let alone e-mail: "Lots of black hair. Lusty cry."

Eventually, I received a three-by-three Polaroid photograph of my little girl. I carried it in a shirt pocket and took it out a dozen times a day, to stare at the dime-size image of her head, trying to get a grasp of a circumstance far too grand for my mind to fully comprehend. Along with the photo, my wife sent a sheet of paper and taped to it, a snippet of dark downy hair and a tiny handprint and a footprint no bigger than the end of my thumb. My wife told me she had taped a picture of me to the inside of my daughter's crib in the hopes that somehow she would learn my face. It was a sweet thing to do, but I was doubtful. Although I kept getting photos, I wasn't doing so great on putting life into them from just staring at them. And, if the trick did work, there was always the chance that my high school graduation picture would damage the child irreparably.

In any event, my tour ended, as all tours do. I arrived home from the airport at night, and we raced to my in-laws to visit my daughter, now six months old.

On the way, my wife told me she was concerned. My little girl was of an age where she'd become wary of strangers. "She might not take to you right away," she said, "so don't let your feelings be hurt if she cries when you pick her up."

After months of looking my photo in her crib, she still might cry? All I could think was, "You DID put up my graduation picture, didn't you?"

Grandma woke up Lynette, half a year old, and my wife made the handoff. Could have been last night, I remember so clearly.

I took her in my hands and stared into her face, eyes so blue, hair so fine, trying to drink her in with my eyes, at last able to see what no photograph could do justice too.

And she. She stared up into my face, intent, curious, entirely at ease. I'd swear she did know me.

It was a magic moment. It was as if, after all these months, we both realized we were meeting the second greatest love of our lives.

You might think the experience of that absence was the worst a soldier could have. Not by a long shot. Three years later I went back to Vietnam. I had to leave behind two children and my pregnant wife a second time.

In the middle of that tour, I got to come home on leave, and my second child, a son, was only a year and a half old. After my visit I put on my uniform to go to the airport. My son took one look and, although he was not yet talking and hardly of an age to comprehend, he began to sob. He clung to me, and I clung to him until the family had to pry us apart. I'm told that for the rest of that day he would stop in the middle of play and cry again and again. It was not the cry of a hurt finger, but of a broken heart.

It was the saddest day of my life. And the reason nobody is praying more than me for you guys with children this Father's Day.

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.