Letters home in my first war
I must
have written a few hundred or so letters in my first war. I seem to recollect
writing once a day but not remembering if I finished them, got them mailed or
if the war interfered with my ability to deliver them to the right person to
pass it on leaving it in my shirt or pants pocket for a later day.
My recollection of my wartime correspondence reflects my
pain, my sadness, my horror and my hopes of coming back to the real world away
from all this hate and death that surrounds me. Reaching the age of nineteen, I
was drafted into hell and put into a war I knew nothing about.
Day in day out I mingled with the war -wounded soldiers as a
medic carrying my magic potion of the pain killing heroin and other goodies
inside my bag on my side so I can ease the pain or stop the bleeding.
Many times have I torn off clothing to get to the wounds and
cover them with the dressing given until I ran out of them and began ripping
tee shirts or other clothing to keep the soldier from bleeding to death.
Some days we laughed and other days we cried but never was
there a day I didn’t think about the ones I loved. Infested by leeches,
mosquitoes and other creatures from hell, I was bitten a thousand times a week
working hard to keep the others from becoming sick, weak or infected with some
of the world’s strangest and unknown diseases so new they didn’t even have a
name for them yet.
In my letters I refrained from revealing my real experiences
for I didn’t want to cause concern for myself and others as we dug in deep and
flush with the dirt as the mortars fired over our heads. Never once did I
burden my loved ones with matters of concern other than waiting to go home
again. Never once do I remember writing such things.
I didn’t keep any of my letters for I saw no reason to hang
onto the warlike air they were written and any involvement of such misery after
I came home didn’t matter to me any longer. I left that all behind and tried to
move onto a new and more positive experience with the free world. I know I
remember thanking God for my safety and keeping me alive.
I know I expressed gratitude for the men that protected me
and those who persistently took care of me as I took care of others. I recall
telling my love to not worry about me for I was in a good place trying to give
consolation that there was no need to worry about and the first war I have ever
been involved in. The truth was not a necessary evil.
There were expressions of what I saw, smelled, touched and
heard. My memory recalls beauty and ugliness as well as discipline and chaos.
Never in a heavenly spirit nor a morbid one, I tried to temper my spirit to
reflect a distinction between good and evil, clean and unclean and real and
imagination. My affliction of life was in constant battle with my addictions in
life.
When I had time to write I was never alone. Soldiers from
different backgrounds joined me as we ate, slept and fought side by side. No
lines to divide us, no racial distinctions made, we were brothers in arms and
kept it a little bit on the wild side to keep from being too relaxed in the
first war I ever fought in.
Some were illiterate and asked for help writing their
letters. Some drew pictures that make us laugh as we were sure it would make
others laugh too. We wrote no war secrets, we stayed away from the truth and
reality that surrounded us as we masked our fear with the love we had for each
other and our families so far away.
My letters were messages from the heart and not the violence
that engulfed us almost every minute of the day and made worse in our
nightmares of the night. These letters were easy to understand.They were simply written and without any suspicion of any
wrongdoings, failings or accusations about anyone or anything. If one could
have smelled the paper the letter was written on, one would have detected
traces of fire and smoke.
Our guilt was more than we could bare and we certainly did
not want to share it or pass it on to our loved ones who had their own troubles
and concerns over there. We rarely wrote a letter that contained any terror and
we certainly did not hint or suggest that we were in any danger for to worry
the innocents was wrong and we knew that from the start.
There were times when my mind was empty but my heart kept
telling me “what more can I write.” Certainly I didn’t want to write about the
numerous deaths, the infectious nature of the plague, the common found venereal
disease or the malaria that was killing people with the fever so my letters
were more or less infected with some make believe or fictional stories about
how the day went for a soldier fighting his first war.
We were taught this by those who had been there longer as
they preached to us to stay away from writing letters that were gloomy to read.
We did write about those moments that captured the good things in life.
The brotherhood, the friendships and the events that took
place in the most remote but populated areas, the awning of tents in the camps
and the little tables around the fire when those chilly nights were wet and
damp because of the monsoon season.
We gave hints of our awareness and the presence among other
people who looked different, spoke different languages and ate strange dishes
of food.
We shared our experiences the best we could without opening
any doors of evil and writing home was a blessed event for this soldier who
wrote hundreds of war letters in the first war he was in.
