Luke's Memories

My dad's best friend from high school came over today.  He said he just wanted to hang around with another "jar head" and the nearest and dearest one around is Andrew, my husband. Andrew never had any "action"as a Marine.  He was the barracks manager and spent most of his time lifting weights, drinking beer and trying to get some action when off duty (to no avail, I might add.)  Luke, on the other hand is a Vietnam Veteran.  I've known Luke since I was in High School.  I think he moved back here from somewhere and reconnected with my dad and they've been tight ever since.  He's gone through some hard times lately, with prostate cancer that has been "playing games" with  him, due to the agent orange dropped on him in the war, but I'm sure that anything that life throws at Luke at this point is laughable compared to what he went through in his young life as a avionics mechanic in the Vietnam War.  

So while my dad was dodging the draft in college, Luke joined when he was 17 years old.  And Luke doesn't mind that my dad didn't go - he says that he went so that my dad didn't have to go.  That's just the kind of guy Luke is, sweet and full of love.  He's not the sort that talks of these things all the time with anyone.  My dad knows less about it than Andrew does.    

When Luke walked in the door and said he just wanted to drink a beer with another jar head, I jogged my memory - was it the Marine Corps Birthday?  Luke's Birthday?  No - its the anniversary of the worst day of his life.  Now I remember, my dad said that this is always a hard time of year for Luke.  He and Andrew talked quietly about what happened 42 years ago, today. 

I think I've actually seen something like it in a movie and I know there are books about it, because he gave Andrew a copy.  My dad once said that helicopter gunners in the Vietnam War lasted about 2 weeks.  Luke lasted for 13 months.  During that time, 42 years ago today, August 8th, when Marines called to be lifted out of an area, Luke and a crew of three or four landed the helicopter where directed and were ambushed.  A child threw a grenade into his helicopter, a little girl and it was Luke that fought his way out, and I guess you can imagine the rest.  The only people that lived to tell the tale were Luke and the badly wounded helicopter pilot.

He said that they would drop troops out in the jungle, only to pick them up less than half of them only 20 minutes later.    

He joined because of a family member whom he admired and was in the corps.  He thought he was doing the right thing.  He was doing something!  Helping out!  It wasn't until he arrived stateside, dressed proudly in his Marine Corps fatigues, with his duffel bag and was greeted by a beautiful blond woman spitting on him and calling him a "baby killer."  Confused, he promptly went to the airport restroom to change into civilian clothes.  When he finally arrived home, he was greeted at the airport only by his parents.  "It was just me, my mom, my dad and my duffel bag.  Not my brothers and sisters or anybody else."  I would imagine that he had expected a hero's welcome, not being spit on. 

Even though Andrew never fired his gun at anything other than a target, even though he never shipped himself anywhere but home, Luke feels a kindred spirit with him.  Tonight they are brothers.  On the anniversary of worst day of Luke's life, he visited with Andrew maybe because he reminds Luke of his friends, his young, young friends that died and are still dying from agent orange induced cancers that they cannot fight due to the wounds sustained in the war.  Or maybe Andrew is what Luke was before he went to Vietnam, un-haunted with the doings of a too young, too sweet, man, full of the desire to do what is good and what is right.  If only the government hadn't f*cked it up and sent him to hell and back instead.  

I look at my children, sleeping in their beds and think - they will never have a day so horrible, in all their lives.  They will never have a day so horrible that it haunts them forevermore.  Nor will I, or my husband or my family or friends.  I don't believe in God, but when I think of Luke, I think of Angels kissing him awake every day and watching over him through the day, kissing him to sleep at night, because he is a truly, deeply sweet person, living with memories that I'm sure he would rather forget. 

In the words of Philip Caputo in "A Rumor of War," 

". . . whatever the rights or wrongs of the war, nothing can diminish the rightness of what you tried to do . . . You were faithful.  Your country was not."