Lest We Forget

Today is the 38th anniversary of the worse day of my life. Some may find it difficult to make that statement with such clarity, but for me to this point there has never been any doubt. On May 23, 1971, I left my parents home in Wayne, New Jersey for army duty in Vietnam. I had to fly from Newark airport to San Francisco, go to a base in Oakland, California where I would board a plane for Seattle, Tokyo and ultimately Saigon.

I couldn't face the idea of my parents driving me to Newark Airport so I asked a long time friend of mine (still a friend today) to take me. As he turned his car around to pass my parent's house on the way to the airport, the only thought in my mind was that this might be the last time I ever saw my parents, sister or the house I grew up in. It was a beautiful spring day like it is today, a Sunday, and all I could think of was what felt like the unfairness of being on the way to war while everyone else had more pleasant things to do. It got worse on the plane to San Francisco - I enjoy irony, but I have come to realize that irony is a lot less enjoyable when one is the target. On the plane was someone who I went to graduate school with - he had done everything in his power to get out of the draft and had succeeded. Now he was on his way to San Francisco for vacation and job interviews. When he heard where I was going, his body language was as if he was accompanying my coffin - just great.

Many years later when I came to write "The Mutinous Regiment," I began one chapter just after the regiment had fought its last battle with the following words:

"If life is unfair, little in life is less fair than war. In every war some go through
combat unscathed to live long and full lives, while others, for no reason besides
luck or chance, die without ever having had the chance to live."

In addition to the reasons already mentioned, this has been on mind because I am close to having the William Lloyd letters ready to go to potential publishers. Lloyd was a sergeant in the 33rd who left the largest collection of letters of any member of the regiment. One of the characteristics of his letters is their total honesty, anything he thought or was unhappy about, he wrote about it. While working on this I have tried to remember that he was only 21, married for about three months when he enlisted in the 33rd, his wife couldn't have been much older. Imagine being that young and trying to cope with adjustments and stress that seems almost unimaginable. Lloyd's story has a happy ending, not only did he survive the war, he lived until 1928.

Yet that's just the point about the unfairness, Lloyd was in every battle and every campaign, lived to tell about it and live a full life thereafter. Another 163 members of the regiment weren't quite so fortunate - they never had a chance to live. The fact is that it is unfair and that can never be changed. To me that means at least two things - war has to be really justified before bringing that kind of unfairness into play. There is no doubt in my mind that the Civil War was such a war which brings in the second issue. The fact that it is so unfair to those who give their lives, it is even more important that we never forget those "who gave their lives that that nation might live," not just in the Civil War, but all wars.