Comments from 6 June

Anonymous said... 

Maybe I can help with your understanding of Einar.

A long time ago, in a feted jungle far away, a young farm boy who was stupid enough to join the US Special Forces fought to save a fire base from which he had been schedule to stage through for a foray into Cambodia. The American hilltop fire bases of the time were defended by concentric rings of soldiers or Marians. If attacked the outer ring could fall back to the next ring if things went bad. Then the next, and so on. It was actually a fairly good strategy. The farm boy carried wounded defenders back to the next ring each time the unbelievable numbers of NVA regulars forced a fallback. Finally he carried a wounded soldier to an evack bird on the LZ. A medic looked at him, leaking badly from both legs and one arm, and a thousand piano wire cuts from NVA Chinese grenades, grabbed him by the flak jacket and pulled him aboard despite his objections.

As the slick fought for altitude he heard the fire base commander call “Broken Arrow” over guard channel. ‘Broken Arrow’ meant that an American unit was in danger of being overrun, and every American aircraft that could reach that unit should respond. It did not matter what ordinance the air craft was armed with. Napalm to depth charges, as long as it could be dropped on the heads of the enemy, it was welcome. Two gunships responded. An AC-130 specter and an AC-47 Puff. As the young Special Forces soldier lost consciousness from blood loss his last memory was of the fire base commander instructing the air assets to: “Fire on my position. We are being overrun!” For a quarter century the soldier suffered the unearned, completely undeserved, guilt of deserting his friends in their time of need. 

Twenty five years later he, totally by chance, encountered one of the men left behind at that fire base. And was told that the garrison was saved, when they hunkered down under sand bags in bunkers and let the air assets do their job. Over 150 men whom he had thought were overrun and killed had been saved!

The guilt was never assuaged. It stays with him to this day. The remnants of battle are not always logical.

Mike


Mike, thank you.  Please tell that farm boy that Einar has some idea how rough it is to be pulled out of a fight when you think you’re not done yet, when you haven’t done all you could do, even if that thinking is in error.  And that he knows how it is to go for years blaming one’s self for not finishing the job, and for all the perceived consequences that followed after.  And tell him also that I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes, so glad for him that he finally found out what happened up there on his hill, and that I doubt it was by chance he encountered the man who let him know.

Kellie said… 

I thank you for your insight.

I actually have an understanding of my own experiences when it comes to this subject. And that may be exactly why I have this love hate relationship with Einar, he is too much like me...?

But I will no longer comment on it since the one time I did barely begin to make comments, I was soundly thrashed for my own view and experiences, despite the fact that I never actually was allowed to completely explain myself and the fact that they (the thrashers) completely did not comprehend what I was saying.

It seems that some men do not understand that women also go to war.

Kellie, I understand that women also go to war.  Everyone has their own struggles, and I for one don’t believe you necessarily have to be engaged in firefights on foreign soil in order to be a warrior, or to be wounded.  Everyone’s experience is different, and if I wasn’t there where you were, I really can’t judge yours anymore than you can mine.

I’m sorry if you believe people have criticized you here for what you said about your own experiences.  I don’t remember that happening, though if you say it did, I believe you.  What I do remember is a spirited debate on the subject of pacifism, and people, me among them, defending their points of view from what they perhaps wrongly believed to be an attack.

I’ve never censored you--or anyone else for that matter--nor would I, so if you weren’t allowed to completely explain yourself on that matter or any other, it may be because you didn’t allow yourself to finish explaining.

So, comment or don’t, as you prefer, but if choose not to, don’t let it be because of anything I have said and done, because I value everyone’s perspective.