Counting the War Dead from High School

Just discovered that a classmate died 52 years ago. I was counting the Vietnam war dead from my high school and found him on the list. We shared a couple of classes one year. The war came. That’s the whole story of our brief friendship. I think about that war every day. I don’t want to think about it. Except.

He was a Marine and he was killed by another Marine. Two nervous high school boys new to war standing guard on a bridge in a deep and worrisome night. Strange noises. Enemy? One boy mistakes the other and shoots him. Then, weeping, his dying buddy in his arms, he runs miles for help. Except.

There was no help. Not soon enough. Not in the confusion and fright of a night of war. Not for my schoolmate. Not for the boy who shot him and who had a breakdown and was discharged from the Marines and died young.

Fifty-two years later I hear the story. See the face in a grimy black-and-white photo. Remember him. Wonder what he might have made of his life but for that one terrible moment. Except.

We of that generation have to wonder what we may have made of our lives but for the too many terrible moments that put us in Vietnam - each time we too willingly believed a lie told us by our politicians and generals, every time we cheered ourselves as the greatest among the nations, each time we taught children that war is Hollywood, and that victory always goes to the most powerful, the richest, the most glorious, the most arrogant, the most willfully ignorant, the most short-sighted, the most like us.

Pardon, I didn’t mean to dump all this on you. Except.