Found on Veterans Day

A friend's facebook greetings to his fellow veterans on November 11 brought up this video in the comments. 



It was posted by the composer who wrote and performed the sound track.  The veteran who offered the greetings was the soldier who took the photos.  He served in Bravo Company of my battalion when I was in Vietnam.  I did not know him at the time but we met in Phoenix and discovered our shared history a few years before I moved to Window Rock and began spending my time in Gallup, New Mexico where he has lived a very long time.  I showed my Vietnam art along with my friend's paintings and read my Vietnam poems at the premier.

Finding this evoked very mixed emotions.  I remembered how fucking brutal that jungle was and how brutal we were to it.  Seeing Firebases Silver, Mace and Fontaine again brought back memories of living in the dirt.  The more pleasant memories include the fact that I survived that shit somehow.  Even better was recalling my years in Window Rock and Gallup where I made some very good friends and found an amazing community of artists.