Download PDF of this full issue: v41n1.pdf (28.9 MB)

A Plea For Our Soldiers

By VVAW

Unless one has been in it, no one can understand what war is like. When all sense of reality disappears, everything takes on nightmarish proportions. Colors become undiscernible to the eyes. Sounds fade into the distance. Time and movement slows. You can't direct your thoughts. All is like unto a dream. Everything is gray — all that is but the color of blood. All is unreal except the cries of pain and dying. In the mayhem and confusion, shouts and explosions penetrate your brain in random array. You make no sense of what you see or hear. Every movement becomes action or reaction. There's no order, no thought behind any action. Pure reflex. Fundamental manhood, kill or be killed. You fight, you survive.

Later, this brought on the nightmares. Those nightmares of mine aren't just visions or ghosts. When they come, they are the reality of life. Once, hardly a night went by, when one didn't relive the pain and hurt of the nightmare. Even now, when they come, the pain, the hurt, the loss, are all too real.

Mayhap you come in contact with one of these brave souls coming back from war, perhaps this will help you to understand somewhat of what they have been through and it will help you to be able to help them in some way. War may affect some differently, but it does affect all it touches. Please, don't forget these, who have answered the call of their nation. My generation's wars were the dirty little wars: Southeast Asia, Africa, South/Central Americas, the Middle East. No one wanted to remember these, or those who fought in them. We were cast aside, to be forgotten. Often reviled for being there and surviving. Don't let this happen to these who have served their country. Remember them and be there for them.

—Donald D. Wood
Graceville Correctional Facility
Graceville, Florida