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My Winter Soldier

By Paulette Reilly

After my husband Alan Reilly passed away I read his copy of Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I'm glad he had this organization and the Veterans For Peace to turn to for all the things I was never equipped to help him with. Alan had an acute awareness of social injustice and political hypocrisy. Alan knew you did not have to go to war to see evidence of man's inhumanity to man. Someone in our neighborhood goes out into the Kearny Meadows and uses homeless people for target practice. One of the homeless gentlemen Alan sometimes brought food to has a face full of buckshot scars. Someone had snuck up close to this homeless man while he lay sleeping on the ground and shot him just for the hell of it. To paraphrase Bobby Muller: it’s not just that war is wrong; war is only a symptom of a sickness that has infected too many hearts for far too long. Alan never lost his compassion, never lost his hope, never lost my respect, my love. He's in my heart, he's in my thoughts, he's in my dreams.