Download PDF of this full issue: v10n3.pdf (6.7 MB)From Vietnam Veterans Against the War, http://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=2059&hilite=
| Download PDF of this full issue: v10n3.pdf (6.7 MB) |
PERSONAL REFLECTION
It's 11:45pm, the 23rd of May. It's been 13 years and the "gap" still remains. That is the "gap" that keeps American from feeling secure at 11:45 on a warm night in the 1980. Why do they create the "gap"? This division that the main stream—and even government agencies have built between themselves and their last source of combat veterans, namely me—the Vietnam vet. Why do the act like the enemy when they talk to me? Just today I was at the IRS field office for the Milwaukee area, trying to get a "letter"—a simple piece of paper—that gave the date of expiration of a phoney delinquent tax bill for $172 from 1972. This tac bill was audited during the famous Nixon audit and assessed: it was illegal for me to claim my mother as a dependent without having kept daily receipts for the food she ate and calculating her other expenses (shelter) on my 1972 tax return. The Nixon audit said that they were disallowing the sworn statements from me and my mother stating that she was unemployed, not receiving welfare, or had any other form of income. We thought that this, along with the fact she did not file an employment tax or personal employment tax form would certainly satisfy them. They wouldn't hear of it! They said I was a liar and a thief, and demanded the $172 that I'd claimed for taking care of my mother. I refused. By the time it came to court nearly a year later, I was ill with what was later declared a service-connected respiratory problem. Most of my time was spent in the hospital or at home under a doctor's care. I was convicted without being there. They passed a judgement in August, 1974, that gave them the power to forcibly collect the money. They came to :garnishee" wages or take property, but by that time it was too late; my home was being taken by the V.A. because I was sick with service connected disability which they denied existed when I filed for disability a couple of years after leaving Nam. "Garnishee of wages"? What a laugh. I'd lost three or four jobs by 1973, all due to illness, respiratory ailments, bronchitis, pneumonia, or acute sinusitis attacks. These were all things that the V.A. was saying were in my head but civilian doctors were saying were in my body. So the V.A. decided not to "enforce collection," but let the penalty and interest mount up without notifying me. It's now grown to $336.43 with a six-year expiration date on collectibles. I went to the local IRS to ask for a piece of paper stating the amount of this bogus due bill, and was refused. Why did I want the paper? I wanted to use my GI Bill to buy a home for my three-year-old son I have custody of. We live in a one bedroom apartment and even though I'm eligible, I've been refused housing by the Milwaukee housing authority. For every piece of paper there's a "gap." For every repossessed home from a disabled veteran, there's a wider "gap." And the widest "gap" of all? Finding out about the deadly herbicide 2,4,5,T—Agent Orange, which poisoned so many Vietnam vets and which comes from the same people who refuse to give me my piece of paper. And that will help secure a better life for me and my son. Why do they hate the men who fought for them? Vietnam veterans were used once and thrown away. "America eats its young" go the lyrics of a popular song of the late 1970s. I know what my son will say when they come looking for men in the next war—and every mother's son within the sound of my voice: Hell no, we won't go. And the little "gaps" are helping Vietnam vets to make sure that's what happens.GHOSTS OF NAM
I pen the following thoughts and words for you, faceless men, who march in route step, in step and close order down history's tortuous road. We ask the weighed questions: Are you victims? Have you been denied? The answer is Yes! You are victims of the biggest "lie" ever told, which encompasses the "Dulles Hysteria," the "domino theory," "halt the spread of communism," the Tonkin Gulf "Incident," and "agent Orange," the last, whether real or imagined, you are still its victims. And you were the victims of prejudice, simply because had all of you possessed wealth for tuition, there would not have been anyone to sound "Charge," and "Charley" would never have existed. Have you been denied? The answer again is "Yes!" You have been denied your recorded "classical battles," your "ticket-tape parades," your "corner of history," and what pains so very much, the gratitude of those for whom you perspired, cursed and bled so heavily. But do not despair. Some march with you and find you and your "chopper call," "sapper," "wasted," "good as you can get" and "bad as you can get" language unique and fresh in a world other ways gone stale. I say again, do not fret over those who have lept into the matrimonial bed with your enemy, and never think you have failed. No, it was those mentioned before who lost it for you. And always remember your hard-earned medals lying there on the lawn behind the iron fence will never tarnish but will remain forever, star bright! And be there any consolation, it will be in knowing you have each other. And you men can, in any company, hold your heads high! Finally, you can make your claim on history and those architects of the "theory" who failed you so miserable, and so blithely whisper Vietnam was a mistake, Who are your historians because you and your unwritten history will drift like ghosts, though not so silently, across the pages of their mind forever. (In any accompanying letter Mr Shelton says, "I'm 53 years of age and counting, but I know where you are coming from. I followed your war and its wrongs through its life and found it the saddest chapter of our history.")