Download PDF of this full issue: v55n2.pdf (41.4 MB)

Squirrels and the War (poem)

By Dan L. Richter

Like the squirrels on the farm,
Most animals don't know about war.
All I knew was I had to do what my country said I had to do.
We had country school and rural free delivery.
We sang "my country 'tiz of thee, sweet land of liberty."
It was the honorable thing to do.
But I was scared to leave the farm
Where I thought I'd live forever with the squirrels.

Knowing nothing about a strange place called Viet Nam
On the other side of the world by China --
You could dig a hole to get there.

Encouraged by my father who went in World War II,
Not to hide behind the plow, he said.
I had no college ahead, no job, no conscience, either.
Mother cried but had no voice.
The TV said I'd get a gun and be in the jungle
Looking for little people to shoot,
Or be killed by somebody called "Gook".
Likely his convictions stronger than mine –
In our wallets they'd find pictures of girl-friends
    we'd left behind.

More cowardly than smartly I didn't take the Army draft,
That took the farm kids one by one in 1966.
"Back in two years" the Army said.
It was four years in the Air Force – and a better chance
    of staying alive.
Passed my physical and got my first airplane ride to Texas
For basic training, kind of like the Army that way -- Army-light.
And saw my first cockroaches under the mop in the mess hall
As big as rats – a whole new world.

Then Southeast Asia bound to a base on the Mekong River
Called Nakhon Phanom where I ran up and down the flight-line
In a little pickup truck, with clearance from the tower
Keeping the runway lit so single prop planes
With bombs tucked under their wings like babies
Could take off at night.
We watched explosions flashing on the other side of the river
In the green jungle mountains.

For a year it got rainy, hot and the mud was red and sticky.
Bob Hope and Neal Armstrong came to the base
For a Christmas Show – how lucky was that?
Then back to the states with a medal for Viet Nam service
But never carried a gun and never was in Viet Nam,
Never wanted to be a fraud either.
College students got shot in Ohio that year protesting the war.

Just a kid, turned 21 in the war –
It must have been the right thing,
To help kill those people – I suppose some were farm kids, too.
I wondered, did they have squirrels in Laos

—Dan L. Richter