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| Photo: Life Magazine. Kurt's unit patrolled these hills. (Mutter's Ridge and the Rock Pile.) |
Some veterans die in battle while others return home to perish on the installment plan. My friend Kurt passed away in 2003 from liver cancer. He went quick, maybe a hundred days. The cancer was partially brought about by PTSD-inspired drinking coupled with hepatitis from a bad blood transfusion he underwent in Vietnam. Kurt could have skated on that particular war, but extended his enlistment in order to fight. Serving in Marine Recon, he won a Navy Commendation medal for helping his unit battle clear of an ambush.
Several Purple Hearts later, Kurt joined an ultra-secret outfit that probed the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. Hacked out of the jungle, the Trail was a highway for the North Vietnamese to funnel men and supplies into South Vietnam and Cambodia. Because of our odd political posturing, Laos was officially off-limits to U.S. ground forces. That meant Kurt and his unofficial comrades were forced to ditch the bodies of their dead. The fallen would be listed as "Missing in Action in South Vietnam." It always bothered Kurt that families would be denied the closure of burial—or the recognition of bravery from a schizophrenic government.
A good portion of Kurt's post-war years were spent in alcohol and drug-fueled rage and self-destruction. In time, he made peace with his past. Little by-little, Kurt cut a trail over to serenity from which he rarely strayed. Despite a Master's Degree in electronics, he took a job driving a truck and fixing vending machines. (Kurt worked well unsupervised.) Getting married, buying a home, his last ten years were good ones.
I was a pallbearer at Kurt's funeral. He received a Marine Corps color guard, taps, and a view of the 2 Freeway stretching below in the distance, flowing past Forest Lawn Cemetery on its way to Eagle Rock. (Transportation played a big role in his life.) I recall Kurt when I drive past and often wish he could call down artillery on erratic drivers.
This Veteran's Day Kurt came to mind. And while he's at peace, I send prayers and best wishes to those still struggling with the silent baggage of war.
(This is a 2014 repost from Veteran's Day 2010 reposted once more in 2021, and now reposted in 2023.)
(And now 2024. I wish I could find the link, but there was a vet on YouTube who'd served in the Special Operations Group (S.O.G.) that conducted missions "over the fence" along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia. It seems their missions were compromised by North Vietnamese spies employed by S.O.G.—not to mention the Walker Spy Ring—but also the capture of the spy vessel U.S.S. Pueblo by the North Koreans, allowed Russia, a North Vietnamese patron, to access our top secret conversations. Many missions never had a chance.)
