A revelation
Today I was at work, and I began talking with another co-worker and friend, John. We talk about food. We talk about women. We talk about our job. We talk about beer. Useless things. Small talk.
John, being the ever-so-polite gent that he is, noticed an elderly black man across the aisle who was wearing a hat that said "Vietnam Veteran" and had his ranking and whatnot printed underneath. John walks up to the man, and says "Hello sir, I just wanted to thank you for your service to our Country."
Being the unsocial and slightly misanthropic man-boy that I am, I stood at a distance and watched.
The mans face turned to stone. His eyes glazed over, and his mouth quivered, as if he was trying to speak, but couldn't seem to find which words to say or how to say them. The man was terrified. By what? One can only imagine the terrors he witnessed.
After a brief, yet staggering silence, the man spoke. He spoke in a timbre that one would not expect to come from a veteran, or a frightened child. It was the tone of a man who had faced an ungodly and heinous amount of death, and lived to tell about it.
And what did he say?
"They spit on me. They spit on me when I got home."
He said it just like it happened yesterday.
"I didn't want to fight that war. I was only 18. I was a boy. Men in suits, those are the ones who should have fought that war, it was theirs. But it was me, they made me do it. And I did."
And that was all he said.
That made me think. No matter how much I am against war, and no matter how much I advocate peace, I still cannot ever lose respect for those who are forced to fight these bloody wars. It is an atrocity and a shame, but no one asks to be put in that situation.
Don't hate the soldiers, but the men who put them there. Greedy, arrogant, corporate, dickless, self-serving menaces who we somehow tolerate. These are the men that we should be spitting on.
John, being the ever-so-polite gent that he is, noticed an elderly black man across the aisle who was wearing a hat that said "Vietnam Veteran" and had his ranking and whatnot printed underneath. John walks up to the man, and says "Hello sir, I just wanted to thank you for your service to our Country."
Being the unsocial and slightly misanthropic man-boy that I am, I stood at a distance and watched.
The mans face turned to stone. His eyes glazed over, and his mouth quivered, as if he was trying to speak, but couldn't seem to find which words to say or how to say them. The man was terrified. By what? One can only imagine the terrors he witnessed.
After a brief, yet staggering silence, the man spoke. He spoke in a timbre that one would not expect to come from a veteran, or a frightened child. It was the tone of a man who had faced an ungodly and heinous amount of death, and lived to tell about it.
And what did he say?
"They spit on me. They spit on me when I got home."
He said it just like it happened yesterday.
"I didn't want to fight that war. I was only 18. I was a boy. Men in suits, those are the ones who should have fought that war, it was theirs. But it was me, they made me do it. And I did."
And that was all he said.
That made me think. No matter how much I am against war, and no matter how much I advocate peace, I still cannot ever lose respect for those who are forced to fight these bloody wars. It is an atrocity and a shame, but no one asks to be put in that situation.
Don't hate the soldiers, but the men who put them there. Greedy, arrogant, corporate, dickless, self-serving menaces who we somehow tolerate. These are the men that we should be spitting on.