*The Perimeter*
*The Perimeter, in the infantry, is a circle
of men. It is half a squad,
platoon or company. One half is on guard, staying vigilant, watching for
the enemy, while the other half rests, sleeps and carries on with life as it
is. They are more than just men; they are a brotherhood in uniform.*
*They share their plans, dreams and hopes with each other. In hard times,
they share their sadness, fears and pain. They face the enemy together,
some like brothers, others like fathers and sons, and always as true
friends. They find a spirit in each other that binds them to one another in
a bond that lasts forever.*
*As time passes, they will leave the service and each other. They
will travel many different paths of life, some to prosper well and others
not so well. Somewhere in life's travels, these men find themselves lost in
the world, confused, dazed, scared, unhappy and searching for
something; something they are not even sure exists.
They are not soldiers anymore, they are
called veterans.*
*Somehow, in their search, they once again find others like themselves. They
find brothers of the past, brothers of the Perimeter, that circle of safety,
where someone else shares their pain, their confusion and their fear. That
Perimeter where that fear is eased, where there is less confusion. They
share each other's pain in stories, in tears and in silence. Inside the
Perimeter, eye contact can say it all. This Perimeter is a circle of life
and a circle of death; it is a circle of wounded warriors, with wounds of
both flesh and spirit. This Perimeter is a circle of iron that has never
broken. It is a circle of common duty that knows no color, no creed and no
religious ground. The circle will last forever, through the best of times
and the worst of times.*
*The Perimeter is a place warriors will always seek - even for eternity. Just
gaze out at our national cemeteries. For out there, on the outer edge, ever
so vigilant, are those on the Perimeter.*
By James R. Lawson.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Webmaster note:
Kim attended the 5th Battalion Association reunion in Dallas, Texas with her
father, Association member Bob Cooper.
Witnessing
Kim Cooper Findling
For some of them, it was the
first time they’d spoken of their war experiences. The real stuff, anyway – a
friend’s blood splattering across your face, traipsing through a jungle village
and killing people before they killed you, the sights and sounds of torture and
death that can’t be erased from the mind, even 35 years later. Through the long
morning, into the lunch break, past the afternoon’s scheduled end, 110 Vietnam
vets stood and told their stories. They spoke, I fidgeted. I waited for an
opportunity to escape; the pool, maybe, and my paperback.
In some ways, each story was
similar. Dust, heat, the constant chop chop of huey helicopters, the thwack
thwack of gunfire. Creeping through the jungle on instruction to engage the
enemy – which, in non-military speak, simply meant hiking around until the enemy
shot at you. Confused, bloody, terrifying nighttime battles. Searching for
meaning in your actions, and finding little. Hot dirty hours merging into
eternal blurry days. The sheer folly of hoping you’d be one of those who would
survive 365 days in hell when men fell around you in a spray of blood and flesh
every day. Throwing yourself into the only oblivion available -- beer,
cigarettes, prostitutes, and the most morbid, self-defying humor you could
muster. The sheer, oppressive aloneness of coming home from an unpopular war to
people who could never understand your experience and didn’t even really try.
“We disappeared into our lives,” said one vet, and because that vet was not just
one more in this sea of middle-aged men, but the one who is my father, and the
reason that I was there, I realized that it was my life that he disappeared
into, as well.
I worried
that my presence would interfere. I worried that these men – men with huge
bellies, men with craggy faces, men with no legs, men with every one of their
fifty odd years etched on their skin like scratches on a cell wall – would edit
themselves for my sake. There were other women in the room – a few wives -- but
no other daughters. Would I make them think of their own daughters, back home:
the girls who they were protecting most when they swallowed yet another personal
horror story? Eyes followed me when I left the room at the break; penetrating,
somber. I tried to make myself invisible.
The
soldiers’ stories diverged at tour’s end. Some went home to rural America and
became mechanics or farmers or factory workers like their fathers, worked hard,
made a family, got by. A smaller number went to college and became teachers or
bankers. A handful stayed in and made the army a career and a life. But it
wasn’t so much what they did for a living that was notable – it was what they
did for a life, after the promotions earned and children raised and bank
accounts mounted and marriages saved or broken. Who were they, and how much of
the war did they carry? For some, it seemed, had never really left Vietnam. Some
never quit living that tour of duty. They were the ones who, if they stood,
stood rigid and frozen. If they spoke, they ranted, cried, blurted, or spit
crude, bawdy jokes. Their stories were of divorce, alcohol, job after job
thrown, drugs, and bar fights. These men were very big or very small, as if they
were trying to expand outside of or vanish from within their own emotional
space.
But
others had survived; some, even, had thrived. They had found the thread of their
life waiting back home, and followed it somewhere good. They had integrated
their war experience into their lives, made some meaning from it, moved on. Each
man’s current emotional state did not seem the direct result of the degree of
trauma that man had experienced. The most injured physically were sometimes the
healthiest emotionally – at least on the surface – and the guy who spent the war
as a supplier and never saw a front line might be the one still waking with
nightly terrors.
My
uneasiness wasn’t just concern that the vets wouldn’t be able to speak freely in
my presence. It was also that their stories were not easy for me to hear. A bomb
explodes, and then your eyes open to see your leg -- only it’s too far away from
your body to be your leg, isn’t it? Teenage Vietnamese whores visited. Best
friends blown into five pieces, and then collected by your hands from the sludge
of a rice paddy. Enemy bodies, with the heads removed; piled, rotting at a
battle sight. And the atrocities weren’t even the worst for me to hear about –
it was the constant fear and uncertainty, the unbearable strain and loneliness;
a supreme misery marinated in an unrelenting suspicion that it was all for no
reason at all. Some men wept, some blustered and bragged, some stood and simply
quivered in a familiar fight against an enemy that at some point had morphed
from a VC soldier with an AK-47 into three decades worth of an invisible,
emotional tidal wave. I watched, I listened, I hoped for an end. I stayed for
the duration, even though the day, for me, was an unlikely mixture of trauma and
tedium. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t think I needed to be.
I was wrong. After the last man
spoke, I stood from the mauve conference chair I had been glued to and, head
down, moving quickly, began to dart through the thicket of Vietnam vets toward
the door. I tried to make myself small, to not take up too much space, to leave
this place and let these men say what else they needed to say, and to escape the
ache of hearing it. But as I passed through the room, eyes locked on me, and
then arms reached for me. “Thank you for coming,” a man with an impossibly
droopy face said. “Thank you for being here.” Then, another, with a deep
Southern drawl – simply, “Ma’am, thank you so much.” Startled, I blinked, smiled
replies. I left the room, accepting the steady gazes and hesitant smiles with
new understanding.
In my
discomfort, I’d forgotten what it can mean to simply bear witness. Having your
story heard – not only by those who were with you and know it as well as you,
but by someone who otherwise would never understand your history, and therefore
never really know you at all – is thoroughly validating. I had said nothing and
done nothing but simply be present – not even very willingly – yet, somehow,
this had been enough.
