“DUTY, HONOR, SACRIFICE”

Guest Post by John DiCiacco:

(A brother, a friend, and a combat veteran)

This was taken from a book I recently read titled "DUTY, HONOR, SACRIFICE" written by Ralph Christopher. It is about the Brown Water Sailors and the Army River Raiders I served with in Vietnam.

The following was written in 1985 by Terry Sater who served aboard one of the PBR's in the Mekong Delta. He was upset after hearing that one of his shipmates from Tango 6 had not fared well after the war.

His wife suggested that he should forget the war and get on with his life. So he stayed up late that night trying to figure out how to explain it all to her. The next morning Terry gave his wife this poem.

It reads:

She said, "Why not forget it? It happened so long ago."

The deepest wounds, cut to the heart, will always heal slow.

The nightmare of the Mekong, of death, despair and fear,

Could not be left in Vietnam, its fresh, its crisp, its here.

My body's strong. My mind is sound. I suffer from no pain.

But once a man has been to war, he's never quite the same.

For I know war for what it is, no glory in the fight.

It's friends who die, and crippled kids, and voices crying in the night.

I know the chill of monsoon rain, the heat of tropic sun.

For some it never happened, and most will never know,

Except for those who fought the war. It happened long ago.