REMANDED

The Russian M20 semi-auto pistol, shoulder-holstered beneath my faded fatigue jacket, made a small bulge that could barely be noticed. It might have been, if the officers and enlisted men on 707 Freedom Flight back to The World weren’t drunk or lost in the reverie of landing in Oakland, or wherever their final destinations might be.

I had worn this captured enemy weapon for most of the past year in “the Nam”, as we called it, and its heft and oily scent comforted me in a way I cannot compare to any other toy, tool or person. Eleven unlucky somebodies would have to deal with a 9mm chest hole before getting to me. That would give me time to figure out what to do next. I never bothered to ask myself why somebody would want to “get to me”, but I knew I had done something wrong.

Moments before landing, the stewardesses sprayed insecticide over our heads to destroy any stow-away vermin. I smiled, thinking, “By rights, all these human cockroaches should be choking now." But they laughed and smoked and drank their little bottles of airline booze with the promise of sweet American freedom just a few hundred feet below their pimpled asses.

One ex-surfer dirtbag described in detail the way he was going to fuck his girl when he got back to Marina del Rey. He snorted like a pig and boasted that her “snatch tasted like honey.” How extraneous. I stared ahead silently, with my arms folded across my chest, feeling the fabric covered grip of my pistol.

Most of the other passengers had been discharged in the Nam and were officially civilians -- just beyond the reach of military justice. Tired, bedraggled stewardesses fended off every lascivious grope, every drunken pinch, with a swift slap or spontaneous punch. The women deftly deflected each lewd proposition with cool words and cool detachment these men hadn’t experienced since the last time they chased Stateside pussy.

There wasn’t one man on the plane I respected, especially myself.

This was just another plane load of nameless, faceless Joes who had “done their duty” and were heading back home to marry some unsuspecting nymph, drink themselves stupid at the neighborhood bar, embellish their war stories over free drinks, dutifully father a litter of damaged kids, weep with the brothers-in-arms at Wednesday night VFW meetings and die of terminal prosperity. And so, we mourn the passing of another generation of self-proclaimed war heroes whose sons will walk the same path, pass the same way. Another example of mindless, patriotic, life-tragedy horseshit.

I looked around the smoky cabin at the quitters, losers, insects.

I guess I didn’t re-acclimate well.

When we landed, I terminated my military flight in Oakland and bought a civilian ticket to Long Island, where my family lived. If I continued to travel on military status, the rest of my flight would have been free, but they wanted me to shower and shave and change into a Class A uniform with medals and badges and ribbons and the works.

Fuck it. I was comfortable in my worn camos, dusted with Nam dirt and that was just fine for me. Too bad if that upset the civilians. I was upset and they were meat puppets. I had eleven rounds in the clip and a pocket full of re-loads. Get a good face-full dickhead, this is what is.

The taxi driver who took me from Kennedy to my parents’ house bragged that his cousin was a Marine corporal at the siege of Hue. I listened passively, sucking down a quart bottle of vodka I’d bought at the duty free store, as this dickless, Checker wage slave had a conversation with himself. The cab reeked of old newspaper, cigars and urine and I figured it was his own personal smell. Staring through the smoke-smudged windshield, I cleared my throat and spit on the floor to let him know I wasn’t interested in a second-hand accounting. It became a very tense ride... for him.

Was it the overcast light or the dreary de-saturated color of the passing scenery that kept me from feeling that I was back home? Or was it that so little had changed back here, I was struck by the insane realization that I had walked through a twelve month delirium, played havoc with devastating weapons, fucked whores, worked the Black Market, stacked bodies and had the time of my life doing it!

We stopped in from of my parents house and I gave the driver twice the fare.

My mother was overcome with emotion when she saw me standing on the doorstep. If she noticed that I was reeling drunk, it was never mentioned. My father, brothers and sister ran to the foyer to meet me with hugs and promises and plans for celebration. They knew that my tour had ended, but I never told them when I would arrive home, so their tears sprang from joyous relief that the long nightmare was over. That relief lasted about thirty minutes.

It was Easter Sunday and the house smelled like garlic, meat, and cigarette smoke. I sat at the dining room table with my father and his bottle of Seagram's Seven. He usually kept one hidden under the kitchen sink next to the ammonia and spot remover, but this was a special occasion. He poured each of us a splash in squat glass tumblers and looked for the right words to start. I’m sure that, in the thirty years since he was wounded in Northern Italy, he had imagined this situation at least once or twice -- father, son, homecoming, a Frank Capra Americana Moment. But now, this “hawk”, who inexplicably cried when I left for war, was binding up his emotions, gauging his words carefully.

He avoided my eyes. “You guys got a raw deal.”

What? Who guys? You mean, “we”, right Dad? “We got a raw deal. We.” I’m one of you now, aren’t I? Wasn’t that what this crap was all about, Dad? Now I’m not one of the draft-dodgers you hate so much, aren’t I? Now I’m a veteran with a life-long grudge just like you, right? Didn’t I do what you wanted me to do?

“They never let you fight it like a war. You got the shitty end of the stick.”

Jesus Christ! The one person I thought I could confess to was putting me on the other side of the fence with the National Guard stay-homes, the weekend warriors who were “dress up” soldiers and not WW2 heroes like Dad. What a shitty, shitty end of the shitty, shitty stick. Seagram's and sympathy.

“It’s like Korea.” He said, around a bitter swallow of booze.

It was done. That quick. I was merely an unlucky kid in his eyes, not a man who “did his duty”, not a soldier who had a different experience of war, not an adult. He looked pathetic, staring down at his hands and sipping his whiskey.

You can die now, Dad. You just flunked “Fatherhood 101” and there’s no re-test, no summer school, no waiver. Coward.

“I don’t want this.” I said, pushing the rye whiskey across the table, “I want vodka.” I unbuttoned my fatigue jacket, drew the pistol and set it on the table were the glass had been. That changed the mood. Dad had never allowed weapons in the house, not even a BB gun.

“Jesus Christ! Get that out of my house.” he sputtered.

I released the ammo clip, cleared the chamber by cocking it and slid the pistol in front of him.

“It’s Russian, Dad. It’s very reliable.”

I popped one of the rounds out on to the table and offered him the clip.

Go on, tough guy, touch it.

He stood up from the table and walked into his bedroom. My mother, seeing that the man-to-man welcome home had ended, came into the dining room. When she saw the pistol she panicked.

“I don’t want that in my house!” she yelled.

That’s all I remember of that day. I apparently got the vodka I wanted because I spent the next few days in a walking blackout. Friends and relatives who visited me during that time tell me that I was really “enjoying myself” - an alcoholic’s euphemism for being drunk to the point of unconsciousness. During this time, I left the pistol its holster.

By Friday I was somewhat sober. That was when I noticed that nothing was happening. Other than watching the strangers who were once my family repeat the same meaningless actions over and over, every day, nothing seemed important, nothing seemed to be going anywhere. I waited for something to matter and spent days “hovering”, i.e. no attachment to the reality ground and no passion wind to fly away on. More vodka and another week disappeared.

During a subsequent day of sobriety, my friend Jimbo suggested that we go to an antiwar protest in Washington D.C. He saw it as a party event and promised reverie and outrageous behavior. I made excuses about not wanting to be part of any antiwar march, then consciously evaded him to avoid being persuaded by his fun-loving manner. The next thing I remember was riding in his car, pot-pipe in hand, on my way to the Capitol.

This is what happened on that day and why I decided to go back to Vietnam.

We parked Jimbo’s car near the Beltway and walked with the massing crowd toward the White House. I saw thousands of people who represented virtually every walk of life in the United States: Pacifists, construction workers, mothers, children, Hippies, Veterans, Grandmothers, celebrities, Communists, religious leaders, government officials and hundreds of others who were united only by their belief that the war must stop. I breathed it all in and blew it out. This was something that mattered, this was real.

A dozen or so Vets in wheelchairs rolled alongside me as I walked and I thought about where their missing arms and legs were now. I started to tear up. A longhaired girl in her twenties walked along carrying a crepe framed picture of a young soldier in his Class A uniform. She cried out loud, a wail that tore at me and I stopped walking, unable to match my racking sobs to the tiny steps needed to keep up with the crowd. I felt arms around me and thought it must be Jimbo.

“Let it out, brother.” said a Black man whose arms held me steady. He wore a vest cut from a threadbare fatigue jacket, covered with military patches and battle ribbons. “Let it out.” His body smelled of sweat and marihuana and alcohol. The Nam.

I lost Jimbo in the crowd, but continued on with the people walking toward Pennsylvania Avenue. A group of people I would not have acknowledged an hour earlier locked arms and I joined them. We formed a cordon as we approached the center of the protest - an impromptu platform where veterans were speaking over a squealing P.A. system and throwing their battle ribbons, uniforms and medals over the iron spear fence of the White House. I felt strength in our armlock union and the acceptance I needed to feel about being back from Nam.

Service ribbons, Purple Hearts, Good Conduct medals, tattered Boonie hats tossed in the air, graffiti covered helmets, flak jackets, boots and sharpshooter badges, caught in the afternoon light as they flew over the fence, letters and baby shoes and a crepe framed photograph of a young soldier in his Class A Uniform, littered the meticulously manicured lawn. Secret Service drones talked into their lapels and hid, frowning, behind dark glasses.

A brown-haired boy of three or four sat on his father’s shoulders waving a Vietnamese flag. The man and boy were wearing camouflage fatigues and their faces were grease-painted to look like skulls. I felt a soul shock and washed out into naked vulnerability. “Bring them home!” the boy yelled, and I wanted no more than to come home to a respite from my sadness.

But the men throwing things over the fence stepped off the platform smiling, into the arms of the crowd. I wanted to smile too. So, I stepped up onto the platform, drew my pistol and held it in the air.

I have never been able to accurately describe the noise that accompanied my action. Everyone in the street saw the handgun and, after a lone pained whimper, there was an abrupt gasp. I heard cries of fear and bellowing outrage, obscenities and a guy yelling “Throw it! THROW IT!” I looked back at the Secret Service men, fearing they wouldn’t understand my peaceful gesture -- it might become a gun versus gun moment.

“THROW IT!” the man screamed and I tossed the pistol over the fence.

A commotion started as I stepped back down into the crowd and, although I walked away as fast as I could, the people clung to me, laid hands on me, kissed me and welcomed me home. I cried myself sick, choking and spitting out my hate and fear onto the littered street, while someone held my head the way my mother did when I was a sick child. Another person handed me a canteen and I took small swallows of warm water, splashed some on my face, then poured some over my head while staring at the cloud-shot sky. It was the first time I had looked up since returning from the Nam.

I recovered, stirred by the thought that I now had thousands of friends and hundreds of relatives who cared about me. They surrounded me, expecting me to add the next word, take the next action that would fire their spirit in the mounting street theater. “I don’t know what to do!” I shouted, “And I’m not proud of what I’ve done.”

A skinny girl, a weary girl, her hair streaked with bolts of gray, placed her palm on my chest and her mouth on my ear. Her lips formed soft words that blew into my ear on cinnamon clove breath. “Do something to be proud of.”

I broke down. Every emotion I had ignored, every injury I caused, every trust betrayed welled up and shamed me raw. I had no where to hide, no excuse to offer. “What? What can I do now?”

“Tomorrow, then,” she said, “tomorrow.”

I left the crowd and walked back to Jimbo’s car. He was drunk and stoned, asleep in the back seat when I got there, so I drove us back to Long Island through the long night. I remembered that children were still being torn into cripples by shrapnel, napalm scarred into monsters, sold into sex slavery in The Nam. Their tour is over when they die.

I mean, I wasn’t for the war. Shit, it was a no-win play on every front and going back was universally seen as the first stage of insanity. But firefighters can return to a burning building without being pro-fire. Christ, there were kids in there and I had to go back.

The next morning I arrived at breakfast sober and upbeat. “I’m going back to Nam.” Anger and tears all around.

My father took it as a personal affront, cursing me for the pain I was causing the family. My mother cried at the prospect of another year of sleepless nights and fear-filled newscasts. My brothers and sisters wailed because everyone else was upset. I was coolly resolute, because their pain, their sadness was such a tiny part of the Vietnam tragedy, fully contained in a lower-middle class melodrama, meted out in twelve month episodes.

Meanwhile, there were kids who needed somebody, maybe me. Maybe I could do something to be proud of. Maybe the most heroic act for me would be letting my spent anger resolve into gentleness or being big when someone small needed help or patiently pouring milk into little cups. Hell, I might even have the time of my life doing it.

And when I got back to the Nam, I did.

I really did.

- end -

Martin Higgins