Posts from the ‘Non-Fiction’ Category

Wishes

by Russel Langley

Hello my sweet child. You can’t hear me, nor can you see me as I stand before you in my uniform. You are lying in your crib sleeping the sleep of the innocent. It breaks my heart that you are unaware of what is happening. It breaks my heart that when you wake I will be gone. I will be far above the earth traveling to a distant land. I will miss you. As my eyes well with tears and I listen to your sweet breathing I have some wishes to leave you with. Until I return my sweet child hold onto these wishes for they will keep me going over there and keep us close in our hearts.

I wish I never had to leave you. You have become the light of my life and the hope I wake up for everyday. Yet in some strange way I want to leave. I want to go there to fight and protect you from all that is evil. Read more

Manna

by Jay Snyder

The rain hadn’t let up for three days as we moved through the open valleys in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Any hope of finding somewhere dry to stop for the day had begun to fade from everyone’s mind. I was just about to call a halt when the decision was made for me.

My RTO stopped and over his shoulder passed me the radio handset. I heard the words “Line Smash 26, this is Line Smash 6, over.”

I responded “6 this is 26, over.” Read more

September 13

by Elizabeth O’Herrin

Years have passed since I joined the military on September 13, 2001 and it feels like long ago and yesterday all at the same time. When I decided to leave the military I suspected I would miss it. I contemplated reenlisting, but decided I wouldn’t miss it enough to spend more time as United States government property. So after seven years in, I decided to get out. And although I left years ago now, I have these nights—although they are fewer and farther between—these quiet nights when I’m by myself, sipping wine, and the memories flood unexpectedly.

It feels like only a few months have passed since I bounded into roll call before dawn, amped up on three cups of coffee and ready to cause trouble. When I put on the uniform, I detected a significant change in my personality. I’m not sure it was a better me, but it certainly was a more foul-mouthed me. And so sometimes, on those quiet evenings, when the nostalgia kicks in I wonder if maybe me and Uncle Sam could’ve made a deal for a few more years. I had a lot of fun as that girl in uniform. Maybe too much fun. Read more

The Voice Behind Me

By Paul J. Kozak, Jr.

In the 1960’s during the Vietnam War, severely burned soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were sent to Brooke Army Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.  Brooke Hospital was known as “The Miracle Center of the World”; there, the injured received superior and compassionate care.  For some patients though, this divine-like intervention did not always mean deliverance from pain, suffering and the grip of death; it sometimes meant something else… I know because I was a patient there.

I remember one night in the fall of 1968. The quiet of this late October evening was suddenly broken by the sound of gurney wheels, as they clacked and skipped across the polished linoleum floor.  The smell of fresh gauze and the muffled sounds of surgeons’ shoes softly filled the air as another burn patient was brought to the ward.  The new patient was being “brought to,” as with all burn patients, immediately following surgery; there was no post op for burn victims. Read more