I Can't Remember Anything
Can't Tell If this Is True or Dream
Deep down Inside I Feel to Scream
this Terrible Silence Stops Me
Now That the War Is Through with Me
I'm Waking up I Can Not See
That There's Not Much Left of Me
Nothing Is Real but Pain Now
Metallica 'One', from 'And Justice for All'
"To make a long story short, we were not pleasant people and the war was not a pleasant business. I have no doubt we radicalized more southern Vietnamese to Ho Chi Minh's national revolution than we 'saved.'" So writes Larry Heinemann, author of two absolutely blood curdling novels about Vietnam, the first, called Close Quarters something of a memoir, the second, Paco's Story something of a nightmare. It is these nightmares i would share with you, being as we are so recently past Veterans day, you know.
I too have tasted a little bit of war, in Colombia, not generally well known, and in Iraq which is. Just a taste, enough to make it, for me something a little more than stories on a page
But these works do not just give you a taste of what war does to people; they grab you, pin you to a chair, force your mouth open and poor the bloody horror down your throat, making you choke. So lets imbibe.