Vietnam to Iraq

We talk about Iraq as the Marine, a veteran of Desert Storm, sips a beer at the American Café on Miles Road. He says no day passes without some memory of war being triggered by a noise or a smell.

Sharp thunder in the night is incoming for a frightful second. The smell of perspiration is an infantry hump over hard ground. The touch of coarse cloth is the feel of battle dress.

My friend John Minco of Lakewood flew 35 bombing missions over Europe in World War II. At 85, grapefruit juice still brings back the tension of those flak-filled skies over Germany. It was the only thing Minco wanted to hold down before those awful flights.

It happens to me, too, only in a different way. I was a reporter covering Vietnam for The Plain Dealer in 1968. Fourteen correspondents, some my friends, were killed that year. It's worse in Iraq.

War always leaves a piece of it with you. Sounds, smells, sights, tastes, words all return at unexpected moments in the most deceptive way. Cold tap water is a joy if you once lived out of a musty canteen. A picnic in a wooded place causes anxious glances at the tree line. A passing helicopter revives the sensation of descending from cool tranquillity into the hateful humidity and feverish fear that lingers over the unknown jungle landing zone.

Once, in a bizarre moment that marks war, a helicopter loaded with infantry on the way to a hot landing zone skimmed over a French rubber plantation, where three women in colorful bikinis sunned next to a swimming pool with the bluest water I've ever seen. For a split second, the color blue can bring that moment back.

War is about the senses that keep you alive, and the constant reliance upon them hones an awareness that never leaves you.

Few speak of these experiences. Recollections are meaningless and silly to the uninitiated. But for those who have been there, they are real and haunting.

It's funny how it all comes back.

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One recent Sunday at the end of the service at St. Dominic Church in Shaker Heights, Father Tom asked the congregation to acknowledge a soldier recently home from Baghdad. The congregation rose and applauded. The sudden ovation in the quiet sanctuary stunned me, and I was cast into such melancholy I could not stand. Besides, I knew the face -- I had seen it a thousand times in a hundred places.

My mind flashed to another time, another war. There were no parades, flags, or cheers. Returning soldiers suffered a sense of scorn, almost as if Vietnam had been of their making. Many thought of them as brute legions that roamed remote villages raping, pillaging, and burning.

I remembered Bravo Company, Second Battalion, 60th Infantry and a sergeant from Detroit, a big man who carried an M-60 machine gun. We were ambushed during a river crossing in the Mekong Delta. I was stuck in thigh-high mud when AK-47s erupted in their distinctive stutter, sending plumes of water skyward.

The sergeant pulled me to the safety of a rice-paddy dike. He muttered that I was an asshole, a tourist taking a very bad vacation.

Later that night, the sergeant laid down withering cover fire into VC positions, while the rest of us moved to a safer position.

The next morning grateful troops passed him pound cake from their C rations. It was a prized possession in the boonies, and the sergeant favored cake. The offering was a symbol of honor and respect that the man probably never felt again in his life. He honored me that morning too.

"Hey man, you won your CIB last night," he said. "You ain't no tourist anymore."

The CIB is the Combat Infantry's Badge, awarded to those who have seen combat.

A few days later he boarded a plane for Detroit. He would be home in 72 hours. His friends would not care where he had been or what he had endured. Some would look at him suspiciously, as if it were fun killing little brown people and dodging shrapnel.

He would strip his uniform as soon as possible to avoid ridicule and accusations of killing babies. He would not speak of Vietnam for years.

I often wondered what happened to the man. He was held in such esteem by those with whom he served. But when he returned, he found the country he fought for viewed him with contempt.

It's funny how it all comes back.

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Two days after the church service, I was at Bravo, a restaurant in Beachwood, drinking wine and reading a newspaper account of the congressional debate over the war in Iraq. There was a lot of deference paid to the troops, but the focus was on ending the war.

The deference was only words. The same people who put troops in harm's way were scrambling to save their asses. Since World War II, Washington has failed at war the same way Detroit has with automobiles.