War wives

Reading about Karilyn Bales’ blog (now removed because her husband is Staff Sgt. Robert Bales) brought me back to those horrible days when Chip was in Vietnam.

Days of waking up to news of Pleiku, where he was stationed, the place they called Rocket City. Days of listening to the tapes he sent, explosions in the background. “That was outgoing,” he’d say. “Oh, that was incoming.”

The dream I had, the consoling but unlikely-seeming dream, that the war was over and we returned to Nha Trang, where he began his tour; in the dream it was a tourist resort (as, indeed, it now is).

He was just there once, of course. I can’t imagine going through that four times. Or, being not just the spouse, but the person actually experiencing it four times.

The Army says it’s not unusual, these days, to be deployed four times. It’s a volunteer army. They all signed up for this. But Bales is 38. When he signed up, conceivably, Bush hadn’t started all those wars.

And are Iraq and Afghanistan any better off, after all the collateral damage?

Ho Chi Minh’s unbirthday

Chip, who is not one for celebrating time or dates or birthdays, told me tonight that today is Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, and that he very clearly remembers what he was doing, 40 years ago on this date.

He’d been sent to a Green Beret camp outside of Kontum, Vietnam. The Green Berets weren’t too happy to see a guy from Army Intelligence there. It was a long story, he said, involving some body dumped into the South China Sea, just like bin Laden; the Army was investigating.

They were expecting attacks, it being the birthday and all, and so, maybe as a decoy, maybe just because they were pissed at the Army, Chip was assigned his sleeping quarters – in an unprotected area.

He spent three nights there.

There were no attacks.

He didn’t tell me this story then. I’m thinking, tonight, that our children owe their lives to this non-event.

Thank you for your service, and other things

It must be a really busy day in southern Germany. They barely had time to get over November 9, and all of a sudden children are parading with lanterns for St. Martin’s Day while the grownups, at elften elften elf Uhr elf, celebrate Fasching. At least maybe Armistice Day, since it commemorates their 1918 surrender at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, isn’t too much of a distraction.

You have to think that the Allies deliberately picked that date and time, for some symbolic reason that escapes me – but all those ones do capture the imagination. In China it’s Singles Day, where single people either celebrate or go on blind dates to try to get married. (It’s a clever holiday, except for the fact that there are four ones, or two elevens, but not really two single ones.)

And then there’s Pepero. It’s a South Korean stick-shaped cookie. Four of them look like 11/11. So it follows, right, that they’d exchange these cookies and give romantic gifts today, on Pepero Day. Maybe even at 11 am.

I wonder what they’ll all come up with for 11/11/11?

We’re more solemn about the day here. Last summer Chip and I were on a boat trip with a guy in a Fort Bliss sweatshirt and short hair. When he found out along the way that Chip had been in Vietnam he said, sincerely, “Thank you for your service.”

I’d been sort of dozing on the boat in the sun, and I couldn’t really believe I’d heard right. We’d been against the war from the beginning. Chip’s “service” was not something I’d thank anyone for.

But he went.

And so at least I can thank him now for not cutting off a toe, or moving to Canada. Chip, thank you for your service.

Moon wake

Ever since we all got up in what felt like the middle of the night to watch it (though I see now it was only 11 pm!), Chip’s father always basked in the reflected glory of the moon landing, because his birthday was the next day. We were living in Baltimore; Chip was in the army learning how to be a spy; but we were at his parents’ house to celebrate the birthday.

Those fuzzy images descending the ladder were, in retrospect, the end of Camelot. The next day we went back to our lives that the army had disrupted, heading, though we didn’t know it yet, to the war in Vietnam.

Decoration/Memorial/Towel Day/

It used to be Decoration Day, and it used to be on May 30, but thanks to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act we now get a three-day weekend to start the summer and, (in that straw-man phrase that I blamed Bush for but now Obama is using far too often) some say (but at least I’m linking it to evidence that some actually do say) because of this we no longer remember what Memorial Day is supposed to memorialize.

In my little town they say the pledge of allegiance and sing patriotic songs and veterans give speeches and then everybody walks to a local cemetery to decorate graves, Monday or no Monday. This is a very nice little-town thing for any day of the week, but, as a non-combatant veteran of the Vietnam War, I’m not a fan of automatic patriotism; and my husband, not proud of that war they made him fight, won’t be speaking.

But my real beef with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act is that I don’t even get to talk about Towel Day.