Michael O'Meara

I

Vietnam lingers in the shadows of the mind, like an old addiction, hidden from view, but always there, cemented in place by heartbreak and loss and shame. It lives in the blood and seeps into the bones. It becomes you and you it. It works you relentlessly, until the world seems strange without it. It lingers close by love and happiness, with no regard. It’s always there, unwelcome, nudging the mind and body to endlessly watch, to be alert, ready to inflict pain, or to be bled. It lingers, caring little for forgiveness. It lingers still, long past any reason to be. 

II

On an unusually warm October day, shortly before the Pandemic sucked the fun out of everything, my friends and I were onboard a wine and food cruise headed from Alameda to San Francisco, a few miles away. Our boat, Cabernet Sauvignon, was the largest of the Commodore fleet with a capacity of 350. The Commodore boats were named after varietals, reflecting the enormous wine industry surrounding the Bay Area. It was Fleet Week and the Navy was in town showing off some of its newer war ships, providing tours for the public, and putting on an air show starring the Blue Angels. 

Our cruise was all about the air show and the chance to get up close to the multimillion dollar war birds. On board, the partiers were a cross section of the Bay Area’s better heeled, the two hundred dollar tickets weeding out those without hugely inflated salaries. Our big boat came to a stop a quarter mile offshore from the Parade Grounds and directly under the Blue Angels’ flight path. Around us, hundreds of smaller boats were locked in a comical dance for viewing rights, while trying desperately not to run into one another. When the show started, we  joined the crowd on the open air observation deck. A lot of the precision flying happened at several thousand feet up, but once in a while the fighter jocks would swoop low, engines thundering, thrilling the thousands crowding the shoreline. 

Toward the end of the show, the four lead jets made a pass right above us, screaming by at 700 miles per hour, just under the speed of sound, rattling the dishes, disturbing the viscera, and shocking the senses. A group of men spontaneously began chanting, “USA, USA, USA”. I felt briefly stirred in that moment too, a knee jerk reaction, a hard on for the power of a nation. On such a beautiful day, I didn’t want my mind going anywhere dark, but an old and familiar memory was pushing its way up to replace that fleeting rush of nationalistic fervor. I think the mindless chanting got to me more than it should have. It was just a group of young men, believing themselves patriots, acting out. After all, this wasn’t Germany of the 1930s, yet I still felt myself wanting to say to them, ‘you really don’t understand,’ but of course, I remained silent.

I came upon her on a grey, cold, rainy afternoon. In the distance, she looked like a pile of discarded clothing. She was tiny, thin, barely more than a child. Her ill fitting, dark clothing made her appear even smaller. One of her sandals had fallen off, possibly as she had tried to run, and lay a few feet away. She didn’t have the look of someone who had worked hard in a rice field, but more of a girl who had grown up comfortably, a college girl, I supposed. I think she had been pretty. It was hard to tell now. She had been struck several times by .223 rounds, tearing through her tiny body at 3,200 feet per second, the hydrostatic shock blasting apart her internal organs. 

We had shot that young college girl ten minutes before. Her AK 47 lay next to where she had fallen, a few inches from her right hand. For me, this was the measure of the glory of war, the killing of a young woman, brave beyond measure, willing to give up everything she had in defense of her country. She had died without pomp, without gleeful chanting, without ceremony, a patriot under arms in an unforgiving jungle in a cold, monsoon rain, somewhere near Hill 882. All that remained for her was a short helicopter ride, and burial in an unmarked grave.

As I drifted back, the chanting had stopped. In my mind, I still wanted to say, ‘you really don’t understand,’ but of course, I remained silent.

AR15 rifles use the exact same rounds today that we used in Vietnam.