NIGHTMARES

THAT STILL HAUNT ME

I lived with the terrible feelings of resentment and abuse all of my young life. I thought I had been through the worse that life could throw at me. I was so wrong. I never knew just how wrong until I served thirteen months of pure Hell in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam. I witnessed, and lived through so many gut wrenching, fear induced nightmares that I thank God every night of my life for allowing me to live through it and return home with some assemblance of sanity and ability to adjust to a cruel ungrateful society.

I was born in a small Texas Panhandle town, and was the last born of a large family. We worked very hard starting at a young age. I lived for the day I was old enough to leave home and join the Marine Corps. I had every intention of making the Marine Corps my lifelong career, until they told me I would have to go back to Viet Nam twice and maybe three times in a six year re-enlistment. I would have gladly returned, if they had let us fight that war to win instead of the way it was handled. We fought and died for our country and for what we believed in which was freedom.