Walt Moon

All my life, I have lived with the legacy of Vietnam. My family lived in Okinawa from 1961 – 1964 so my father could serve in country running a Special Forces unit and still be reasonably close to his family. I celebrated my 13th birthday while he served his second tour. I remember coming home to my mother crying (and she never cried) the day my father told her he had volunteered to go back – he needed a combat battalion to get to full colonel. That was 1970, right after Tet. The promotion wouldn’t happen – something happened where he would not do something he felt was wrong. He came home disgusted. I spent a whole year wondering if he would come home. I can still feel that terrible sense of dread, sadness, and mouth dry with fear as I imagined what life would be without my father, my hero. I have letters to and from him that provide a wonderful view of teenage angst and silliness. I was one of the fortunate few born in that wonderful window when you didn’t even have to register for the draft, never mind having to worry about it – a legacy of the stupidity of the war.

When I go the Vietnam Wall, I look up in to the very beginning of the Wall and look for Walt Moon. He was my father’s best friend. He went to Vietnam because he needed combat duty and experience. He was a great officer, but the kind that is best running the plans and thinking tactics. He was captured in a firefight trying to save a soldier. He tried to escape several times and was finally executed, beheaded. The first time I saw my father cry was telling his story. Walt Moon haunts me. His fate is the fear I lived with for a year and more – the capricious nature of war, man and that terrible hubris that destroys young lives. I am glad that I can write about him because I realize I spend a part of me keeping him alive – this is part of that task. Visit him – verify the transient nature of immortality on the net.

After you visit him, look at the Frontline website and read about this generation’s war. I saw this the other evening and it ruined my evening slumber. In many ways Iraq is worse than Vietnam because it is the war that we swore we would always avoid. It is another war of hubris, mismanagement, and corporate greed. We feed our hubris and the war machine with our youth like Hades fed Cerberus with Trojans and Greeks. As an Army brat I could never understand those who protested against the war. While I’ll always be an Army brat, I can now understand those protesters. I’ll protest in words and the ballot box, the old fashioned American way.

It is for this that I will vote against anyone who supports this war in Iraq.