Alwaysawarrior
1,321,009 poems read
IT IS WHAT IT IS
Agent Orange is now recognized for what it is
Exposure caused internal and invisible wounds
Which are exposed only with the passage of time
We recognize the courage of our own brothers
Who now struggle each day with these results
And who now face suffering and pain each day
Facing the cold facts of what may be in store
Can sometimes be very unnerving to many of us
But these facts do remain the same regardless
The increase of our disabilities and illnesses
Thoughts of death and our families left behind
These things have been there with us for years
Seems the odds are great that it'll strike more
That these dioxins are still searching us out
Wanting to claim even more of us as it's victim
It's that possibility that haunts many of us still
And regardless of all of today's medical advances
Modern medicine has no cure to give to any of us
Once you have been exposed to these deadly dioxins
It will remain with us for the rest of our lives
Only the passage of time will give us the answers
And time will be the only final determining factor
As to whether you will become even more crippled
Or if you will just become another causality of it
In many cases dioxins have turned into cancers
Is it the fate of the draw or our own genetics
Everyone is not always affected in the same way
But even if you do survive that deadly fate
The quality of your life is no longer the same
You can't do many of the things you used to do
Walking alone can become a major task for many
The neuropathy has destroyed nerves & tissues
Our legs now so numb we can't even feel them
And so it is what it is that's a fact of life
That at any given time in our own near future
Things can still go from very bad to even worse
© Terry Sasek - Always A Warrior - all rights reserved.
An old friend from high school recently asked me this
question, if you could go back in time to 1968 would
you still have gone over to fight in South Vietnam and
face everything you had faced there and do everything
all over again the way you did knowing now what you'd
have to deal then and for the last forty seven years?
My answer really surprised him when I had replied to
his question quickly and to the point, I said that I'd go
again in a heart beat and he asked me why? Why would
you do it again knowing now what you know? My answer
was quite simple, it's because of the fact that I know
in the year that I had been there that my buddies and
I had made a huge difference in those kids lives and
because of what we did over there for those children
who were orphans living near our outpost, they had a
far better quality of life for that year that we were there.
There were thousands of us there in Vietnam who had
cared about all those orphans who'd been living in the
orphanages by our different bases and our outposts and
we all did whatever we could to help out those kids
and the Catholics nuns who were taking care of them. I
volunteered to serve there because I had wanted to help
them preserve the freedom for the South Vietnamese kids
and their families and to preserve South Vietnam's own
future as well. I'd gone over there to defend them and
I had also decided to help out all these little orphans
when and where I could over there by getting my family
and hometown to send us clothes, toys, can foods and the
over the counter children's medications that the nuns
couldn't get for the children. In the end they'd helped
me to keep my sanity in that insane environment called
war and that is why I would do it all over again in a
heartbeat because I know that I had made a difference
over there to those kids and they helped me as well.
(Note)
When we started helping out the nuns caring for these
orphans, we had 60 orphans and by the time I was sent
back home when my tour of duty had ended in November
of 1969 in Vietnam we had even gotten the the US Army
and the US Navy guys involved helping them out there
too and they helped to get them clothes, canned food
and toys along with children's asprins, vitamins and
diapers for those little kids who were under one year
old. These innocent victims of that war had never done
anything to deserve what the Viet Cong had done there
to their own families and we all did our best to help
them all out, we had about 120 innocent little orphans
who had lost their own parents and in some cases whole
families who had been killed by the the Viet-Cong only
because they had wanted to be free and live a peaceful
life with their own children there in South Vietnam.
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IT IS WHAT IT IS
IT IS WHAT IT IS