Time to Go Home

My name is Peter Dewey. John Rowe and I met at the Viet Nam Memorial late one night in November 1982. John came to visit The Memorial before it was dedicated, before the politicians showed up, while it was still clean. We seemed to hit off, both of us Viet Nam vets and both of us natural-born story-tellers. That's how this book began. Soldiers tellin' war stories, one after the other, some of them mostly true, others maybe not. But that's what soldiers do, we tell stories, using rough words that speak of sex and ways to die. And drinking cognac and coffee to refresh our memories, loosen our tongues. We talked about the bad things, about 'the ditch', about Mortar Man, and the 'killing zone.' We talked about the good things, especially about our friends. The best friends we'd ever have. We talked about our wives and how they fought their own wars. Right along with us. And nobody thanked them. Not the Country. Not the Army. Not us. Shame on us all. John wanted to know where God was in all of this. I wanted to know why the politicians let it happen. We both wanted to know why death was haphazard; a mortar round out of the sunrise and the soldier on the motor bike becomes a hole in the ground. Yes, we told war stories, but also going-to-war and coming-home-from-war stories as well. Because war is not an event. It is a continuum that begins at home and then ends at home. The soldier does return to join either the quick or the dead. But John never did come home, not really. He just sort of settled in. And that's the hardest story to tell, when you're an old man standing in a graveyard far from home, just talking with ghosts.