Books, Arts & Manners: The Vietnam Veterans’ Parade

In ten years how much human fluid can drip through a catheter tube? How far will the missing leg dreamwalk, jerked by some nostalgic nerveend? What is your interest, compounded hourly, on bitterness or shame? They have been here, not in Hanoi, all this time. The American prisoners of war.

I stood behind a police line, across from City Hall, and thought—it was my first response—good God, how old they look. Hair defoliated. Reflex-shot. Many hip-thick and slow as professional house-sitters. How could it be—just last Tuesday or so this was the capitalist war machine. Tough to visualize that leap from a hot LZ in full gear now. Or anyone walking point, alert, through the closet space of dense jungle growth. Yet, add it up, 25-year-old jarheads at Da Nang in 1967 would be 43, would be my age, now. There is an Agent Grey, I think.

In ten years how much human fluid can drip through a catheter tube? How far will the missing leg dreamwalk, jerked by some nostalgic nerveend? What is your interest, compounded hourly, on bitterness or shame? They have been here, not in Hanoi, all this time. The American prisoners of war.

I stood behind a police line, across from City Hall, and thought—it was my first response—good God, how old they look. Hair defoliated. Reflex-shot. Many hip-thick and slow as professional house-sitters. How could it be—just last Tuesday or so this was the capitalist war machine. Tough to visualize that leap from a hot LZ in full gear now. Or anyone walking point, alert, through the closet space of dense jungle growth. Yet, add it up, 25-year-old jarheads at Da Nang in 1967 would be 43, would be my age, now. There is an Agent Grey, I think.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.