I sat in the lobby of the Atlanta VA Medical Center on Clairmont Road awaiting my turn to fill out some registration forms. The documents would entitle me to veteran’s benefits. So far, in 85 years, I have been lucky. My health has remained excellent attributable to proper diet and exercise.
The room was crowded with the din of muted conversations, calling out names of those next in line for some kind of help.
It seemed there was a steady stream of tired looking men searching for somewhere. Others were sitting or standing passively with their individual agony hidden inside. I noticed their eyes rarely made contact with other eyes. I figured many of them had ghosts of past battles haunting them. I have a couple that sneak in unexpected sometimes.
I sat watching, curious about those passing by; mostly grizzled men from wars over the years; one with a leg missing, frostbitten on Attu. His leg was amputated on a boat that wasn't equipped for amputations.
Another vet, tall, broad shouldered with stuttering footsteps, remembered battles better forgotten. The images are always there, and in the stillness of nights unwanted dreams relive the day it happened; marines wading ashore on Peleliu, Japanese machine guns chattering from the dense foliage. Six steps and the war ended for him, and life changed instantly, never to be the same.
Thank God for the veteran’s administration.
I spoke to a man sitting next to me, gray beard, Alabama born, who carried a football 102 yards on two kick-off returns in the same game. Big time football was in his plan. But Vietnam came. Not questioning the logic for being there, he volunteered instead of talking to the University of Notre Dame.
“Did you speak with Notre Dame when you got back?”
“[Ara] Parseghian didn't want me without legs, didn't think I could get to the goal line,” he said.
I hadn't noticed. Seated, it didn't show.
“What happened?”
“Viet Cong mortar outside Saigon, during the Tet Offensive.”
I noticed he never smiled. His eyes looked tired. Sacks of rocks can be heavy.
I also talked with a P-51 pilot whose riddled plane crashed on approach, a 101st Airborne paratrooper who landed badly on D-Day, and a chauffeur for a colonel whose jeep crashed in a gully in Belgium. I saw tears form in his eyes. “The colonel was killed instantly.” he said. “He was my friend.”
Memories linger; an army nurse who spent time in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. “I relive the time once in a while,” she said, unsmiling. I thought about the Bataan Death March. I wondered if she was taken at Corregidor. I wondered if she saw General Douglas MacArthur.
Sitting in the VA lobby I saw an occasional wave of recognition between veterans who had evidently met, the rare eye contact, each with their personal burdens.
I began thinking about my brother who was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. He wasn't quite 21 when he died. Tears burned, but the dike held this time. Not always. Late at night, in the silence of darkness, there is often a rupture.
I left the hospital aware I was part of a family of combat veterans. I was a lucky one.
Bill York has lived in Stone Mountain for 35 years. Reach him at sioux2222@gmail.com.
