A Letter From One Of Our Canadian Neighbors
This letter
was wrote to me after a conversation on the telephone from a MSN technician.
Letter by Lee Burden, written to Steve Shircliff
Hi
There,
I hope you remember the conversation we had the other day. This is Lee from
MSN tech support. I have to say how deeply moved I was by your website. I
have had tears in my eyes since yesterday. I will admit that I was reading
stories and looking at photographs when I should have been listening to customers.
Thing is, I have been a this business for a while and I can listen with half
an ear for key words and phrases that will help me fix the problems. No one
suffered for my inattention, just my customary politeness may have dipped
a little.
Perhaps it is the fact that you pointed me to the site yourself that has affected
me so. I feel like I have been personally invited to share the experiences
of a truly remarkable group of men. Very humbling experience.
I hope you don't feel that I am being pretentious or taking liberties but
I am allowing the emotion of the moment to take me and I am offering an open
letter to your association. I guess I just feel that this needs to be said
and that you are the guys to hear it.
Gentlemen,
I would introduce myself and I would like to, but it is rather pointless.
You will never meet me and I am nothing to you. As I am barely into my thirties,
I am not old enough to be taken seriously. As I am also not an American, nor
do I have any desire to become one, you did not fight my war. It is quite
right of you to feel that I do not have the right to address you at all, or
offer my opinions or blessings. After all, I am nothing to you.
I am, however, an amateur military historian. I can almost picture the groans
that greet that statement. I will say that I am not motivated by morbid curiosity.
I do not seek to live the glory of better men through tales of their exploits.
I do not have ulterior motives. It is not my interest to try to publish a
bestselling novel built on the pain of men I could never be like.
I believe in your mission. The mission that none of you have spoken about
and the one that you will take up. And you will take that mission up, even
though you may not have thought about it.
Please do not mistake me, I am not a combat veteren, though I come close.
No veteren has ever dismissed me for morbid curiosity. I do not have the 'thousand
yard stare' However, real veterens can see the shadow in my eyes. Real veterens
can see I have been touched by the Beast. Real veterens have offered me their
stories, not to satisfy my curiosity but because I think they are instinctively
offering me healing.
I survived an American style fast food massacre when I was barely eighteen.
Thanks to a great deal of stupidity, four of my buddies went into that Good
Night with bullet holes in their heads and their throats cut. I will say no
more about that, I am just gald I did not have to watch my buddies die. Thankfully,
I was off that night. This isn't about who has the most tragic stories. This
is about establishing my bona fides. I only mention it to let you know that
I do have a glimmer of understanding about what shaped you all.
I know how to be afraid and keep going. I understand rage and pain. I understand
that a bullet fired at you has a presence. The sound effects guys in Hollywood
try their best, but no one can reproduce the presence that a bullet has. There
is something in your gut that tells you that superfast wasp that just buzzed
past weighs about ten thousand pounds. I have no other way to describe it.
I understand the questions that you ask yourselves, often at 3 AM and often
years later. Questions like"Why did you take him and not me, Lord?"
I finally understand that old Russian saying, " A man can get used to
anything, even hanging, if he hangs long enough" The Demons never go
away, you just get used to them.
I offer the honor I have and all the respect I can hold. Barely a drop in
the bucket compared to what is owed you. I swear not to make the mistakes
that my parent's generation made. Treating you like returning criminals, beneath
contempt. I will not make the mistake that today's generation is making. Vietnam
veterans are not victims to be pitied. I will not make that mistake.
Speaking as one that has labored over something I loved, and managed to bleed
all over that creation, I look at Vietnam veterens as true craftsmen. Craftsmen
in the old sense. Men who gave all they had to complete the task they were
given. Some of you came back with broken bodies, some with broken minds, some
did not come back at all. But damnit, you did the job, and did it well. I
honor you.
I look at the pictures and read the stories and the poems that you have offered
the world and I am deeply moved. I believe I understand your unspoken mission.
Your association is about healing. For some, a healing that has come too late,
for others, a healing that they can offer. There are still tangled emotions.
As your buddies helped keep you alive in that green hell, so your buddies
help you ease the wounds in your souls now. I think you need each other to
see that regardless of the scars in mind and body, that goddamn war did not
damage you. You need to speak with men that truly understand where you've
been. You need to speak with others that have walked out of that blood red
rage and back to the sunlight and know that your souls are not tarnished.
The Beast may have touched you, but he did not grab hold. I believe that is
your unspoken mission.
Here in Canada, we have Rememberance Day on the eleventh of November. Veterens
of WWII pin plastic poppies to our lapels in return for a small donation.
I remember the Rememberance Day following the massacre when I was still getting
used to my new understanding. I ran into a veteren that was handing out poppies
outside the liquor store. For some reason, this little old guy no longer seemed
so comical too me. Oh sure, he had that red cheeked amiability that a lot
of truly funny old guys have. I do love them, but I do not take them all that
seriously, at least until that day. I remember seeing the hardness in him.
It is difficult to describe. I had never really noticed it before. The happy
smile was there, the twinkle as he flirted with the pretty young things that
giggled past him, but there was an air of the indomitable about him. I approached
and put some money in the slit in the ice cream bucket he was holding and
waited for my poppy. He hesitated and smiled, " It is almost a shame
to poke a hole in that nice jacket" he said, referring to my new, black
suede jacket that my girlfriend at the time had helped me pick out. I looked
him square in the eyes and said "Which is worth more?" He looked
at me for a second, almost shocked and then pinned on my poppy. As I walked
away, He said gruffly, " Thank you for that" I remember feeling
strangely ashamed that he felt he had to thank me.
The Royal Canadian Legion's mission has not failed. Some of us have learned.
The Legion's mission is best summed up by the phrase "never again"
That is all the War Amps president, Cliff Chadderton says about it. He is
a veteren and one of the few men left in this country that realize the importance
of that mission. Those two words say it all.
I look at your pictures, then and today. I see the same hardness in you all.
I am sure that all you see now in each other are the grey hairs and the extra
pounds and you laugh and joke about it. All I can think is that the Dogs of
War took your childhoods and made you men. Those dogs have since become wolves,
more cunning, more dangerous. They are still within you. They are still present
in the set of your features, in your eyes, in your stances. You are still
dangerous men. Though not for the same reasons you were dangerous with your
rifles in hand. Because now you truly understand kindness and mercy. Like
doctors lancing a boil, or gardeners pruning a tree, you realize that true
kindness is sharp as a scalpel and merciless as fire. It is this wisdom that
you found in a hotter forge than any I care to face that makes you dangerous.
Gentlemen, our grandfathers are dying. They are taking their stories with
them. The world may soon forget the insanity that smeared blood across her
face sixty years ago. That must not happen. I honor your current mission.
May you find all your brothers and heal them. May you laugh and cry and preserve
your memories. But I ask you all to consider the next mission. A mission that
can be summed up in two words, "Never Again" Don't let the stories
die
Lee Burden,
Nova Scotia
Canada
