Memories of war last a very long time.

I wrote this two years ago, so now the text should read 43 years on August 7th. The costs of war can linger for a VERY long time...

Thomas J. Blanchard

41 Years ago today I lost my brother. I was off doing my military duty in Germany. We were getting ready to do a deployment, I don’t recall where, I think Greece. I was in a tactical outfit and we traveled lots and were deployed all over the world from time to time.

My brother had been in Vietnam for exactly 30 days. We had this belief that if you survived for a minimum of 30 days, your odds were better that you might finish out your whole tour. There was some truth to that theory, you gained experience and you had fewer days left in the tour, so of course your odds would be better.

We never did get a clear description from the US Marine Corp. as to what actually happened to my brother. There were conflicting stories but ultimately he died in combat up near the DMZ. It was only a short period of time before the Tet Offensive began in 1968, I suspect he was meeting up with the advancing troops gathering for the Offensive.

It may seem like a long time, 41 years; yet it seems like yesterday. He was 18 and had a long life ahead of him. It all came to end in that far-away war, a war that he never expressed much interest in. He was typical of so many young people, the old people decide where and when we have the wars and the young go off and fight them.

I really thought that our country had learned something from the Vietnam experience, sadly, we didn’t. We let the last administration march us off to the two recent wars without much thought, and in the case of Iraq, outright lies. Now another generation of young people (and not so young) are going off to die and we’re still not certain as to why.

At least with Afghanistan we were going after somebody that killed a bunch of Americans on our soil, but we soon lost sight of that goal and now I’m not so certain we know what the goal is.

Sorry if I ramble, but I just fail to see how we can make the same mistakes over-and-over again and not learn from them. Maybe someday, somehow, we will learn, until then I just have to live with visions of what might have been my brother’s life.


Dennis R. Blanchard