I can write nothing about Vietnam or what it was like to be there during the war from first hand experience. Everything I know, I have learned from historical sources, veterans who were there, and my own understanding of the world here at home changing because of it.

If I fail to mention an important note about the war, it's because I haven't learned about it yet.

If there is an error in anything I've expressed, I welcome the supported correction.

This article is meant to be a personal reflection of an event that changed my life forever.

 In early 1962, US forces were sent to Vietnam, and I was born. (I have read accounts where President Kennedy "authorized" the Green Berets in late 1961, but not clear on whether they were actually in Vietnam before 1962 or not).

It would be several years later before I would come to understand even a small amount of what was happening, but what I saw and heard would stay with me forever. (You shouldn't underestimate the comprehension of a first grader, all the while seemingly engrossed with the Barbie doll she's dressing in Go Go boots and mini skirt, she's listening to the adult conversation going back and forth across the kitchen table, and Walter Cronkite bringing us the latest from Vietnam.

I knew that we were at war, but I didn't yet know what war was, only that it meant brave American's were dying because of it and that some of these men were not given a choice because of something my daddy had called a "draft".  I  began noticing pictures of soldiers on tv and on the cover of my mama's LIFE Magazine.

"They're brave men dying for our country" mama would say.

"They're brave men dying for SOUTH VIETNAM"!! my daddy was always willing to point out in frustration.

Seemingly walked out of a page of mama's magazine and into our livingroom one morning. He was 17 and leaving for Vietnam.

I didn't know this man, but soon learned that mama had baby sat him and his brothers when she was younger. I heard them laugh and he told mama that some of his fondest memories of childhood were when she would babysit and make milkshakes, hamburgers and french fries for them.

I was full of questions, I mean, the only thing better to a 6 year old than meeting a real life Soldier, was maybe being rescued by a story book Knight In Shining Amor. I needed to know about "girl soldiers", I was sure they were brave too. After all, I was going to be the first girl astronaut and I had the Star Trek lunch box to prove it. He laughed, tugged on a pigtail and said "of course they are, girls can do anything boys can do" (there was a reply from the kitchen "cept pee on a wall" from one off my older, less eloquent brothers).

They talked for a while longer and he told her that he had wanted to come see her and thank her for being there for him and his brothers because deep down inside he felt he wouldn't be coming home.

The first time I can remember seeing mama cry was right after he pulled out of the driveway.

He never came home.

I knew before he left that I would never make it to the moon. From that day forward I would grow up to be a girl soldier.

I was too young to really fully understand how permanent death is. Like the Coyote brushing off his fur after the Roadrunner had tied several sticks of TNT around him and pushed him over the cliff, it was a reality that I had not yet grasped.

Day after day I watched the news hoping to catch a glimpse of David in some snapshot or footage from the war, the visual of him dressed in his "Army suit" while at our house permanently etched in my mind, down to the very last detail. I even checked the mail every day for a letter, but of course one never came, and I would be several years older before they stopped whispering infront of me the reason why.

I asked everyone I talked to about the war, if they knew nothing, I brought them current on what I already knew. I once overheard my grandparents telling mama that it wasn't healthy for a 6 year old to be so concerned about war, but they mistook fasination for concern, and I was mistaking fantasy with reality.

While I was standing on a chair fingerpainting red white and blue banners to send to my hero, our heros were living one minute to the next, doing without the things we took for granted, and only dreaming about home. They were dying in a war they hadn't started, taking their last breaths in a foreign place instead of surrounded by family, captured, tortured, held prisoner, and some murdered for no other reason than vindictiveness.

There was a "day of dawning" eventually when I realized the difference between truth and fantasy. I am sure that the things I learned that our soldiers had been put through in Vietnam was probably not even the half of it. The war was over and a lot of soldiers were already back home. Reluctant to talk with me about the worst parts of what they had seen while there. But the kitchen table was once again alive with the chatter of "he said, they said, happend to them while over there", and I listened again.

Maybe I was just getting older and more mature, but I found myself sitting under the Oak tree in our backyard alone, the song "Green Green Grass of Home" playing over and over in my head and me crying, for the first time in my life crying for someone else other than me and what ever pitiful drama had led to a skinned knee.

A bus pulled through the gates of Lackland AFB and I hit the ground running...

After the Air Force, I joined the Army, going only from Security Police to Military Police. There was no difference as far as the soldier inside.

Even after understanding the hell and reality of fighting in war, I would not have thought twice about going. A guy in my platoon was shot and killed in Panama during Operation Just Cause. I wasn't there, but my roommate was driving the hummer. She was human and the experience of just that short time was evident after she came home.

During his funeral service at Ft. Hood, there was the "Last Roll Call". It had to be one of the saddest moments I've ever experienced, but at the same time, there was a lot of respect in it for the fallen soldier.

I couldn't help but wonder at how many of the Vietnam Soldiers who never came home were never given the respect of a last roll call.

It's the very least they deserve.

Vietnam Veterans - Men of Valor - My Heroes