Scars

Paul Picker  
SSGT USAF
An Khe, Viet Nam
August 1970-August 1971

There is the thought that the Viet Nam War has left a scar on the United States, no argument here. It was a war that was unsupported by many, it was a no win from the start. Fifty years later and we still have a visible scar for that war.  That scar is visible in myself and two of my brothers, we brought the scar of war into our family. Our family and many families within our church shared the scars, our neighborhood contributed even more scars.Take it all the way up to the United States and multiply my scar by the millions, there was never just a scar but millions upon millions of scars.

My scar my not be visible to you, none the less it is very real to me. It is not the scar of a bullet that entered my body, nor is it a scar from shrapnel. It is not a scar from machine guns firing or is it a scar from bombs exploding. It is not a scar from seeing a soilder killed, it is the scar of sending a soilder home that will never again be a living part of a family. I sent home those soilders that would never again be a part of a living family. I sent home those soilders that would never again embrace their parents or wives and children. I had a part in their deaths, the end of their lives. I became a part of the memory of their lives, a new life of memories.

Each body became a new memory, each experence was to be a new begining for those recieving the body. One body was too many, I endured so many more over my tour of duty. Viet Nam was a memory maker, the Viet Nam Memorial Wall says it all. Every name on that wall is attached forever to a memory, that is the only life left for them. The Viet Nam War has left a scar on the United States, a scar of millions upon millions of memories.