Tommy was a soldier.

He graduated from high school during a time when boys have to become men because that is what war does to a boy. He came home from Vietnam a wounded man with three purple hearts on his chest, enemy shrapnel in his body and a metal plate in his head. And those were the wounds you could see and treat.

There were other wounds buried deep beneath the surface that were invisible to the eye and almost impossible to mend. These were the wounds that ultimately killed him. It was Albert Schweitzer who once observed, “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives”.

Men are almost always embarrassed and ashamed of their woundedness, especially when a soldier returns home to a wounded country. So they do what they are trained to do. Wounded warriors tend to ignore their wounds and treat their pain. After all, it is the pain that yells the loudest.

However, the way of neglected wounds is this, they always win. 

I’m not sure what Tommy brought home from the war. All I know for sure is that he brought home himself but for most people that is not enough. Most men loose something in war that requires a lifetime to recover. Although he left Vietnam far in the distance, he came home to fight another war and to the very end he was a fighter.

The words of Paul Simeon from “The Boxer” (1968) say it all:

“In the clearing stands a boxer

And a fighter by his trade

And he carries the reminders 

Of every glove that laid him down 

And cut him till he cried out 

In his anger and in his shame 

“I am leaving, I am leaving” 

  But the fighter still remains.” 

In the land of Vietnam where life was cheap, there was a phrase that became popular among the grunts. When faced with impossible orders, the death of a fellow soldier, the atrocities of yet another firefight or the insanity of fighting an unpopular war, they would say: “It don’t mean nothing! ”. With that phrase they would bury their pain, turn their back and walk away. Burying pain beneath years of an “it don’t mean nothing” attitude has a way of becoming uncovered back in the “world”. There life isn’t cheap. Things do matter.

I hadn’t seen or talked to Tommy in thirty years until his mother died. Several months later I called him on his birthday and in the process I said, “Tommy, the real reason I called was to say Thank you for the sacrifices you made for your country and for people like me. I know when you came home our country didn’t seem very grateful and I’m sorry for that. And, just in case no one has ever told you: Welcome Home”. There was a defined silence on the other end. I understood. Then he spoke, “Someone did tell me that but it’s been awhile, so Thank you.” That was our last conversation.

At the memorial service we remembered the deeds of a soldier. We pledged our allegiance to the American flag that draped his coffin and I promised myself that I would be more grateful for men like Tommy who risk their lives to afford me mine. I promised myself to be grateful for boys who go to war and become men.