Homber

3 Pages 716 Words

“How To Tell A True War Story” had quite an impact on me. My father served in Vietnam, and I realized while reading this that he never told my family about the time he served there. That’s when I realized that the most powerful war stories are probably never told.
I remember when I was young, around eight or nine years old, I was helping my father and his carpenter friend put a new roof on our house. My brother and I spent most of the day picking up scrap pieces of our old roof, sorting out what could be burned safely, and throwing the rest of the trash in a dumpster. It was getting late in the day and my father and his friend decided to call it quits. I was in our back yard burning up the scrap lumber we had accumulated throughout the day.
My father walked over and started breaking up the larger pieces of wood. We eventually got to talking, and somehow we got on the subject of when he served in the Army. I asked him what it was like to be a soldier. He didn’t have much to say about it, he just said that after he finished college he had a hard time finding a job, and so he joined up because it seemed like a good opportunity. I remember clearly that the sun was starting to set, and the pink and purple hues were filling the evening sky. The fire was dying down, so I started to rebuild it.
I probably should have stopped with the questions at that point, but I was young and curiosity got the best of me. So, I asked him what it was like to go to war. Children have misconceptions of war being an act of heroism; a grand event where good conquers evil and everyone lives happily there after. They are ignorant of the futility of war, and the ways in which it scars the people who participate.
Again, he didn’t have much to say. He told me that he watched a lot of good people die, and he hoped that I never had to experience anything like it in my lifetime. He told me that many of his friends turned to heroin to deal ...