The war drums are pounding out a martial tattoo once again and, like a lot of veterans, it gives me a sensation akin to vertigo. We never learn.
When I came back from Vietnam in 1969, it became very obvious to me that being a vet was not something I wanted to brag about. I went into the closet and didn’t come out until 1980.
That year, I found myself in a group of guys getting hammered in the Red Dog Saloon in Juneau, Alaska. It eventually came out that we were all Vietnam veterans. We started sharing stories and getting righteously pissed off at the government, the media and the world in general. That was the nucleus of what became Vietnam Veterans of Alaska.
One of us was a political fixer, one of us was a media whiz, one of us was a tripwire vet, two of us were street people. All of us were fed up with the way society had treated us. We got our shit together, organized, and pushed a bill through the oil-rich Alaska legislature that established the first store-front counseling center in the nation.
That effort finally forced the Veterans Administration to address the reality of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Most of us have it. Some of us have dealt with it better than others. A number of studies have shown that as many as 70 percent of the street people in this country are Vietnam vets.
You won’t find their names among the 58,000 listed on the Wall in DC. Yet, they are just as much casualties of that misguided adventure as the ones who came back in body bags.
As an amateur songwriter, I eventually expressed some of my feelings through that medium. Charlie Daniels wrote “Still In Saigon.” Billy Joel wrote “Goodnight Saigon.” Neither of them was there. I was. My song wasn’t a hit, but maybe it has a degree of authenticity. If you want to sing it, start in D minor.
SHORT-TIME SOLDIER
You went when you were just eighteen, with glory in your eyes,
Believing in your country, God and truth.
And suddenly you landed in a jungle full of fear
That killed your soul and robbed you of your youth.
You thought that you would find
Something noble in your mind
That somehow all your sacrifice made sense.
But you found out they lied
And something in you died
And now you’re on the outside of the fence.
(Chorus) And hey, hey, short-time soldier
The torment and the tears won’t go away.
And hey, hey, short-time soldier,
They fixed it so that you can’t even pray.
And it seems like only death will set you free,
And "Don’t mean nothin'’’ is your litany.
The bullets, bombs and booby traps just never seemed to quit;
You never knew what moment you might die.
And just about the time you felt you might be safe at last,
Here came Agent Orange from the sky.
There wasn’t any hope
And so you turned to dope,
Anything to give your nerves a rest.
Your brain went out of gear
For that everlasting year,
A cruel and insane survival test.
(Chorus)
Your friends got wasted one by one, wondering why they died
And now you can’t get close to anyone.
And then you came back to the world, thankful for your life,
But nervous ‘cause they took away your gun.
And when they let you out
There wasn’t any doubt
That you were not the boy you were before.
And, yes, you felt the lack
When you weren’t welcomed back
And knew America had slammed the door.
(Chorus)
You’re always in the movies and always on the tube,
A wild-eyed and stressed out psychopath.
They call you baby-killer and they spit upon the ground.
The war was bad, but why this aftermath?
So now you hide away
And you won’t come out by day.
You keep the dreams away with dope and booze.
And it’s a goddam shame
That you had to change your name
Runnin’ from a war you didn’t lose.
(Chorus)
If this song means anything to you, please oppose any efforts to send young men and women in harm’s way for the purpose of furthering political careers or protecting corporate profits. Neither of those ends is worth a single human life.
12:27:47 AM 
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