Da Nang Postscripts

DA NANG POSTSCRIPTS: THE PRESENT:THE DREAM: The round went straight through Benny's right eye. He lost consciousness the instant the bullet passed through his brainy flesh. Seconds later he died without ever knowing what hit him. But I knew. I was looking at Benny when he got hit. I was concerned about him sticking his head up and over the top of our bunker to take a look into the dark empty space in front of him. The bullet met his face the moment his head cleared that top row of sandbags. The blood blowing out of the back of Benny's head didn't impact me as much as that small, bloodless hole that violently pushed into his right eye. It was the sign of a sniper. I hated snipers; they were always so sure of themselves. With no life in his other wide-opened eye, Benny started to shake. I laid his head down against the wall of the bunker. That's when the mortars started going off. Poor Benny. I abruptly raised my warm head off of my sweat-soaked pillow, immediately realizing that it was the same chronic nightmare. Once I realized I wasn't in Da Nang, my heart slowed down. I grabbed a plastic bottle of water from my wooden nightstand and glanced at the clock radio--- It read 2:40 a.m. INTRODUCTION My name is David Simms, and I am a black Vietnam veteran. I have been through so much and seen too many bad things. I have discovered that reliving my worst memories could be detrimental to my mental health; I have realized I am damaged. Vietnam was truly a shitty deal for many, particularly the ones who died or were wounded. However, I was one who took a shitty deal and made the best of it by surviving. It's been over forty years and 150 thousand beers since I was in Vietnam. By most standards, I am a Vietnam survivor. Webster defines the word survive as "to remain alive or to remain in existence. To live longer than, to outlive. To live or persist through." This is an accurate description of my thirteen months in Vietnam. The miracle, the wonder and fluke of my physical perseverance has raised many questions. By virtue of being a survivor, I am also a witness. Vietnam was an unavoidable and painful truth and getting out alive and in one piece was the first test of my young abilities. However, after over forty years of intense reflection, my survival reflex has taken on a different challenge. Physical survival was part one. The psychological survival afterwards has proved to be more difficult, and I have become and represent a side effect of the war. Vietnam offered me no psychic rewards. Its past is still with me. I still sleep with a loaded .380 automatic pistol on my night table, and I still check for snakes beneath my bed covers. Is that crazy? I am always ready and alert, waiting for somebody, anybody, who may want to kill me. I can't help it. It's a habit impossible to break. Avoiding being killed or injured in Vietnam was quite easy because it was so instinctive. For me, dying was not an option. I had promised myself that I would survive Vietnam by any means possible. I learned things there that were not taught in public school or at home. All I did was to try to stay alive as best I could because I was too scared to die. I just refused to die. However, after forty years of passive insanity, maintaining a pretense of my emotional stability has proved to be more of a challenge. A person can get into a lot of trouble in that amount of time---- primarily because you never know how crazy you are. And after you realize it, you don't know how to deal with it. I had become an enigma to myself. I have accepted my insanity. Hiding it, however, has proved most difficult. The story of my life today is directly related to my time in Vietnam and those recurring memories that refuse to cease. Vietnam changed my life forever and it still haunts me in spite of my denial of having been there and surviving its brutality. I have avoided recording this story for so long because I was afraid of reliving the memories. I spent so much time trying to forget Vietnam. All of my attempts at writing were short-lived---- I just didn't follow through.And I found numerous excuses for not writing. Working through two failed marriages and helping to raise two children were my best justifications. After the wives were gone and the children were grown, I ran out of good excuses. Still, I developed lesser reasons for not writing: reading hundreds of books on writing, engaging in constant beer drinking and reefer smoking, accruing debt to justify the need for steady employment, to name a few. Despite the strong urge to write I continued to back away from satisfying those writing impulses partly because I was afraid.....mostly, I was lazy. I always said,"I'll write it later. I still have time." So after forty years of avoidance, I have decided it's now or never. I wanted to be healed before I started writing this memoir. However, after all this time, I am still not healed. I can't wait any longer. I must write this in spite of my dysfunction. I am convinced that the constant urge to write about my experiences in Vietnam is crucial to my recovery, and this story is about my youthful past there. I will speak plainly and truthfully.