Index...

 

 

 

who is the enemy
this autumn afternoon?
burning babies

 

Images of the Vietnam War continue to haunt me...eleven months forever etched into my mind. Imagine what is etched into the minds of the Vietnamese people who woke up to the war every morning, year after year?
French, Chinese, American, North Vietnamese armies burning villages,
raping women, killing and torturing families, laying waste to rice fields, polluting rivers, turning what was once heaven into a Daliesque portrait of hell. War movies draw big audiences at movie theaters. War is entertainment to those who have not fought or lived in a war zone. Thankfully they have not experienced what some of us have seen and felt. What many in the world continue to experience. I hope they never do. Beheaded corpses, bodies burned beyond recognition, human candles, friends and family members gasping for breath, missing limbs, the stench of death, the end of dreams, horrors that defy description or imagination.
Who is the enemy? It is not the villager who works day and night in the
rice field to provide sustenance for her family, who prays to the ashes
of her ancestors at night, wanting to be left alone to carve out the dreams others don’t want her to dream.

 

 

 

 

 

Vietnam Ruminations - Robert D. Wilson
Copyright Robert D. Wilson, 2003