There's a slow train comin'

Note*

This note was started the day after the Paris attack took place

I listened to Joe Bonamassa tonight and the song "Slow Train Comin' " inspired me to write this because we've seen these kinds of things before in Vietnam except the bad guys didn't stick around very long.

The point is to remember my frame of mind about this and today's visit at the VA hospital. Even though the appointment was made long before the attack in Paris, one day after the fact is NOT a good day to ask a oombat veteran what he would like to do about it. That should be enough of a reminder to allow me to have a good starting point on the post. 1/8/2015, 9:52 pm.

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Okay, it's two days later @ 9 a.m. and instead of my attitude about Paris calming down a bit, the news media continues to inspire me to..........uh............. never mind.

I'm not supposed to talk about the things we did to the bad guys in Vietnam because it scares the BeJesus outta the kids.

Post Traumatic Stress is right but remembering them is NOT a disorder. For those of us who have been there and seen killing like this, we don't have visions of running away, we have visions of running toward the killers. In our minds, we hear the echo of "Head Shot, Head Shot, Dick Shot, Dick Shot, Chest High and Center Mass".

I'll never forget the day Tim Jr was ordered to push my wheel chair up to "Suicide Prevention". That was the day they told me my brain cancer was malignant and I had 3 months to 12 months to live. When Roger was entering my name and stats into his computer, my eyes drifted toward his book shelf and I saw the 3 ring binders that had "Suicide Prevention" on the end.

When I saw that, I told him I thought I was in the wrong department. When he asked me why, I mentioned the title on the 3 ring binders. With that, he told me that all terminal cancer patients, especially Vietnam Veterans, were mandated to go there. I responded with: " I still think I'm in the wrong department". Roger said: "Which Department do you think you should be in"? When I told him "Homicide Prevention", I heard Tim Jr in the background as he said: "Oh Shit".

Roger asked me if I would be so kind as to tell him who my target was. My response was "That raghead at Ft. Hood named Hassan". Roger began to play that computer keyboard like a piano. I asked him to contact Ft Hood and tell the boys on the firing squad to get the wives and kids and have a picnic. I told him that I would drive over there, take my own rifle and shoot that murderin' piece of shit myself.

That' started verse two of "Oh Shit" from Tim Jr.

Roger looked at me like I was nuts. I told him that I had seen that comment in the paper where the tree huggers and the owl lovers didn't want to see any gun powder in the air so I told him I had won the Jim Bowie knife in the sales contest and I would just go to Ft. Hood and cut his head off.

That's when Roger gave Tim Jr another piece of paper with a room number on it and Tim Jr said: "I get it, 4 doors down the hall". Roger said that was correct and Tim Jr wheeled me down the hall. Little did I know that I was headed to the Chief of Staff for Psychiatry but that was where I went.

The point of all this surrounds the fact that you simply can NOT draft a guy, put him in the Army, train him to kill people with a helicopter and then ask him to forget it. There's a long list of stuff that you shouldn't ask a guy to forget. When the VC and or the NVA comes into a village and murders piles of civilians, how can you forget that sight? You can't. You can and should remember it and use it as a tool or a class room example of what kind of people you are dealing with.

Here I am, 45 years later, still remembering what kind of people we have on this planet. I would say that there isn't an ounce of difference between then and now. Only the uniforms have changed. If ever there was a Slow Train Coming, 45 years is real slow but they're here now and the train is stopping off in our homeland.

I promised Roget that I would not do anything stupid and I won't. However, if they show up in your town, would those of you readers on this blog please be so kind as to give me a shout. Steve has a really big RV pull behind travel trailer with slide outs and  he's promised to drive me to where ever we need to be. I have Veteran friends all over the Country and if it's too far for me to go, I'll get in touch with Doug, Bill, Curt, Glenn, Craig, Kat and others so they can get into the fight. Y'all rest easy now. I just wanted to tell you about Joe Bonamassa's song: "A Slow Train Comin' ".