Bokelskere.no

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing - these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and spesific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinkt to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier´s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrased not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the frist place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrasment. They crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire. Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. They endured. They kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close their eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object vas not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.

During the years 1965-1968 twice as many bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than had been dropped on Germany and Japan during all of World War II.