Not the Memorial Day Post You - Or I - Expected
My uncle had his legs blown off in Vietnam. Things did not get better from there
Not the Memorial Day post you - or I - expected. In 1968, my uncle Allen was serving in Da Nang, Vietnam. He was 20 years old when he picked up a radio sitting on a stump. It was a booby trap that blew off both his legs to the hips and all but three of his fingers, all on his left hand.
My earliest memories of Allen are of him coming to stay in our apartment, after he was out of a series of VA hospitals. There was a big chair in the living room and Allen would sit in it all day, the drapes drawn. I would come home from 2nd grade and sometimes sit near him, using my finger to trace the scars on his stumps, which looked like red threads.
Allen was my mother's youngest brother, born when she was 11; she felt like a mother to him, and more so when their own mother died, at 43, when Allen was 11.
My mother's father was a charming if devious man. We never knew what he did for a living. We knew he lived in Port Jefferson, Long Island. We knew he had a new Corvette every year. We knew he was inordinately proud of his trim physique. At one point there was a rumor that he worked for the CIA, which even as a child I knew was malarky. My own father didn't respect my grandfather, and not only because he spent all of my parents' wedding gift money. There was an undercurrent of mistrust as well as grandiosity.
Allen moved in with my grandfather around 1970. I saw them on holidays, and my understanding was that the house was full of tension, that there was some sort of competition there I was too young to understand.
Allen made his way. He sailed. He became something of a champion disabled skier. I did not see him often. When I did, he often had this or that marvelous tale to relay.
My mother worried often about her brother. He became addicted to various pain killers. Once as a teenager I had period cramps at Thanksgiving. Allen gave me something for the pain, which may have been a Darvon. Whatever it was, I spent the holiday hallucinating in my bedroom as the family ate. My mom was not happy about that. Still, she supported Allen, she sent money, he always needed money, despite getting some hefty VA benefits.
Allen married. He moved to Florida. We rarely saw each other but I heard stories from my mom, including her visiting him and meeting his friends, who told her she must be proud to have a doctor for a brother. When my mother asked Allen about this, he said, they must have meant a vet; that he did a lot of work with animals. She relayed other stories about Allen, the painful surgeries, his constant need for money. I told her it was not a good idea to keep sending money, that I was pretty sure Allen was a drug addict, but she couldn't not, she felt responsible for him.
Maybe 15 years ago, I got a phone call from Allen. This had never happened before. After a few pleasantries, he let me know he had an offer for me, if I got in on the ground floor, I could really make a killing. I don't recall what the scheme was, pet food maybe.
Things went downhill for Allen in his later years, he was in and out of various rehabs. He died several years ago after, I am sorry to relay, being found, naked and screaming, on a neighbor's lawn.
I have told several friends, I've sometimes thought of writing a piece called, "My Uncle Allen's Horrible Life," because so much of it was horrible, a horror he tried to find shortcuts out of, which I discovered more of today when I Googled "Allen Hayes disabled Marine" and my second hit was from a site called Military Phony.
"This Marine has been there and done that. He gave a lot in defense of our Country," the post began. "Why he felt the need to lie does not make any sense at all. One of the most heartbreaking exposures I’ve seen and done."
It detailed how Allen had neither a Silver Star nor a Navy Cross, as he apparently claimed, and two Purple Hearts rather than three. It detailed how he'd been honored as an orthopedic surgeon and how everyone in his Florida community called him "Doc."
The fabrications did not surprise me. Several years ago I realized I might so often as a journalist write about people whom I think of as charming sociopaths because there is such a heavy strain of them in my family, men who tell big stories in a bid for admiration; as someone who knows one of them once told me, "It's always hero or zero with him." Which I find crushing, but for the havoc they wreak on other people's lives.
The comments on the Military Phonies post are equally crushing, to imagine Allen (or anyone) talking this big game that everyone sees through but no one wants to say anything about.
I wish I could sew this post up better. I wish there was an easy moral here - about war, about courage or lack thereof. But that's not what this story is.
When I was a kid on the rez, there were dozens of Indian men who'd fought in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. I was far too young back then to understand how many of them suffered with PTSD and how that affected their behavior.
I always have trouble talking about going into the service because I did nothing, went no where, and ended up leaving after a year due to getting busted up. It's a complicated story, but the training part was something I felt I would write about one day, hilarious and bizarre as it was. However, the whole "stolen valor" thing always struck me as unforgiveable, but in many ways understandable. If anyone ever said the cringe inducing "thank you for your service" I would always immediately spring to "I didn't do anything, and nothing came of it". I felt like the only people I could really talk to about it was people who were in the service before, because it all made sense to them having experienced first hand what the bureaucracy of the Army was like. I debated going back in after 9/11 but the thought of going through all that again just to have my knees try and fuck me again seemed a worse prospect than seeing combat. The only Vietnam vet I knew growing up was my buddy's dad, and while he came back intact, he had that distant affect that told you it wasn't a thing to be spoken about. When memorial day swings around I always think about him. He never had flags in his yard, he never went to the VFW, he essentially left it out of his life. But I also understood the guys that went to combat, had a go of it, and felt like the true story wasn't enough. But hearing about a guy that had two purple hearts but said he had 3 is bonkers two me. Like dude, one purple heart is more than 99% of the people in the service ever had. Almost NO ONE sees active hot zone combat. But then again, I can't begin to fathom the kind of mental damage that kind of injury does to someone, let alone being in an environment where that kind of thing is even possible. I get that people hate stolen valor, and that often those people that do the stealing are out to exploit people, but at the end of the day some dude spinning yarns at the local tap house, esp. one that did in fact serve and come home fucked up, seems to me like going overboard. Why out a guy like that? Just seems punitive, and also makes me question what kind of fear or demons the authors of such an outing have to motivate them to do that to another vet... Idk, maybe its just me. Call bullshit when you see it, sure. But let's not make this in to an occupation or some kind of crusade. Everyone that serves has some kind of "well I wasn't X level" or "I never got shot at" type shit. To me that is what drives that kind of behavior to begin with, feeling like your service as a motor pool guy or whatever is a lesser form of service than some boot who was deployed but never saw combat, vs some guy that was airborn, vs a ranger vs and SF and on and on. I think part of the reason the whole "quiet professional" thing was standard back in the day is to keep this kind of FOMO or shame from being operative. If no one bragged about there service there was no reason to feel like you didn't do enough. But anyways, another novel another day. Good read as always on a Monday even!