Vietnam. The war of my adolescence. The end of my innocence. The beginning of my questions. Why are we there? Why are we spraying tropical rain forests with agent orange? Why are my friends going to fight, and why does it have to be that some do not come back, or are never quite the same if they do? Who is the enemy? Is someone truly threatening our freedoms?
The Vietnam War display at Patriots Point was a realistic representation of a Vietnam War camp with bunkers and a river boat, helicopters and helicopter noises, the sounds of gunshots. My friends, and others like them, 19, 20, 22 years old. Going to fight in a war no one understood. Going to kill or to be killed.
It’s not that we disrespected our friends that went there..at least I didn’t. But it just seemed so tragic that they had to and no one quite knew why.
The Adventures of Wilhelmina 