One For All, All For One

'What you see is what you get.'

'Take a flying fuck to the moon.'

Expressions of independence learned while in the Army but well used by me since those days.

The strange part is that independent thinking and being a GI were not even kissin' cousins.Except when you were diving for cover when the bullets started flying. Then we became heavy thinkers. By then we had learned, the hard way, that the bullets were not our friends.

For some weird reason, my days in the service didn't come into my daily stream of conscious until I was around 84 years old. No one ever asked about them and I never spoke of them.Once in a long while someone would ask why I limped. Always had some smart ass answer. Never said that I was hit on Okinawa.

Putting myself out as some kind of hero or patriot seemed silly then, as it does now. We were wherever we were because that was where we were supposed to be.

But going to the VA Palo Alto Health Care facilities snapped me to attention. Seeing vets who looked worse than I did (no small trick) and still being alive brought history back to me. Lots of vets with WWII baseball caps in my early days at the vets.

Now it's the Korean and Vietnam War vets who tool around in their motorized wheel chairs, mostly overweight and looking like shit.

WW II vets, like me, die every day. Hardly ever see a vet with a WWII baseball cap at the VA health care facilities these days.

Now the Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq vets look at the likes of me and think that we are fucking freaks. Freaks maybe. Fucking freaks, hardly possible. At 91 1/2 my schlong is a faucet which drips from time to time. Hardly a fucking sex tool. A major league generator of the need for fresh, dry underwear.

At the end of the day the most meaningful memory, for me, of the service was the deep seated feeling of family. A feeling that is sorely lacking in my life these days.

As a first generation American, with immigrant parents, I was lucky as a kid to have lived 'family' to the hilt. Huge family dinners: 'break the fast', passover, on and on. Squabbles but feelings of family reigned.

The Army, through fist fights, harsh words and hard times was the ultimate in 'family' living.We were, all of us, in it together. One for all, all for one.

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