A Veteran Shares His Heart... Because “You Never Asked” By John Shivers
T
om Randle just needed to get it out of his system. The war in Vietnam, that is, the nationally divisive military action that polarized this country before it was a done deal fortyfive years ago. He’d arrived in Southeast Asia on his 19th birthday, February 14, 1969, and left one year later as a 20-year-old certified U.S. Army combat veteran. For this vet, however, it was still all-toovividly real the older he got. His return wasn’t exactly what he’d anticipated. The folks back home, the people he’d risked his life for, didn’t quite see everything the same way. This was to be the seed that took almost fifty years to finally germinate in the pages of Tom’s book, Dad, What Did You Do In Vietnam? He had no forum, he discovered once he was home, that would allow him to share his frustration without also sharing his experiences as well. This was a time when returning troops were the object of scorn and ridicule, if not outright hatred. They were taunted, spit on, ostracized and ignored. No one wanted to hear all he’d seen and done. No one asked, questions, not even his wife. And when they did ask questions, such as “You didn’t kill anybody over there, did you?” Tom found himself disgusted. It was just easier to keep everything to himself, even though he wanted to tell someone. Anyone. Tom had returned home believing he’d matured physically, mentally, and with marketable skills. After all, he and his fellow soldiers had cleared a good bit of the country to make fighting the Vietcong easier and safer for the ground troops. Yet he was denied a job doing precisely what he’d done and done well so far from home, all because hiring criteria decreed that anyone under age 25 wasn’t qualified. The specialized skills he’d mastered well during his year away from the land of the free and the home of the brave came with a
18 GML - November 2020
