[HT: Ace]
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
![UPDATED FROM JUNE: Casey Klahn Goes Walkabout on China at War [Bumped for the discussion in the comments]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Little_Big_Horn-150x150.jpeg "UPDATED FROM JUNE: Casey Klahn Goes Walkabout on China at War [Bumped for the discussion in the comments]")
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Comments on this entry are closed.
Welcome home Colonel.
Son of a BITCH that shit still hurts.
Blessed rest for the formerly lost, and peace to family and friends.
I didn’t go to Vietnam, because I joined in 1975 at the age of 17. My dad was a WWII combat vet.
Vietnam. HFS. Everyone in my infantry unit that was a little older than I was a combat vet from Vietnam, and I remember most all of them. Their stories. Their eyes. One guy chopped off a VC’s head with his entrenching tool because he lost his rifle when he was shot by the guy. Another had nightmares at night after being a point man in a rifle platoon. He taught me so many skills I became a subject matter expert in my weapons system. He knew it all, upside down and backwards. Another couldn’t hold a job after coming home because one supervisor asked the asshole question: if he’d ever killed a kid. Yes, he had. The kid ran headlong into the grill of his 5 ton truck and there was no reaction time. He was spat upon when he entered the airport in SF on his return home.
Heroes. Hard men.
Other wars had tragedy, that’s not an argument. But Vietnam was an epic tragedy at the individual level.
My HS classmate’s brother came home 20 plus years late, in a small box. He wouldn’t stop flying his helicopter into withering fire because he was looking for his downed squadron commander. He was killed in this selfless act – put in for the medal but got the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously.
I never went, but I have my own memories of the era. I didn’t protest; I served. I don’t give a flying fuck for those who protested.
Sorry to say “I” so much. These are my personal observances of the war and the war era. They show how I feel.
If you say you’re against the Vietnam War even once, you have a piece of ice hanging on your heart. You fucking shit.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
We did not forget Colonel Knight. Someone, his family foremost, remembered.
Godspeed Colonel. Welcome home at last.
Rest in Peace
Casey,
I spent a few days in Saigon and the Cu Chi tunnels in 2003. I had read so much about Vietnam and since I was living and working in Asia, I had to go see first hand. I have a favorite picture of myself after the tunnel tour standing in front of a pile of old and benign American military munitions holding a Tiger beer. Even in the shade I was soaked in sweat. I can only image adding a flak vest, steel pot, full ruck and ammo for the pig.
As you are well aware the DSC is just below the MOH. One must just about die to get such awarded.
I have a book covering all the stories of guys in Vietnam winning the MOH. Have Gerard give me your address and I will mail it to you.
What a handsome man Col. Roy Knight is.Beautiful family.
Of course,all pilots are good looking,it’s a basic requirement.
What an honor for his son, Captain of another type of aircraft,to bring his Dad back.
Welcome home,Sir.
Rest in Peace.