He knew all the answers that the dead knew
and couldn't think about.
He could speak for the dead because he was one of them.
He was the first of all the soldiers who had died
since the beginning of time who still had a brain left to think with.”
The novel “johnny got his gun” is the story of a young man, who like many others, goes to war because he is told by the leaders of his country to go to war.
He is injured in that war as a bomb explodes next to him. He has lost both his legs. Both his arms. His hearing is lost, his eyes cannot see, his mouth cannot speak. He has no face. But, strangely he lives, if it can be called that, in a military hospital.
The nurses pump the food into a hole in his stomach, they clean him, and he exists in his own world for years with no real communication with anyone. He then comes to realize he can communicate by Morse Code.
By moving the stump of what is left of his body he can communicate to the world in dots and dashes. And finally there were people who understood what he was doing. A message is tapped on his stomach; he is asked “what do you want?” After reflecting on how he can have a meaningful life outside the virtual prison of this hospital, he comes to realize he has a special mission.
(Dalton Trumbo - 1939)
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JOE: I don't know whether I'm alive and dreaming or dead and remembering.
Inside me I'm screaming, nobody pays any attention.
If I had arms, I could kill myself. If I had legs, I could run away.
If I had a voice, I could talk and be some kind of company for myself.
I could yell for help, but nobody would help me.
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JOE: When it comes my turn, will you want me to go?
FATHER: For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son.
JOE: There's a game out there, and the stakes are high.
And the guy who runs it figures the averages all day long and all night long.
Once in a while he lets you steal a pot.
But if you stay in the game long enough, you've got to lose.
And once you've lost there's no way back, no way at all.
Our Troops
Fuck the politics, the rhetoric, the blame-game
and all the rest of the BS by pundits,
politicians (both sides of the aisle), celebrities, etc..
There's an old saying, "Talk is cheap, and whiskey costs money!"
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Bring them home,
and unlike Vietnam,
let it be with open arms of welcome back
and thank you.
Ronnie - 1968 - Vietnam
More a brother than an uncle.
