MY FRIEND CANDY IS ON THE VIETNAM MEMORIAL WALL

            I had a friend whose name is on that great black wall that is the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. But if I were there I would never be able to find it etched on the granite. That’s because his "real" name is on the wall and I don’t remember it. We, his friends, never called him that anyway. We always called him Candy because he so loved chocolate candy bars.

            We all lived in what was then a semi-rural area, a valley of dairies and farms. Sometimes Candy and I would take dates to the drive-in theater. We’d turn the pickup truck’s tailgate toward the screen and then, leaning against the cab, stretch out on the truck bed.

            But before the movie started Candy and I would make the obligatory run to the snack bar. When we returned I carried the soft drinks and he the popcorn and candy, a chocolate bar for each of us plus two for himself. I liked cowboy movies while he liked comedies with pretty girls with pony tails.

            A world away from our valley tens of thousands of Americans our age were fighting and dying in Vietnam. It was only a matter of time before our draft notices arrived. Candy enlisted, figuring that way he’d have more of a choice of how he served. I hoped they would find him a nice, safe typewriter to pound. Someplace for a gentle man.

            Meanwhile I was ordered to report to the Greyhound Bus Depot at four in the morning where with thirty or so other young males I boarded a bus. For two hours we rolled through the predawn darkness to the military examination center. There we were given rudimentary examinations. Nobody talked much on our way back. In the end I did not go to Vietnam. Nixon ordered the troops home and I did not even go into the military.

But Candy did. He flew to Vietnam aboard a chartered airliner. Two months later he flew back, this time in a metal box in the cargo bay.

I think of Candy occasionally when on the evening news broadcasts I hear sabers being rattled and bellicose speeches being made. Increasingly now the heated rhetoric concerns Syria. Wars are not new to Syria. Over a thousand years before the birth of Christ Ramses II hurled his war chariots against the Hittite king in what is now Syria. At the Battle of Kadesh both armies were badly bloodied. Afterward both kings went home proclaiming great victories.

I don’t know what will happen in Syria in the next weeks. But I like to think I know where Candy is. He’s someplace where he can have all the candy bars he wants. And where there’s funny movies with pretty girls. With pony tails.

Dad out.                  

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