I Still Keep a Letter

 To The Parents of the Young Men That We Killed in Vietnam

by Mushroom Montoya
December 11, 1996

I still keep a letter that I wrote to my brother, John on his 17th birthday under my keyboard as a "memento" of my loss of innocence. I wrote to him on my first day on the gun line. On our first strike and our first of too many "targets" too high a body count. The letter starts off innocently enough, "Happy Birthday, John! Your being 17 makes me feel old. The USS Trippe killed her first VC today. Somebody's mother's child is dead and, unfortunately, I was part of that. It makes me sick just to think about it.  ... I can't tell you much though 'cause Mom's ears and eyes would hurt ...  Take care of yourself, Mushroom"

What I couldn't let my mother's eyes read is that on our very first strike, our very first shot, I watched three young men running on the beach carrying a wooden box. We fired! Screams, blood, body parts! Two of the young men got up and started running. Bam! Shot number two. No screams, just body parts. I was looking through the Big Eyes (huge binoculars).

The gunner jumped down from the gun ecstatic over the news of his "better than perfect" score. I stood there, still in shock over what I had just witnessed. I looked him in the eye, and yelled, "How can you be happy? You just killed three guys! and you don't know for sure who they really were. You just killed THREE guys!"

His eyes went wild as he screamed back, "Damn you, Mushroom! They are NOT people! They are just targets! If they were people, I couldn't do my job? Fuck You! Why did you have to go and spoil a perfect hit on a moving target?"

Too many "targets", too high a body count. Now my first-born son is dead. "And somebody's father's child is dead." He died in uniform, returning from lunch to the reserve center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I wonder if those three boys were returning from lunch so many years ago on the shores of Vietnam. Now I have a glimpse of the pain we caused to the mothers and fathers of those young boys that we killed in Vietnam.

Every night, in Vietnam, I used to pray and ask God to let me wake up from this nightmare and be back home. This HAD to be a nightmare, it couldn't possibly be real. But each time I woke up, the "nightmare" was still going on. Later, in 1978, while watching the fireworks, someone shot off white flares. For a small eternity, I was back in Vietnam. I was terrified that night. I was afraid that 1978 was a dream and that I would wake up on the ship and it would still be 1972.

Too many "targets" too high a body count. I was unable to watch and enjoy fireworks without the weight and fear associated with the war until I went to the Vietnam Memorial in 1992. The Memorial caused a healing through many tears. I had my younger son take a photo of me pointing at the place where my name should have been. Part of me died in Vietnam. Part of all of us who were there died.

We lost our innocence. We lost our sanity. We are plagued with ghosts that haunt us. We are all wounded too deeply from too many "targets" too high a body count. Mushroom Montoya HTFN USS Trippe DE1075 Rdiv.

After my second tour in Vietnam, I was granted a 6 month early out as a conscientious objector. War is not healthy for children, parents, and other living things. 

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I submitted this to PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) in response to my visit to the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington DC in summer 1992:

http://archive.pov.org/stories/vietnam/stories4/thewall1.html