To: Robert Lyon Treat, ex-PFC, SFTG and 82nd Airborne (ret.)

Abn Bobby,

Does one wish one a “happy” Veterans Day? Mais non, maybe. It’s kind of a solemn occasion and instead of thinking about getting drunk on jug wine strung up with IV tubing in our BAMC barracks, I will concentrate on the real heroes like my Dad who rode a horse in parades down in Hartford during the first Great War. Also, too, I think very much of Captain Doc who lost his eye to Charlie and has never found it or the reason he was there. Here’s to good old Great Gran’pa (Charles Humphrey) Case who lost his health to dysentery while interred in Andersonville, a nasty residence that did not kill his enthusiasm for his country or fond feeling for fellow veterans. And there’s Captain Daniel Case who fucked over the Indians in a land grab that went horribly wrong for the wrong side. Then his son went after the Brits so we could have lower taxes, and white land owners could vote.

This morning I left a message for Jonesy on his ans. mac. He is most assuredly off to some parade with his beret verde ancien. He actually gave it to me one C’mas eve, long after he’d gotten sober. He and Maisly were in Rye with Jame and me. I sneaked it back to Maise so she could give it back to her father someday. I never got to wear one, since back in that day, the year Mustang came out with that frabjous convertible, one had to earn the hat. “Get your three” before you don the green beanie. Anyway, as you know, I went to Deutschland to help mop up the Marshall plan and check out the frauleins, but that’s for another time.

I remember that you went down to the Dom Rep for a little sun and some hot action. Even got to see some shooting and sew some sorry suckers back up. Good job being a medic, well for me anyway. Wearing whites every day as I walked (not friggin’ marched) to the ER for my 9 to 5 with occasional weekend CQ. Johnny Jones didn’t have it like that y’ know. Well actually, I didn’t know either till about ten years ago when he started to show me some pics and tell some stories about working with the ‘Yards’ and running a small hospital in the mountains somewhere. Let it suffice to say he buried way too many people for the experience not to own his soul from then till now.

Remember how whacked he was when we got back to State U.? I always thought he was a little outré but he shocked even me. He was like a little Che Gueverra riding around campus on his ten speed. I had no idea what he had seen and even if he had told me there is no way that anyone can recreate the horror of combat and indiscriminate death so that we could feel what they felt. Thank Cryce. He told me of one particular incident that gave me the heebies, and later I wondered (I still kind of do) why he didn’t break down at the memory. I also wonder if he has told anyone else about this stuff. How much good can it be to keep it in? How awful to have to relive it in the telling.

I don’t know what his dreams are like but I do know that the problems that plague him now are the same as everybody who has to pay bills, worry about children and be nagged forever about what might have been if he hadn’t witness the insidiousness of man’s ultimate struggle with man.

I think of Johnny, and my brother, and their buds on this day. I think of the guys we knew who did not come back and the one’s who came back like Bob Kerrey and Max Cleland. I think of that big black “V” in the ground at the mall. I can never look at that fucker Kissinger without thinking of his secret pact with Le Duc Tho to hold off on a peace agreement so that Stinkin’ Dick Nixon could get elected only to draw out the war for another five years with a death total of 5 to 6,000,000 Southeast Asians and 58,159 Americans. Thanks, you Dick!

I watched Wes Clark (it’s okay, he calls me Pete) on TV this morning and he said that he was happy that Veteran’s are now allowed to salute the flag instead of having to do the hand over the heart thing like civvies. It was a simple statement, but really emotionally charged for me. Then I laughed a little because I’ve always done that. One thing even my thousand and seventy-seven days in the Army couldn’t ruin for me is my own heart felt sense of small “p” patriotism.