One day in the last week of July 1968, I got off a helicopter--my first ride in one--at Dak To, Vietnam, the headquarters of the 1st Brigade, 4^th Infantry Division. From everything I learned from the news media, people went to Vietnam to die. I expected to die, and this was where I expected to do it. That probably made it a little easier to spend the time that I did in helicopters and with our forward platoons and companies. But still, with all Jake Jacobs' compliments about valor, I need to clear the record -- the ribbons that came my way were for doing my job in a meritorious way -- the ribbons you see others wear with a "V" device for Valor -- that's something very special I don't claim.

A year after that day in Dak To, I got off the plane at Travis Air Force Base with both wonder and confusion. I wasn't dead. I hadn't planned for this. Now what do I do with the rest of my life?

Frankly, like many of us I stumbled with that decision making for a while. And like many of us I spent some years having blocked out of my mind anything to do with Vietnam. It wasn't part of my life and it wasn't part of my decisions. But in the last decade or so healing has taken place and I've moved toward being a whole person who claims all the parts of my life. As a result, I discover myself making more decisions taking into consideration those people who were important to me who didn't make it home. I'm sure I'm not alone in that, and the thoughts I commend to you this morning are probably just a recap of what many of you are already thinking.

Of all the memorials we could devise for those who didn't make it back, none give as much tribute or promise as much enduring remembrance as the decision to make our own lives living memorials to those whose sacrifice enabled us to come home. So I want to encourage us today to very consciously think of our own lives as living memorials to those who gave theirs, and to do so by taking care in three important ways.

First, for our lives to be living memorials, we need to take care of ourselves. When I was young, I didn't think I had to do much to take care of myself. As I hit middle age I realized if I didn't take care of what God had given me, it was going to go away. So I stopped smoking. I spent some time in therapy. I take pills for high blood pressure, and I go to a gym to exercise. There's a lot of stuff I want to do yet, and I need to be alive to do it. It's a chance our KIAs gave me, and I don't want to blow it.

I was talking with a psychiatrist about PTSD several months ago who alerted me to something that may be coming up for many of us. He commented that a lot of veterans are hitting the age where, even if not yet ready for retirement, it's time to look back at our lives and what we've done and what we've wished to do but haven't and try to make sense of the whole thing. And for many of us, that's going to be the trigger that kicks in some PTSD. And people who don't understand veterans, and don't understand war, and don't understand PTSD, will stand around amazed and say, "good heavens, the war ended over 30 years ago. Aren't you over it yet?"

A Marine named William Crapser, a veteran of the 3^rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 3^rd Marine Division was diagnosed as suffering from PTSD in 1981 and wrote an essay in 1988 as an important step he took in coming home. I want to share it with you now.⁽¹⁾

I had been trying to come home from Vietnam since 1969; more than eighteen years. Over the years it seemed I had been condemned to death in Vietnam, and that I was slowly dying with the nineteen-year-old marine I was when I fought there. Over the years the young marine I was kept a tight hold on me and lived in anguish inside me. He took tighter and tighter control of my life until, toward the end of my refusing him, of my guilt over him, of my refusal to recognize him, his full anger exploded. The doctors told me it was a flashback. But I saw only him.

Still refusing to accept his existence inside me, I took vast amounts of drugs to suppress him, subjected myself to being strapped down and injected with Thorazine. "This will keep him in check!" I thought. But he did not go away.

His anguished screams rose up inside me and became mine. My mouth would open and the sound I made was not a grown man's. The way I conducted my life-living on the edges of society, looking and dressing like an angry nineteen-year-old, acting out my crisis like an adolescent - only strengthened his grip. I became numb with my own anger, doubled with his anger, the two of us facing down each other inside me, resembling a father and son who don't like each other but are stuck together in their blood.

The first decision I made which led to my recovery was to recognize him as me. That, yes, I was the nineteen-year-old point man lying flat on my face in terror and fear as enemy rounds impacted around me. That ,yes, I was the nineteen-year-old marine who had killed and, at times, killed without remorse. I realized I could not fight him any more or deny him. I realized I would have to make peace with him and bring him home.

So I began to meditate on him, think about him - the "me" who was a nineteen-year-old in Vietnam - until I could see him very clearly in my mind. He looked sad and he was very tired. When I really focused on him, I too felt sad for what he had gone through and I realized how badly I wanted him out of the war. Then an idea dawned on me.

I decided to bring him home. I began by picturing the nineteen-year-old "me" stopping, then dropping his rucksack, his suspender straps and web-belt, his gas mask and K-bar knife. Then I watched him (in my mind) throw his rifle on top of the pile. Then I watched him take off his camouflage utilities and wipe the camouflage grease paint off his face. When he was finished, I placed a man's clothing store in front of him (I realized, too, I could really think anything I wanted) and had him go in and pick out some nice civilian clothes. I watched him dress in jeans and a sports shirt and a light jacket (he also picked out a suit). As I watched him dress I could see some of the pain and exhaustion lift from his face. When he was done, I told him he was going home, that he didn't have to fight anymore, that he was being discharged. He burst into laughter and tears and ran toward me, his arms wide as if to embrace me. And inside me we embraced. Then I put him on a plane and sent him to someone I knew would love and care for him, someone who would listen to his stories and calm him through his frights. Someone who would always be there for him.

I sent him home to me.

Take advantage of the presence of God to show you ways of understanding what is going on within you and how you can take care of yourself. I've never been the pilot of a helicopter and if I sat down in the pilot's seat, a lot of those lights and dials wouldn't mean anything to me--and that could cause me to hurt myself and others. God has given us all kinds of indicators and warning lights for our own systems. Pray to God for wisdom to read what's going on, and to take appropriate action like this marine did, so that we keep ourselves and others from harm.

Second, for our lives to be living memorials, we need to take care of our buddies. In doing so we do no more for others than those we honor did for us.

An obvious way of doing that is within our veterans organizations. In groups like this we meet again and offer support to those who were actually with us in Vietnam. In other groups we meet veterans we never knew before, but we were there and they were there and that gives us a common bond, a claim on each other, that we know we will respect. Our buddies also include the families of those who were killed in action. We are their family now in honor of those they have lost.

The internet has been a marvelous tool for this kind of care taking. I received an email a month ago from a young woman -- I think of her as a young woman though she herself has just retired from active duty in the military. She was 11 when her father was killed in one of the units I served. She was wondering if I might know which chaplain conducted the memorial service for her father. Memories have dimmed and I couldn't answer her. Then she searched through her grandmother's attic and found the letter the unit's lieutenant had written at the time, describing the circumstances of the death. In the middle of the letter were the words: "Memorial services were conducted by Chaplain Day."

We've corresponded a little since then, and there is now a linkage which will not go away.

But our most important buddies are not necessarily associated with Vietnam. In the years since that war many of us have had someone with us who has walked the same trails and flown the same flight plan, who has been with us in the dark of the night and the brightness of the day. Perhaps it's not appropriately romantic to think of our wives as our buddies, but in caring for us they have acted as our buddies in so many ways, it's up to us to act as buddies taking care of them. And if we don't do it for our own sake and we don't do it for their sake, do it to honor those who gave up to us their chance to have a home.

Our organization of Viet Nam Veteran Ministers holds two or three spiritual healing retreats each year for combat veterans with PTSD and their wives and significant others. They start with strangers coming together on a Friday evening and they end with close friends saying goodbye at Sunday noon. This year we just had one in Maine, we'll have one in Massachusetts next month and in Racine, Wisconsin in October. These weekends focus on hearing the stories of others and telling our own in the context of our honoring our relationships. Sometimes we find veterans who have protected their wives from their stories for 30 years because if their wives heard their stories, they would surely break. And then they tell their story and their wife doesn't break and their eyes are opened to the tremendous resource that has been beside them all these years.

If taking care of ourselves means praying to God for understanding, taking care of our buddies means praying to God in thanksgiving - for our wives and for others around us who care for us. And I suspect for everyone here there is someone who has taken care of us when we need care; if it wasn't a wife, it was a child, a neighbor, or even a stranger.

Lastly, for our lives to be living memorials, we need to take care of our country. It is our country, after all, for which they gave their lives.

How we do that is going to be different for each of us. Even the thoughts of how our country can be improved are going to be different for each of us. Some people are bothered by the idea of us getting in a room and each championing different ideas for how we can make our country the best it can be. Controversy, they call it, and that's a bad word to them. Some people even take offense at the notion our country can be improved. We're "good enough", and that's good enough for them. But I don't think many of those who gave their life in Vietnam would think just a "good enough" country worthy of their sacrifice. The free interchange of ideas is at the heart of our country's strength in past and future. It's the freedom for which they gave their lives and the freedom which will bring a better future.

I want to ask each of us in our hearts to honor our dead by making some pledge to do something in the next year to make our country better. Perhaps for someone who has not yet registered to vote it will mean registering to vote. Perhaps for someone else it will be to take the time and energy for involvement in a project in your home area. Perhaps for someone else it will be to be engaged in some national campaign for our country's betterment. Whatever it is, as much as we love our country, there is always some way we can make it better.

To take care of ourselves, we ask God for understanding; to take care of our buddies, we come to God in thanksgiving, and to best take care of our country, we need to pray for wisdom, and then for the strength, energy, and determination, to see our caring through. In a hymn we'll sing shortly, we pray to God on behalf of America that "God mend thine every flaw." But God, like those we honor, has no hands but ours.

Six centuries before Christ, a Greek General named Heraclitus wrote home. In his letter to a friend he described the troops who had been sent to him: Of every 100 men, he said, 10 should not even be here. We must send them away. And 80 are but targets. Nine are soldiers -- of them the battle is made. But one - ah, that one is a warrior - for he will bring the others home.

Take care of ourselves -- take care of our buddies -- and take care of our country. And on behalf of those who have no hands but ours, we will bring the others home.