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Discussion: A Dedication to a Vietnam Veteran "Allan Howarth" my dad part 1
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bimbyjo |
A Dedication to a Vietnam Veteran "Allan Howarth" my dad part 1
Nov 12 2008, 8:46 PM EST
Hi All,I just want to share this with you guys I wrote this for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Day Service in 1991. Allan Howarth prior to joining the army in 1968, was your typical fun & life loving teenage Australian. Apprenticed as a butcher, good sportsman playing both soccer & rugby league, with a full & trouble free life laid out before him. His reason for joining the army as a volunteer & to go & serve in Vietnam, was the same as that of generations of young Australians from previous wars. He joined to be with & to help one of his mates who had been conscripted. At the age of 18 young Allan was posted to an Infantry Battalion, 2RAR stationed in Townsville & then to 5RARin Vietnam as a reinforcement. Alan was at first a rifleman, then a forward scout & then a machine gunner. The true horror of combat were quickly impressed upon him with the death of a close mate on his first day in the jungle. Only "the grunt" knows the true horror of jungle warfare & it is not a thing that one can easily talk about. The legacy of this experience is that with each new horror a small piece of you is torn from your fleah & left back there in the jungle with your lost youth. Part of every veteran is left behind to mourn for both their lost comrades and their lost youth. This was the plight too of my father, Alan can not come to terms with his life as it now presents itself, a part of his wholeness has been lost as has, he believes, a part of his soul. Alan's mother, like soldier's mother's before her, lived a life of quite anxiety and despair as she waited for news of how Alan was coping. His return, without warning on a midnight flight was a further shock that left them both unprepared to cope with their life as they must now live it. Do you find this valuable?
Keyword tags:
dedication
depression
ptsd
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