The Jacket In My Closet

Hanging always in my closet is a roughly made rubber jacket, cut and sewn from a U.S. Army poncho and lined with camo parachute silk. I have owned the thing for forty three years. It is the oldest personal possession I have.

As a young soldier in the U.S. Army Security Agency forty three years ago, I and others in my outfit took our issued army ponchos to a Chinese tailor in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and had the ponchos made into jackets. It only cost a few dollars and we thought we could clamber in and out of our 3/4 ton truck- mounted commo vans easier that way. We also thought the jackets and their camo linings looked pretty damned cool. And, at that time and place, maybe they did. The army let me bring the altered poncho home, but, if I remember right, and since I showed them the jacket rather than claim it as a combat loss, they charged me for it. A tour in Vietnam and the U.S. government charged me for the poncho. $11, I think. A grateful government’s thanks.......

I don’t love the jacket; and I don’t hate it, but I’ve never been able to throw it away. Someone somewhere once said, “Be careful what you do when young, for you are stuck with it for the rest of your life.” That rough jacket and I are bound together forever with bands stronger than iron and steel. Twice a year, Veterans Day and Memorial Day, I pull it off the closet hanger, pin on my meager two rows of ribbons, put it and my VFW hat on, and march in a parade, or stand an Honor Guard. I am not a “professional veteran,” and I don’t know why – twice a year – I still wear the damn thing.

But I think it’s because I yet hear in my heart their youthful voices of nearly a half century ago, coming to me out of the murky ether of years and distance, laughing and yelling in the morning twilight between restless sleep and fretful wakefulness.

“You dinky-dao numbah ten mutha-fuh......!”
“What the hell are they gonna do, draft us and send us to Vietnam?”
“It don’t mean a thing, troop, it don’t mean a thing.....”
“When I get on that freedom bird, man, when I get on that old bird......”
“Back in the world, man, back in the world.....”

Yes, I can still hear their young voices, some long dead now and forever silent except in the dark orchestra pit of my mind... I also hear the thunderous beat of 58,000 pairs of combat boots marching between the dream only worlds, never to rest, never to stop, and, most importantly, never to matter.... and never to be banished from the desolate, empty parade ground of my soul. I only knew three of them personally, one well and the other two briefly, but because of them I am bound forever to that cursed ghost army, the American dead of Vietnam. I cannot ever leave them; I can never quite catch up with them; I am never of them or free of them.... It’s like I got somehow separated from them and can never get back....I will never be with them; and yet I will never be without them.

And the quick hot tears come again as they always do when I first run my hand over the jacket, over the peeling, flaking rubber and the moldy silk. “I’m sorry,” I mumble to an benevolent, unlistening universe, “I am so sorry.....”