He looked so sharp that day in his Army uniform, his hair, almost platinum-blonde, cut so close to his scalp.  No medals on his chest , but he hadn’t yet seen combat.   Didn’t matter to me.  I thought he looked proud and strong and regal, a man ready to take on the world.  I didn’t realize that he was barely out of boyhood, age nineteen at the time.

No, he was my big brother.  Nine years older, bigger, tougher.  He seemed every bit a grownup to me.  Deep voice, hair on his chest, all the markings of a man.  I stared out the window on that crisp Colorado morning, awe mixed with envy, as my oldest brother marched smartly down the driveway with my parents, climbed in the family station wagon and headed off to Vietnam.

I remember wondering if he would come home.  Even then I was attuned to the news; it was 1968, the war was growing exponentially and along with it, the body count.  Something told me he would be fine.  Big brother was tough as nails.  God would look after him, right?  He would do his duty, he would be fine, he would come home in a couple of years.

Looking back on it now, I smile at my own innocence, my own naïveté.  One of the earliest Christmas gifts I remember requesting was the “5-Star General’s Uniform” in the Sears catalog.  I enjoyed pretending to be a soldier, a leader, a man of valor.  Capture the Flag was fun when you played it in the backyard with some of the other kids on the block.  And here was my big brother, going to fight in a real war in a real Army uniform, looking so impressive and unfazed.

He must have been terrified.

I was right about most of it.  He did his duty, served honorably, fought hard.  Deployed near the DMZ as a frontline artillery observer, he followed orders, saw some terrible things, lost his closest buddies.

And then he came home.  Alive.  Uninjured, save for the wounds a soldier hides in his head.

We had the discussion once after he made it home.  He told me my turn was coming.  I remember answering that I thought the war would be over by the time I turned 18.  His four-word answer:

“Don’t bet on it.”

But I was right, he was wrong.  American involvement in the war ended while I was in high school.  Even the draft was gone by the time I turned 18.  It seemed at the time that our nation politely folded up its military forces like a battle flag and put them high on a closet shelf to be brought out again at some future time as needed.  So no, I never served.  It wasn’t that I was anti-military or even anti-war.  It just seemed that, by the mid-70’s, my brother and his buddies had done all the heavy lifting and there wasn’t much left for the kids like me who followed.

He doesn’t talk about it much.  I know some of what he experienced.  Most of it he keeps to himself.  I tell people that Vietnam didn’t do him any favors.   I think that’s the best way to put it.  He’s recently begun receiving disability payments through the V-A based on his exposure to Agent Orange.  It was a tough war.  Aren’t they all?

His country called.  He answered.  He served.  He’s proud of his Army record, proud to be one of those men who battled the enemies of freedom for this great nation, proud to have put in his time fighting a war that ultimately turned unpopular.

And his little brother is very, very proud of him.