Vets now, Vets then, and Freedom

Another author complimented my book! It really made me smile. Y'know what else made me smile? Painting all day... however the canvas is huge and it isn't even close to done yet. But if you are very good, I will post it here when it is done. It's a gift for my neighbor Jen. She is a whirlwind of blessing to me! She misses her son who is in California. He is a US Marine, Busying himself like many of us praying fro those of our troops who are deployed.

I pray for them too, as do most of us, so I totally get that.. I know how war destroys our boys and their families as well. I know it balls to bones because I watched my Nanna wait for a son she knew wasn't coming home from Vietnam.

So I have a poem here (one of the ones archived to go into the Vietnam museum when it opens.) It has won awards... sure. But it was never about awards for me. Just as I am certain that it wasn't about awards for all the heroes that fight and fall every day.

So many have fallen since this country began. Some that have lived and made it home confided in me that they wished they hadn't. So many injured, so many dead. And so many families destroyed in the name of war. And after living with my Nanna and her pain all I could feel was the waste of it all.

When our boys came home from Vietnam they were spit on and called, “Baby killers” what a horrible thing for one human being to do to another. Especially one who just risked life and limb to protect the freedom of speech.... the very right used so heinously against them when they returned. They were denied jobs sometimes, housing sometimes. Why? These people were heroes! Yet they were smote by their very own after seeing such horrors that you and I could never imagine in our worst nightmares.

They were plucked from the very bowels of hell then brought home to a country, that they had just defended that didn't want them or were oblivious to their suffering. For them promise.... PROMISE... never to do that to another one of our troops. I swear. Do you?

The cool thing about Americans is once we've screwed up, we try to learn from it. So in that vein this year when you're filling out your Christmas cards, buy an extra card and address it to:

A recovering American Soldier

c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center

6900 Georgia Avenue

NW Washington DC 20307

And now the poem:

Left Behind

Kiss good bye,

Soft Lullaby,

It brings gentle sleep no more,

And pray away those teary eyes,

For Daddy's gone to war.

Cease this silent suffering,

Of soul in restless wait,

For none have filled my lonely arms,

Since war took you away.

Last night I heard your mother cry,

In tears no one could see,

My eldest son

Put down your gun,

and come home safe... to me.

And Christmas goes,

And comes again,

And I long still to be near you.

And I shall find no solace in,

The fact you died a hero.

Angel Dunworth

Do what you can do for your fellow man today. It doesn't matter if they have served or not. Try your hardest to be kind on a daily basis. That stranger might be a vet, the child of a vet, a Gold Star Mother, you never really know do you?

But in a way we are all fighting for freedom, freedom from oppression, freedom from bullying, freedom to just co-exist in peace. Some one died for these freedoms. So please today... would you mind very much paying it forward... for them?

That's my side of it

Angel xxoo