Category Archives: Viet Nam

Actually, it was my second encounter. The first was in 1971, when I used the G.I. Bill to go to graduate school. But that was just by mail. This was the local health clinic, where this morning I began the process of getting on the Agent Orange Registry. I though it was to be a health checkup. Instead, it was a signup, getting a picture i.d. done and being assigned to a doctor. The first checkup with him will be at the end of October.

The clinic was packed. They handle military retirees these days as well as veterans with little or no private health insurance. The Military Order of the Purple Heart was serving coffee. The security guard asked me if I was carrying a weapon or a knife. I said no. There was a long table of service caps and unit pins for sale, mostly Vietnam units, in case you shed your military identity years ago and now you want it back. The clinic is in the highest-crime part of town–where the land is cheapest, I suppose–so it’s surrounded by a high fence topped with concertina razor-wire. That’s a reminder of how military service is degraded in this country: Once the pols, the news media and Hollywood finish beating you up, you get shabby health care. It’s a wonder anyone serves. Better would be the system that Navy veteran Robert Heinlein wrote about in "Starship Troopers," where only veterans were allowed to vote or hold public office. That would really shake up this society.