Linda Buishas
Over 50 years have passed since I received your last letters. As I scattered them onto my table, the tattered, yellowed envelopes with faded postmarks and long-forgotten “APO”s and “FPO”s reminded me of how receiving them once gave my young heart a thrill. Bittersweet memories and unbidden feelings float over me like a priceless old blanket, taken out from safe-keeping, comforting me now with stitching of long-forgotten innocence and tears mended over to soothe the pain. I could never discard them. They are glimpses of the most controversial and heartbreaking time of our youth. Every letter you wrote made me feel important. Every word you wrote was important to me.
Thank you for faithfully writing to an innocent, young girl who could never know what you endured, nor would you want her to. My enjoyment in writing to you didn’t compare to hearing from you. It was one of the highlights of my week. During the years you gave for us, when your lives were turned inside out, you took me to places I would never see and vicariously through horrors and emotions I’d never experience. As I held your letters in my hand, for the first time in decades, I remembered the ache of your absence. Fears for your safety washed over me again, followed by relief that you came home.
While I was taking exams and attending weddings of our mutual friends, many of you were enduring monsoons, dodging “booby” traps, and being attacked and wounded. Sitting in the back pews of the church next door, every morning before class, I prayed that God would protect you and that you would come home soon. When too many of our childhood friends didn’t, I cried until I had no more tears.
You called me Best Buddy, Friend, Sweetheart, Love, and other things you never would’ve said in person. They were always understood as tender endearments inspired by wartime loneliness. You were charming, respectful, and kind. You gave me glimpses of not only who you were, but who I was in your eyes, if only in that moment. Anticipation of your letters influenced my days, and your word-pictures infiltrated my heart. Part of my growing up and my impression of what men should be was because of you. You once wrote, “I am fighting for everything a man should stand for.” That’s how I saw you.
I listened to songs you mentioned to feel you weren’t so far away. I read the lyrics to songs you wrote. You made me feel important with your words, “Tell me what you think.”
When you wrote that “Dear John” letters from other girls were casualties of war, I sensed your breaking heart. It stung a little when you wrote of new loves, because your letters made me feel that you belonged to me.
Thank you for the photos and for entertaining me with descriptions of your “lighter” duties and days off. When you kept things light, I guessed it was to protect me and for a little respite for yourself. But when you wrote, “Everything in Nam is Peaches and Cream,” I wasn’t fooled. Then there were the letters that I ached over, yet was grateful to hear your heart. You wrote M14s were called “people killers.” You called Nam the “Green Hell.” You accused yourself of being heartless for “having to kill to live.” You said, “I wonder which buddy will fall beside me, or will it be me?” You spared me the description of visions you said you “could never erase” and shared other anguished thoughts I could never repeat.
When you said, “No one cares,” I was crushed; so helpless to protect you from so much disrespect and abuse. I could only hope that knowing you were loved would comfort you and that the laughter, hugs, and kisses when you returned would drown out the deafening “voices,” but, sadly, for too many, it wasn’t enough, and for others it was too late or never to be.
Thank you for caring enough to ask about my “loves,” my family, my schooldays, and social life, for making me laugh as you questioned my choice of boyfriends, for the brotherly advice, the teasing, and even the “Dear Jane” letter, compassionately written. Each letter was unique to its sender, but every single one ended in “Write back soon.” I hope I didn’t let you down.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for serving a country that seemed so unworthy. Never doubt that you have always been loved, appreciated, and respected by more of us than you could possibly know. I am so very proud to have been a tiny part of your life during such an impressionable part of mine.
I leave you with little pieces of a song we heard repeatedly during those unforgettable years, adapted from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: “A time to be born, A time to die, A time to plant, A time to reap, A time to kill, A time to heal, A time to laugh, A time to weep, A time to dance, A time to mourn, A time of love, A time of hate, A time of war, A time for peace. I swear it’s not too late.”
One of my greatest wishes is that every good seed you have planted you are reaping, and that the years have brought healing, laughter, dancing, love, and peace.
“To everything (Turn, turn, turn). There is a season (Turn, turn, turn). And a time to every purpose under Heaven.”
With undying love and gratitude,
Linda