Today would have been my brother's 67 birthday

[DainBramaged]

He died from pancreatic cancer April 1 of 2011. He was a Vietnam war vet, two bronze stars and a purple heart. Like so many other vets of that era, he lost his way after he came home and never became a fully functioning part of society again. I had not seen him since 1985 when my dad passed, and I wish under different circumstances, he would not have been drafted. Like so many other vets of that era, he was lost in the VA shuffle, pushed aside and denied the dignity of recovering his life.

To my brother, and all of the vets who had their lives destroyed by that unnecessary war. We miss you terribly. You deserved much better.

Rest in peace.

[madinmaryland]

1. I remember you telling the story of your brother a couple of years ago.

Rest in peace, brother of DainBramaged.

[Ohio Joe]

2. RIP - nt

[Rex]

3. Hear hear!

Second to none! So many unnecessary wars, should be a crime to abuse our military professionals the way they do.

[pinboy3niner]

4. R.I.P.

[TheCowsCameHome]

5. Sad indeed.

Even sadder, we still keep adding more and more generations to the list.

[malaise]

6. So many lives have been destroyed

[n2doc]

7. RIP Soldier n/t

[Blanks]

8. To your brother.

And to all the other good people who never fully recovered from war.

[avaistheone1]

9. Yes!

To our Vietnam Vets!!!

[warrior1]

10. I'm so sorry for you loss

My dad would have been 94 today.

[tblue]

11. May he Rest in Peace, dear heart.

[lastlib]

12. Peace to you and your brother, DainBramaged

and FUCK the MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX that seeks profit at the expense of human lives!

[jtuck004]

13. I appreciate his service, regardless of, as you said, that

unnecessary war.

Thank you for posting this. It serves as a reminder for all of them, a number of whom were school kids right along with me years ago, and for the loss of those they had to leave behind.

[maddiemom]

14. May your brother RIP.

So many of my friends and relatives of that era came back badly damaged. My own brother maintained systems on the "choppers" and wasn't in combat, but still dealt with some very hairy situations recovering parts from the downed copters. In retrospect, I've given a lot of thought to our father and his generation from WWII. Dad was in a couple of major battles and helped liberate a concentration camp. He carried a camera through most of the war(on his own, not professionally). I had assumed an horrific album from those camps (skeletal survivors and the dead piled like firewood) were his shots. I later learned a higher company officer had taken the photos and copied for his junior officers as a stark reminder. My dad was a handsome man and, by all accounts, previously very outgoing and witty. I saw occasional signs of the latter growing up, but mostly, he was strict and downright paranoid about me when I started dating. How this related to his past experiences was a puzzle. It just seemed part of his being a bit crazy in increasingly weird ways. He was convinced my mom was having an affair, to the point of her planning to divorce him at age sixty, just before his death.
If this seems a stretch in regard to PST, I can only add that several other people of my generation have told me similar stories about their fathers. Those guys would gather at the VFW or at one anothers' homes and tell rollicking stories of the WWII years. The ugly stuff was never mentioned,. This was only one factor making a difference after Viet Nam.

[westerebus]

15. amen..

[Auntie Bush]

16. Today would have been my son's 50th birthday...if it wasn't for that terrible car crash!

I'm so sorry bout your brother's experience.

[Dustlawyer]

17. RIP!!! My brother's pancreas is almost gone too!

Tough way to go. They deserve better! I'm very tired of chicken hawks who don't care what happens to our soldiers when they come home! Tired of wars for the 1%!

[8 track mind]

18. My condolences sir....

My Dad is now once again paying the price for his service in Vietnam in the form of vascular Parkinson's. Caused by his exposure to Agent Orange. The VA was underfunded so badly during the fucking republicans rule. How my Dad managed to keep it together through the PTSD, the Nightmares, and the stresses of raising a family, i'll never know.

[grantcart]

19. The fighting stops but wars never end.

This is the first lesson of war. You can decide when to start one but you don't get to choose when they end.

For 8 years I worked on refugee resettlement and watching the 400,000 pass through our operations I realized that the scars don't even end with this generation but are carried forth and become part of our DNA.

Beautiful tribute to your brother.

Namaste.

[cliffordu]

20. RIP.

So sorry for your loss.

I have to use two hands to count the veterans of that clusterfuck who have died of cancer, suicide, drug overdoses and, in one case, a high speed single car crash into a concrete wall in front of the high school at noon.