Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet

Memoirs of a REMF

De: Robert Martin

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

“I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve" ~ William Westmoreland This is a memoir of my one year, seven months, and three days spent as a reluctant, though proud, member of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Or, as we measured time in Vietnam, for five hundred and eighty (580) days. Of those five hundred and eighty (580) days in the Army, four hundred and four (404) were spent in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). Time wasn’t measured in weeks, months, or years in Vietnam. It was counted one day at a time because every day in Vietnam was someone’s last no matter his job or assignment. You would be just as dead whether it came from an aimed bullet or from a random piece of shrapnel in the field or in a “safe” rear area. Although I was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1969, I will set the stage for the reader by beginning my story in 1989, twenty years after my tour of duty in Vietnam. This is when I was diagnosed with “moderate to severe clinical depression” and what is commonly called “Survivor’s Guilt.” Although friends and relatives may have noticed earlier, 1989 was the year I first began to realize my life had been greatly affected by Vietnam. That is when I decided to try to remember (and understand) as much as possible about that period of my life and the war so many of us were sent to fight. Up until that time, my goal had been to forget as much about Vietnam as possible. I began writing this memoir as a form of self-therapy, and after a few years, I realized I was also writing this for my family. I have never talked at length with my wife or two children about my time and experiences in the Army, and I thought that by putting them in writing, it might help them understand why I seemed to have shut them out of my life during the previous twenty years. Realizing my experiences were not unique, I decided to make my story available to others. Every few months over the twenty-five years spent writing this book, I would open the manuscript, add a few words or pages, make a few changes, and save it on my computer. At first I saved it on a 5.25-inch floppy disk and after a few years was forced to transfer it to the newer 3-inch floppy disk. Now I keep it on my laptop’s hard drive AND an external hard drive AND in the “cloud.” Times have changed in many ways. Writing this memoir has not been easy and I had a very difficult time completing it. I may never have completed it had it not been for the copious notes I made when I first began the project. From my original notes—plus letters, descriptions, dates written on the backs of photos, and conversations with a couple of old comrades—I was able to cobble together a decent accounting of those days so long ago. Where possible, I have placed events in chronological order, otherwise I have placed them where they best fit. I am not a professional writer. What little writing I have done has been in the form of a blog (http://robert-carolann.blogspot.com) or as letters to the editor of the local newspaper. I researched “how to write a book or memoir” on the Internet and found a staggering number of articles on the topic. I also researched writing conventions and the formatting of books. However, I was not attempting to write a best-seller, so I finally said to hell with it. I’ll just write the way I talk. There are many facts in this manuscript and, where possible, I have included appropriate references. There are still many without citations, but I don’t really care whether or not you believe every fact mentioned in this memoir. If you do feel that anything I have written is untrue, then please write me and let me know. I’m not saying I will change anything, but feel free to write if it will make you feel better. The photos in this memoir are all mine except for a couple from the public domain. All of my photos were originally in slide or print format, which I had digitized to create the JPEG images.