"Uncle Travis, why did you get two purple hearts in Vietnam?"
"Because he kept shootin' and I kept gettin' up!"


Here's the thing about combat vets, and how they go about recognizing one another. The true combat vets make light of whatever action they have seen. They joke about it. If they should talk about it at all--which is rare--they frame the most harrowing experiences into funny stories.

They don't much talk about the bad stuff to people who have not been there. Period. The guy at the bar with his arm around the brassy blonde, regaling her with his exploits of heroism during his time in the warzone is, in all likelihood, lying. He's either exaggerating, making it up altogether, or telling someone else's experience as if it were his own. The true combat veteran doesn't talk about the bad stuff to people who have not been there. Period.

If they do talk about it at all, it is to other combat veterans. They seldom talk about it to their spouses for the simple reason that they don't want to scare them or worry them. If they do talk about it to a close loved one, it is usually because this loved one has earned a high degree of trust. They feel safe in going to those dark places. And chances are, it takes years for them to be able to do so.

This is also true about books. The book Jarhead, for example, which was made into a major motion picture, was based on the Gulf War experiences of Marine Anthony Swofford. As you may have noticed, it's been a long time since the Gulf War.

My brother-in-law, Travis Mills, served in the U.S. Army Special Forces, rose to the rank of Captain, and did two tours in Vietnam. The incident my daughter asked him about was truly horrific. Their post was ambushed in the depths of night. Men all around him were killed. He was shot once, and when he tried to get up, shot again. He had to play dead in order to live.

He laughs about it now, just as he laughs about the screaming pain he suffered from those wounds while recovering on a hospital ship. Even when he talks about that period, he frames it as a funny story.

I come from a distinguished military family. My husband, Kent, served with the 101st Airborne Division as a 1st Lt. platoon leader in the jungles of Vietnam. We were married for 14 years before he talked much about his experiences and how he lost one man. But it was my son, just returned from combat duty, who Kent told that he had always blamed himself for the young man's death, because it had been he, as platoon leader, who had ordered the private to take the canteens to the stream and refill them.

Right now, I have five family members in active military service, including a nephew and a son with the Marines in Iraq and another nephew who served in Afghanistan with the Army Special Forces and is soon to deploy to various other dangerous destinations. My father, brother, husband, and brother-in-law all served in Vietnam. My step-dad and father-in-law served in WWII. I have been around combat veterans all of my life.

This is all a preface to say this: Representative John Murtha, who fought in Vietnam and served his country for several decades, has become a lightning rod for controversy because he has stated that he wants the troops brought home from Iraq, or at least withdrawn to nearby but safer deserts. It's natural that people would disagree--I'm not sure I agree completely with what he has proposed, even if it would bring home my own son.

But those who confuse the word "opponent" with "enemy" seem to have taken it upon themselves to smear his reputation and claim throughout the Internet that he somehow did not deserve the purple hearts he brought home from that war. This is all based, apparently, on a conversation he had with a political opponent he had defeated, Don Bailey, who had won numerous medals in Vietnam. Murtha is reported to have said, "Hey, I didn't do anything like you did. I got a little scratch on the cheek."

Now suddenly he's a coward or liar or worse? People who make these claims--many of whom never served in combat themselves--do not understand the nature of the combat veteran. Remember how Sen. John McCain, who was held for years as a POW in Hanoi, once joked, "It doesn't take much of a hero to get yourself shot down." ??

Murtha was being respectful of a fellow warrior, and he was downplaying his own sacrifices just as my brother-in-law, Travis, did. To take those words as some sort of literal reason for personal attack is reprehensible.

I have one thing to say to any of those who do: Shame on you. Shame, shame on you.