Vietnam Helmet Quotes

I slowly dug a stand-up foxhole up to my neck using my helmet. I don’t think any of us slept that night. It was the first time in my tour when I wasn’t sure I would make it. I’m not ashamed to say I did a lot of thinking about home and a lot of praying to the man upstairs.

Tâm can describe in detail how the soldiers slipped the ace of spades into their helmet straps, sleeves rolled up above their elbows, the cuffs of their pant legs tucked into their boots. On the other hand, she remembers no soldier’s face. Maybe war machines don’t have a human face.

Communal recognitions of deaths were perfunctory, delayed, and conducted by rear-echelon officers who had no emotional connection to the dead or their comrades. One veteran from an elite unit bitterly resents that nothing ceremonial marked the death of his closest comrade: They didn't even have a fucking stand-down for the fucking kid. They had a fucking stand-down for all the fucking pot-head mother-fucking dope-stuffing motherfuckers. [Stand-down] is when guys in the outfit get killed, they'd bring the whole unit back, and they'd set his rifle up and put his helmet or his boonie cap on, and plays taps and shit. Pay him fucking respect. They do this for all these mother-fucking junkie motherfuckers around here. They can't do it for a fucking kid who did every fucking thing he was asked to do. Fucking kid never complained about nothing.