Why I Write

[Ranger Ray]

It was during the fighting in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam that I had one of my worst moments in combat. I had to crawl over a pile of dead and dying VC to get to the young soldier groaning in the mud. As I picked him up, he looked in my eyes and asked--"why do I have to die". I couldn't respond as I tried to push his intestines back inside his belly while he screamed and then his eyes went blank--blue eyes staring at nothing.

I wrote a poem about that incident and about the 58,000 who died like my young soldier. I posted the poem for those who served in Vietnam to read and understand.