Doug Bradley, author of DEROS Vietnam: Dispatches from the Air-Conditioned Jungle, looks at the unspoken connections of fathers, sons, and soldiers.
The fact that my father, Jack Bradley, who passed away in 2009 at the age of 89, and I were former soldiers linked us in ways that only other combatants could know. But, not too surprisingly, we two proud, private men never talked about this connection. He never told me about the horrors he witnessed in New Guinea in 1944 and 1945, and I never spoke of the ugly brutality of guerilla war in Vietnam in 1970 and 1971.
But our eyes told the honest stories, the truth that neither of us had the courage to enlist but, rather, had to be drafted to fight for our country. The truth about the male friendships we formed that to this day remain unlike any others we’ve ever had. The truth about all-consuming fear and the aroma of death. The truth about coming home, but never, even though we both came back whole, never quite making it back home completely.
So, every year on Father’s Day I make a point of searching for the thread that runs between the two soldiers, the son and the father. I usually end up asking more questions than I can answer. And reaching out for a man who, while still in my life, is more separated from me by hundreds of silent conversations than by his death.
I’m especially mindful of this when I observe my final Father’s Day ritual – re-reading the one letter I received from my dad when I was in Vietnam. My mom did all of the letter writing, and she’d usually write at least twice a week – but my dad took the pen in hand this one time when he felt that I was losing hope and was worried that Chris, my girlfriend back home, was going to break up with me.
In his lone letter to me, my dad told me how his love for my mother had kept him alive during World War II. He told me that if Chris and I were meant for each other then everything would turn out okay. He told me how sorry he was that I had to be in Vietnam at all.
“I won't tell you to keep your head down,” he tried to joke at the end of his letter to me, “but I think you should hold it high because I’m proud of you. Not for being a soldier,” I could almost feel him pausing, “but for being my son.”