Thoughts From the Heart
By
Joseph Smith

A bullet going by your head sounds like a fly fling at a thousand miles per hour. The people you never expect to die, die, and as I stood above my friend as he laid on that cold slab of steel at the US Army Central Morgue, Danang, South Vietnam, my mind drifted back to our first day of basic combat training at Fort Polk.

I was 16 years old. I had entered the army by the use of my twin brother whom I am named after. When he and his twin died unexpectedly four days later, my twin sister and I were born four years later and named after them. Obtaining a copy of his birth record and a Social Security card, I was on my way of becoming a soldier. From the first day of basic training, we had become friends. Going our own way after basic, myself going to Fort Sam Houston for my medic training, him going to Fort Benning for jump school. Then to Fort Bragg.

11 weeks left of training, I was called into the school commanding officer office and told that I was being sent to Mortuary Science school at Fort Lee. Before he was sent to Vietnam, we spent most of our time together since he was from Richmond, Virginia. I used to go there on the weekends. He would send his sister to pick me up. I think he was trying to hook us up. It worked. We would go out together. His soon-to-be wife and his sister and I would go clubbing.

They wanted to get married before he went to Vietnam. So one weekend I stood as best man, and they were married in the family's backyard which was huge. And it didn't rain.

And now here we were—it was monsoon season, a cold hard rain. As the rain fell hard on the metal roof of the morgue, which brought me back to present date. As I washed his body, took his fingerprints, and attached his dog tags for official identification which the army required, I prepared his body for the embalmer who gave him a number. He was somebody's son, husband, brother, uncle, grandson. He was not a number. He was more than that—he was my friend. A friend who I needed to visit at the wall—a place I have not been able to visit, a place where my heart is burdened for a friend. The wall of black granite with over 58,000,00 names on it. A wall which my friend's name is on. A place I need to go to—to start the healing process.