To be brief, I went back a few years--
and I went with a friend to New Mexico.
And we went to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
As I told one of the classes this morning,
I came across a-- still a young man-- he was probably
about 19 when he was in Vietnam, with a cane,
and tremendous scars across his head.
He had been operated on for tumors.
And I suppose you're familiar with Agent Orange that
was spread across the jungle and plains
to exfoliate the jungle to kill the leaves so that people could
see who to bomb and stuff.
So literally, he had been around Agent Orange seriously,
and had serious tumors.
And the other thing that was strange
that I'm still trying to figure out is that he had gone to live
or lives in some place in Mexico.
And it's hard for me to fathom why somebody blonde, blue-eyed
would go live there, and tend to think that it's because maybe
he's accepted over there.
But who knows.
"At the New Mexico Vietnam Veterans Memorial,
the doctors failed to banish Vietnam forever
when they removed the tumors from his brain.
Jack had centipedes crawl out of his dreams
and tread down his forehead, nearly
tumbling into his blue eyes.
Unlike the devil who went back to hell after the war,
home for him is now a village somewhere in Mexico.
The curse of a country that endeavored
to paint the jungle a resplendent orange."