Lance Mitchell DFSD AMC NS

I DID NOT WRITE THIS! But, it needs to be post on every Social Media Platform! These days, people look at me like I’m just a tired old man—but they forget I once crawled through the jungles of Vietnam with bullets flying over my head.” "Just a Soldier" A reflection for those who remember what dignity used to mean. I wasn’t always invisible. Back then—I'm talking about 1968—you couldn't walk into a diner in uniform without someone nodding, quietly paying for your coffee, or giving you a firm handshake. Not everyone did, of course. But when they did, it meant the world. Now? I stand in the pharmacy line behind some teenager arguing with the clerk about a TikTok coupon. No one makes eye contact. My cane slows me down, and people sigh like I’m the problem. They don’t know I once carried a buddy on my back for three miles through the mud with a shattered ankle and two bullets in my leg. I didn’t ask for a parade. I just wanted a little respect. I was drafted out of Arkansas at nineteen. Left behind a girl who waited—then didn’t. My mom hung a photo of me in uniform over the mantle like I’d already died. I guess part of me did. Vietnam was hot, wet, loud. You slept with rats and woke up praying your legs were still there. But you also learned things you don’t forget. Brotherhood. Grit. How to laugh during hell. I had a buddy named Frankie—loudmouth from Jersey, always had a harmonica in his shirt pocket. He didn’t make it out. Sometimes I still hear him playing under the trees. When I came home, people didn’t know what to do with us. The country was tired of war, tired of death, and some of that tiredness turned into anger. We didn’t get the hugs and banners. We got silence. Or worse. So I worked. Fixed trucks. Painted houses. Drove long-haul to keep food on the table. No pension, no benefits for a long time. The VA back then was a joke—lines out the door, paperwork lost in the mail. I had friends who never went back, who couldn’t deal with the wait, or the shame of asking. And still, we endured. My hands aren’t what they used to be. Arthritis is a cruel thing. Sometimes I stare at them and think, "These hands once loaded M16s in the dark, now they struggle with a jar lid." My knees creak like old wood. The back’s stiff from years under trucks and sleeping in strange motel beds with thin mattresses and thinner paychecks. But the hardest part isn’t the pain. It’s the feeling that none of it mattered. I remember when neighbors helped each other build fences. When a man’s word meant something. You didn’t need a lawyer for everything. We argued on porches and still shook hands afterward. Now, it’s all tweets and screens and screaming. Everybody’s offended, nobody listens. The worst is when young folks roll their eyes. “Boomer,” they say, like it’s an insult. They don’t know the hours we worked. The nights we went without so they could have more. They think we’re out of touch, but we remember a time when dignity wasn’t an app and truth didn’t change with the algorithm. I live alone now. My wife passed six winters ago—cancer. She was the only one who knew how to quiet the jungle in my dreams. Some nights, I still wake up gasping, hands clenched, heart racing like a chopper overhead. The VA counselor says it's normal. Normal. Funny word for nightmares. My daughter visits when she can. She’s got her own battles—divorce, debt, a son who barely looks up from his phone. I love her, but sometimes we sit in the same room and feel a thousand miles apart. You know what keeps me going? The little things. The smell of coffee at 5 a.m. Watching the squirrels raid my bird feeder like it's Normandy. That one neighbor kid who mows my lawn without being asked. He doesn’t say much, but he waves every time. That wave means more than he knows. And the flag. I still raise it every morning. Not because the country’s perfect—but because I believed in something once. Still do, deep down. Even if the news makes it hard some days.