Inspired by, and with some lines from the war documentary - 'Vietnam requiem'


aint no hero
Vietnam 1967 first tour
all they bother about is body count
all that pours out is
body one
body two
body three
body four hundred
black plastic bin bag zip up on our side
burned napalm gook, skin slides off horrendous
out here
half the time you don’t know who your killing
Gook?, What? They are people Sam, you fool.
they send you out in a free fire zone
to shoot anything that moves
tree leaves, little furry animals, whole villages
to search and destroy
and the sickening thing is
I got to like it
I actually got to like it
and like any addiction
it escalates, hell they had us kill 7 year old kids
they looked bigger in the telescopic sights, these guys were kids
photographs of their mums n dads when we stripped em
the marines turned us into machines
and Hollywood into heroes
we aint heroes, we wanted home
and the Vietnam vets
with no arms and no legs
the forgotten sons
got no arms to shoot ourselves or we surely would
just because we survive , feel guilty
for surviving when comrade died by your side
part of the child is dead
Christ I had to sit in his blood for an hour
and that’s not supposed to affect you
sat in a tin can truck with half of somebody’s head
that’s not supposed to affect you
and what we scare me is that
if they sent up a group of 18 years from 12 000 miles away
and subject them to a year of this obscenity
and have them not be affected, that would frighten me
we aint no heroes
the drill instructor said we were worthless
the core made us worthless and we rotted inside
become the kind of thing the devil himself would despise
I can still hear the screams over the Bell-Huey
and the smell of it all
all petrol
like the films all gasoline
that drill instructor bastard never got so much as a scratch
never needed a band aid patch
to cover the holes in my head and my purple heart
I am worthless
a killing machine no hero
I’m the worst person in the world
and people that weren’t there
they piped up and said ‘hell I missed out on the action’
and I just sit there and think, you lucky man
every day we fight, it never ends in the head
I have not a shred of emotion left except anger, guilt and disgust
I trust no one not even myself
you ever felt like that?,
when you can’t feel nothing,
and you don’t want to either.
cant face a family of this.
spawned a family, and all the love is dissolved, in all of this.

and then when we came back and it was different,
and they all wanted to know,
Christ!,  what happened to those guys over there?

well…….

there's gotta be something wrong somewhere.

-we did we had to do
and people wanted us to feel ashamed for what it made us

all we wanted to do was come home