Finalist— THE COLLECTOR’S SEPTEMBER WRITING CHALLENGE
Forgotten Blood: On African American Soldiers in the Vietnam War
*All quotes are accounts from African American Vietnam Veterans
…people were dealing with drug addiction, PTSD, the military spraying Agent Orange on our troops. We needed support. We needed love.
— Job Mashariki
A few years before Marvin Gaye crooned ”Are things really getting better as the newspaper said?” Vietnam War critic and non-violence activist Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel. Although a gifted orator, it was King’s death that would undermine the fantastical imagery of the Vietnam War’s proclaimed troop integration. For decades, this war is attributed to being the first American War upon which Black and White troops were not formally segregated. Formality or not, American racist ideals thrived on military bases while Vietnamese combat ensued.
So then we went into the hut, and it was all these women and children huddled together. I was gettin’ ready to wipe them off the planet. In this…
