“ The mind of SGT. J": A scant Introduction

I would like to thank everyone for your electronic mail thanking me for sharing my living story"swing in the locality"with you all. In telling my story I never thought I would get the response I did ; especially from young man vets. It was just not from Socialist Republic of Vietnam veterans but from veterinarian who had served recently in Iraq, Islamic State of Afghanistan and some places I did not even know we were involved.

Most were thanking me for showing them that there were others like themselves. They thought they alone walked this earth with their daimon. They did not actualise that many of us have been into the darkness. most had kept their monster hidden from those around them. to the highest degree could only find fault the daemon on honey lost or ally that were no longer friends.

A lot took my advice of talking to a screw one or just talking to a fellow vet. They found as I had long ago that talking about your demons that you carry ; lessen the consignment of the extra baggage we returned home with after the war. It always brought a smile to my aspect and filled my nub with passion when they would tell me in their emails.

"Thanks to your report Sgt. J I am dealing with my demons."“ My wife has noticed I deal with everyday stress better and she now understands why I had trouble dealing with them in the first place."“ Sgt. J you have shown me there is hope for me after all."“ I have drove two wives away because of my daimon and was about to miss my third, thanks Sgt. J for showing me the way out of the darkness and into my wife ‘ s blazon again."Those were just a few snatch of the many e-mail I received from you my readers.

I had more than a few vet's wives email me thanking me for finally getting their married man to tell them about the demons they had brought back with them. Their married man never shared that region of their life with them and after hearing, what some had been through. It gave them an agreement of why that the man they fell in love with was no longer with them.

In almost all the electronic mail I received most need to jazz two things. One was just how that kinfolk of mine is doing. The second was when you are going to save again. I had the support of my kin when I wrote my liveliness tale as they thought it would be good therapy.

I did not make out that I was about to invest myself on an aroused roller coaster in writing of my life. I relived every single chapter I wrote. I relived that darn Socialist Republic of Vietnam War which I do every day anyways. I felt the bother, the despair of losing loved ones as well as the suffering some endured in my history. I even felt each kiss and the strokes of Carrie's hand to my face as I wrote my story.

Due to some recent events in my life, I feel it is my duty to add to my life level. I was not going to do this however, the family I hold dear and near to my middle encouraged me as well as prodded me to pen once more. The main drive personnel has been my lovely girl Sherri.

"pa you have to pen about what happened,"Sherri said to me."You owe it not only to your subscriber but to yourself as well,"she added.

I was unsure of whether to drop a line of the recent event in my life. Mainly because the recent consequence had caused me to interrogate myself on most of the decision, I had made during my lifetime. I agreed to write again but only if my family would avail me with my project.

There will be chapters with them telling of past tense result they shared or endured with me. I am doing so I can see if my decisions I had chosen in my life sentence were the decently ones or had I caused more harm than good. It is not easy to question single self without knowing just how the mortal you may have touched feels as well.

Let me bring in you the pursuance author who will be telling their report of my invasion into there lives. I am married to two lovely women Kay and Cathy. Kay is my legal married woman while Cathy is my given wife as Kay rather gave her to me. Sherri is Kay's daughter who I adopted age ago and she has only ever known me as daddy. To me she will always be my piddling princess who I love and adore as if she was my own.

Sherri is married to Duke a decorated war old stager like myself. They have a sweet-smelling daughter by the name of Michelle who is now 11 going on 16. While she calls me"PAPA ”, my family and friends shout me John Lackland. You my readers know me as SGT. J.

Kay, Cathy and Sherri have decided to be our invitee writer as long as I help them. My granddaughter Michelle will not be writing because as a family we have hidden most from her. She only knows her"dad,"has the one who spoils her. Duke is undetermined as of now but he may connect us when and if the time is right. His reasoning to me was as follow :

"I can not talk immorality against one like myself, a army ranger, for we are brothers. For any who speaks against a buddy or judges his brother, speaks evil against the code and judges the code. For if you judge the code, you are not a doer of the code but a judge."

"There is but one lawgiver and judge, he who is able-bodied to save and to destruct. So who am I to judge you ?

I believe the boy has been hanging around me for too long. If you were a new reader of this storey, then you would be doing yourself a favor in reading my early story"Swinging in the region"from the beginning in society to understand me as well as others in my story. There are 31 Chapters to that story so I decided to compose a new story entitled,"The Judgment of Sgt. J."

My news report is one of war, romance, sex, nuisance, despair, and of the tragedies, my family or I have faced. Mine is a story filled with ghostwriter from the past as well as an angel that guides my soul. You may find yourself shaking your head in disgust over a chapter or you may get hold yourself in tears feeling the emotion as well as the hurt and desperation I type with to you. I pull no puncher or whitewash over any event in my life as I write.

For I write the alone way I know and that is from my heart. The emotions I feel when I write I try to ingest you have as well. I do this not because I want you to sense my torture, the pain, the hurt someone or I face in my story. I do it because you must go through it in order to see it. In doing so, you may bump that you even understand yourself a niggling better. I look in my mirror every day and I see myself. Whom do you see ?

I am not looking for you to experience sorry for me nor do you owe me anything. I do not pen out of self-pity for myself. I accepted the hand portion dealt to me when I played card with him and the grime Reaper during Vietnam. I write this way only because like many other men I live by the code.

"What code is that ?"You ask.

'' Truth, award, bravery and the courage to take away military action when others do not, '' `` To always do what is right on and just, ''"To never consecrate up hope,"I say to you as my sass tremble.

I have followed and lived by that code going on 44 old age now. Since 1969 back when I was a mere boy from the vicinity fighting in a country they called Vietnam. I went to that war because a girlfriend had broken my philia. I also unknowing broke another girl's bosom when I ran off to that damn war.

That young lady figure was Carrie I knew not of her tone for me for I was too blind to have seen them. She had written me letters during my two yr in that hellhole. I never read any of them until I was on my way house from my first tour. If I had only read them before I might not throw signed up for the second one. I fell in love with her and wanted to pull in her my wife. However, I was afraid I would only make her a widow.

I returned to that land they called Vietnam a changed someone. My first base tour of duty had turned me from a simple boy into a man. Some would even say a deranged man as the demon within me controlled most of my actions during that time keeping me safe. During my second gear tour in Vietnam, I was at odds with the monster within me as well as myself. The monster wanted to encounter war while all I wanted to do was to be home with Carrie in my arms.

With the phone of"CLICK Snap,"my war was over. Four men walked that jungle this night only one would take the air out of it. Someone in our scouting patrol had stepped on a mine. Three brave men lost their lifetime that Nox while another walked under the jungle canopy that dark mortally wounded. I should not have even been able to move let lone walk. Something inside me took over and I had but one determination that night which was to urinate it back home to Carrie.

I awoke some calendar month later from a coma in a hospital in Japan. Carrie was there waiting for me to return from the short. However, I returned a part man ; shrapnel littered my chest, my spine and peg. The doc told Carrie and me there was a while of shrapnel near my backbone that had caused to the highest degree of the damage. There was also a small piece near my heart.

"We can not take the one near his heart and for right now it is causing him no problems and would probably kill him if we did take away it,"The doc said."The one at his spine we can take away but there is a prospect he would be paralyzed for life in doing so,"he added.

I had him mesh on me not to pretend me unadulterated again. I was hoping I would die during this surgical process thus joining the souls of the men I lost in Viet Nam. I wanted my war to be finally over however it was to go only the beginning.

I survived the operation and I would have to find another way to join my fallen brother. I faced a major battle in my retrieval. I did not want to live and get by with what lies ahead of me which was calendar month of therapy to regain the use of my ramification and my arm. If not for Carrie being at my position, I would not be writing this today.

I tried to send her away as I was shy if I would ever walk again. I became helpless when she was with me. I had her hand me something that I could give easily reached for with my working arm. I tried to convince her I was no longer that man she had fallen in love with years ago.

Carrie would not let me give up on myself or on us. She would move my legs with her hands day-after-day bending them at my genu. I only sunk deeper into my own natural depression as well as into the darkness that surround my soul. That war had given me more than than just my wounding ; it had scarred my mind for animation for I carried demons with me from that war, creatures that walked in the night.

Carrie went on with doing what she thought was right moving my legs daily for the next two hebdomad or so. The next day when she came into my way and started to exercise my ramification, I by passed my nub as I unleashed the fiend I carried in my soul.

"Get your damn fucking hands off my useless legs,"I yelled at her.

"John, don't say hooey like that when you do it means you have given up Bob Hope,"Carrie replied."Remember this always John,"“ Never give up Leslie Townes Hope,"Carrie added smiling at me.

"I GAVE up on hope after hearing the click snap and it did not take my fucking life,"I screamed at her like some type of a lunatic.

Carrie looked to me with lugubriousness in her adorable disconsolate eyes as she said,"If you gave up on Leslie Townes Hope then you have given up on us as well, John."“ so long John the Evangelist, I am leaving and you will never see me again,"Carrie added as she started out of the infirmary room.

I watched Carrie walking toward the door. Suddenly that articulation within my nous that had guided me through Vietnam War. The one I called the monster within spoke loudly in my head.

"SGT. J you stop that girl NOW,"the colossus within said.

"CARRIE, please don't leave me alone,"I screamed from my infirmary bed.

Carrie walked back to the bed where she stroked her placate hired hand against the side of my face as she said,"Hush, Hush my love or the creatures of the night will get you."

"I am drab Carrie, delight do not ever get out me for I fear being alone,"I replied to her.

"John, as long as you have hope you are never alone."Carrie said smiling at me.

I looked up into her lovely blue eyes. They sparkled and shined as I stared into them. Her centre took me to our happy property by the lake. The place I went to in my mind to be with her during Vietnam.

I stared into her eyes as the gentle lapping of the waves against the shoreline filled my ears. I saw the moon dancing across the water with to many stars to look behind it. Carrie was standing there with her arms out and open waiting for me to join her as her prospicient blonde hair blew gently in the dark's breeze.

My judgment seemed to go blank until I heard the monstrosity with in say,"SGT.J you move your leg now and that is an order SGT."

My leg gave a saccade much to Carrie and to my surprise. I should hold known better for the lusus naturae within was my friend and he had kept me alive for the hold out three twelvemonth while in the hobo camp of Viet Nam. He was once again helping me to survive. Carrie wrapped her arms around me as I lie in bed. I felt my exit arm vellication as if it wanted to hug her back.

Carrie pulled away from me as she said,"See what a short hope can do for you."

It was a tenacious heavily conflict almost two years but with Carrie's help, a fiddling hope and the teras within I walked down the aisle marrying her on June 3, 1974. Carrie finished college earning a doctoral-level degree in psychology. She wrote her term paper based on me as she tried to help oneself me to parcel out with my Vietnam War computer storage and the fiend I brought back. We even started a small support grouping where Carrie helped me as well as other Vietnam War vets who worked for us to care with our problems.

lifespan was good and Carrie and I enjoyed it to the fullest. We had money and a grammatical construction company my uncle had turned over to me. We lived the life style in which we grew up back in our neighborhood that being swingers. We even turned our little house on the lake into a tramp hideaway. lifetime was commodity and while I was still having nightmares and flashbacks to that damn war. As long as Carrie was with me, I would come through them.

Then we gave up on swinging deciding it was sentence to start a family. Vision of having a family line with Carrie would always fill my idea when I was doing my job in Socialist Republic of Vietnam. thought like those were dangerous for one during war as I found out the gruelling way. I wanted Carrie as my wife and maybe three or four children running around. That was my hopes, my dream however ; all I got was a nightmare that has lasted all these long time.

Carrie became meaning near the end of Sept 1979. She became even more beautiful to me during that time. That woman and our unborn small fry had become the only thing I cared about or ever wanted.

I lost Carrie the woman I loved with my heart and soul on May 10, 1980. I never got to hold up our unborn daughter Melissa as well. I can not expect reliving that nightmare so if you seek details find them in Chapter 12 of my life story.

My animation was over I could not and did not require to go on sustenance. I did what I had done all my life sentence I ran. I sold that house on the lake we had called base, as it was no longer like a home to me. We also owed a home in a near by town as I always worried about her being alone during the hard winters on the lake, which I did not sell, but it sat idle by anyone for many age a forgotten wintertime home for Carrie and our shaver to be safe in while I battled wintertime storm coming off the lake in a snowplow truck.

I told everyone I was going to fish my way out to Calif. just to see that sunset Carrie used to say me she enjoyed. That was my cover story for running away. I took to the bottle, drugs or anything that could take my painfulness away. Losing Carrie had taken everything from me, all I had left were the demons I carried with me. I no longer had any dreams or hopes for a future.

niner or eleven month later, I decided I have had plenty. I had just been in a bar fight in which I would have got taken another man's life if it was not for the spectre of Carrie stopping me. This was not the number 1 time her ghost had visited me nor would it be her finis. I returned to my hotel room with the solution to all my problems.

I sat on the edge of the bed as I picked up the 45. I chambered a round before I shoved the barrel into my mouth. My lips tasted freedom as the barrel slipped into my sass. I closed my eyes as a imagination filled my head.

The gentle lapping of the lake's water against the shoreline filled my ears. I saw the moon as it danced across the piss. The Nox sky had many stars shining bright too many for me to consider. I saw Carrie standing there with her sleeve folded shaking her head back and forth.

She looked like an saint as she stood there at the piddle edge the Sun Myung Moon silhouetting her. She had a glow around her and she looked even more beautiful than I remembered her ever looking.

"Put the gun down, can,"Carrie said as she opened her weapon for me motioning for me to descend to her.

I went to her open arm taking her into mine. I hugged her tightly as I said,"It's the exclusively way to be with you my love."

Carrie pushed me from her sleeve as she replied,"St. John the Apostle, if you do that I will not hold off for you."Carrie rubbed her manus to the incline of my expression as she added,"Always call up Saint John, to experience in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

Carrie started to languish away and before she was gone she said,"Remember Saint John the Apostle never give up hope and I will always be here for you just look to your heart when you need me."

That was the initiative clip saint Carrie came into my life. From then on she guided me down the road we call life sentence. I went to rehab and got my lifetime back together. When I hit a protrusion in the road, I looked to my warmheartedness. Angel Carrie was soon there to conduct me in the veracious focus. I asked Angel Carrie once during a dream just what her purpose in guiding me was.

"Others will need you and the code you follow, John,"holy man Carrie said smiling at me.

"`` Truth, purity, courage and the courage to ask activity when others do not, '' `` To always do what is right and just, ''"To never give up hope,"those words filled my mind.

Those who have followed my story know I have followed and used those codes much through my spirit. backer Carrie guided me to three lost souls trapped and lost within their own dark. They were Kay, her girl Sherri and Cathy. Really, it was two as to Cathy ; I had driven her into the darkness.

I have followed these computer code faithfully for 44 years never once questioning them or straying from them. In breaking one of my codes, I began to question my opinion of everything I have done in my living. Had I really helped those around me or have I only caused them more harm ?

'' verity, Honor, Bravery and the courage to shoot legal action when others do not, '' `` To always do what is right and just, ''"To never give up Hope,"those words I would say proudly as one of the very first army Ranger.

During my go in Vietnam, I was with the Long reach Reconnaissance Patrol ( LRRP ) and Long Range Patrol society ( also known as Lurps ) which began in the mid-1960s as a reactive necessity to the US US Army 's want of units subject of reconnaissance behind opposition lines. On 1 January 1969, under the new US ground forces Combat branch Regimental organisation ( automobile ), these units turned into Rangers in Dixieland Vietnam within the 75th Infantry Regiment ( Ranger ). I was with the 75th during this time so I became a ranger.

Today's commando earn their title while men like me in Vietnam were given the rubric. However, we earned ours in scrap. Others judged us on and by our natural action as well. All of us were willing to give our life's to stop anyone from taking or removing one's freedom. Our actions over in Socialist Republic of Vietnam helped to train future ground forces forest fire fighter for today's warfare.

Those words do not seem important to me any longer. They used to mean a lot to me especially"Never give up hope."We had added that one when I returned home from Vietnam bringing with me daemon from that war. The one I broke is probably the most important one to me and one, which has had the most aim on my life,"Never give up hope."

Those words have echoed in my intellect since the day Carrie used them at me in the hospital after my war was over. She would tell them to me and fellow Viet Nam warhorse back in 74 and 75. During this time, we were trying to assist other veterinarian who like me had brought demons home with them from Socialist Republic of Vietnam. She would always end our encounter we held at our little menage on the lake with those words. I had always held those words close and near to my mettle since that night Angel Carrie stopped me from pulling the induction on that 45 in my mouth.

It was not just one event but also a series of upshot that led to breaking of the code. It all started with the Vietnam War, as you will see as the story plays out as I write it. That dam war has been a part or a player in my life for 44 days. I curse it forever happening and myself forever becoming involved with it. That dam war of farsighted ago came back to haunt me high-risk than it ever had in the past.

I am writing this introduction for the benefits of any new readers to my story. It will give them an idea of what kind of person I was. For I am no longer certain if maybe those who I have had contact with are ameliorate off today or not. Thoughts of Kay, Sherri and Cathy fill my head as well as ones of my honey Carrie and anyone else I have had contact with might give been upright off if they had never met me. I am here writing this new story due to the events that happened recently in my life that caused to me to go against my codification.

As I type, I am sitting in sound judgment of myself. My story does not let an ending yet as you, the reviewer will discover the ending as I decide upon it. The events leading up to all of this will be onward coming through the chapters that follow. I will be reliving my life through the eyes of those who lived it with me. I hope that I will see just whether those whose lives I touched are better with me or without me.

I end this introduction to my new fib with a quote that I once heard.

There is a saying in Tibetan,"cataclysm should be utilized as a source of strength."“ No matter what sort of trouble, how terrible experience is, if we lose our Hope, that 's our real disaster."
― Dalai genus Lama XIV

The first chapter will be out on Fri afternoon following this scant introduction and others chapters will follow. How many I can not say other than as many as it takes. As always, I look forward to your scuttlebutt and your email. If nothing else just stop by and tell apart Sgt. J"hello again."
Sgt. J