Tears of Vietnam

Vietnam 1970

Mary Jane MacKenna was playing in the front yard with her boys when a yellow cab drove up across the street. They had been arriving more and more frequently of late and not to pick up passengers. They worked with Western Union to make ends meet. They delivered the telegrams to the doors of the dead men. So as she looks up she knows what it means; soon the keening sounds of a grieving widow would be heard echoing in the streets. She gathers her boys and enters the house preparing to go and comfort the poor women who would receive such dreadful news. Yet little did she know, there was no need. This time she was the widow in need. As she turned away from the front hall mirror to the open front door, the hair comb falls from her limp hands... she stands there as her sons cry in the background until even that sound fades leaving only the sound of the cab drivers beat up shoes walk up the noisy porch steps, a telegram and a box in his hands... Her Billy was never coming home... never meeting his year old twin boys... In the box were some of his things and the last letter he ever wrote...

Dear Mary Jane,

I miss you more everyday. You are the only thing, the only reason, I still fight. President Nixon has ordered the Army to invade Cambodia to stop the Viet Cong and their factions who have set up camp on the other side of the border. He say's that this is the key to winning and therefore ending the war... I hope this is true! It'll mean I could come home to you and finally meet wee Liam and Knox. To think I have two sons whom I've never met... The days seem endless yet to leave on the choppers bound for base doesn't mean freedom. My buddy Johnny got married to a Vietnamese girl yesterday. They look nauseatingly happy and I wonder if we were once that way? I'll be among the men headed into Cambodia so don't worry to much if you don't hear from me. Just know that I love you and our boys! That some day soon, God willing, I'll be coming home.

All my love,

Billy

But all was not lost! A month to the date Mary Jane received yet another yellow cab delivered telegram... there had been a mistake!! The Billy listed as K.I.A. was not hers after all... her's was coming home!!!

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2) Intellectual Property= Mali