When Lorraine ran from our sixth grade classroom crying into the arms of her mother, I knew something dreadful had happened. It was 1967 and Lorraine’s Dad was at war an ocean away. Upon arrival at home, mother described how Platoon Captain Martz had died saving a draftee caught in enemy fire behind the lines. He raced his jeep straight into withering fire scooped up his fallen subordinate took shrapnel and died shortly after delivering the eighteen year old soldier to safety amongst his comrades in arms. Tears burned my cheeks when I dropped to pump off as many pushups as my skinny arms could muster, and drained back across my ears while reeling off the sit-ups intended to ready myself to wreck vengeance on behalf of my friend’s fallen father. When I learned six years lay between then and eligibility to join the army, I wondered about the sorrow of this family now fatherless who sat just a few pews away at First Presbyterian Church of Wappingers Falls and attended Sunday school with me and my four older and younger siblings. “Where is Vietnam anyway?” The atlas showed a divided country squeezed onto the continent by the South China Sea. “What in the world, was Captain Martz doing at war for America over there? Did he die to make his family and our country safe?” [Read paper]