Hammond, William (Bill)

ONE DAY CLOSER TO THE WORLD and WAKE-UP!!!! Hammond, William (Bill)

My tour in Vietnam was 1969-1970. I was with the CoB, 1/7 Marine. 1st Marine Division. I was in the bush for the majority of that tour. Private when I got to Vietnam and a Sgt E-5 when I left Vietnam. All the years since 1970 I've been mentally living in Vietnam. I am learning to live with PTSD.

I have spent 49 years living with these memories. They have followed me, not only in waking hours, but also in sleep. The time has come for me to do a little emptying of my mind and memories of a place that seems more like a bad dream than reality. My Tour of Viet Nam. The hardest part of the whole ordeal was being sent home without my fellow Marines, and not knowing who lived or who died. I have a sense of guilt for leaving them behind.

I end each story with the Words "Another day closer to the world and Wake-up" because Nam was so foreign and backward and violent compared to what we had left behind, and it seemed like another place other than the real world, like a bad dream. The fact that we might go home outside a body bag to the World was a constant topic of conversation throughout my tour. When we weren't talking about the last firefight or ambush, we were talking about the possibility of waking up from this bad dream and being back in the world again and home.