All Comments on 'Laurel'

Lovely story!

5

Nice story.

You are a very good story teller. I hope to see more from you (I know it takes time and effort)...Regards, Alan

Sad story but resonates with one who, although not American, was 18 in 1970 and could have gone to VietNam had he been such. How about a follow up where he finds some peace and love.

Great story, thanks

Wonderful.

I can relate.

Thank you for a beautiful story

Beautifully written.

Your story made my heart ache.

I was lucky in that a car wreck kept me from being sent to Viet Nam. I still keep a letter sent from a lady that I never responded to. I often give thanks for the letter. It wasn't a love letter; it was an "I care" letter. I got that letter some 50+ years ago. Thank you Linda, Where ever you are.

A fine story. I suggest to remove from here and ask someone where to submit or sell film rights.

I wanted to like this story, and I did, until the main character, Roger, got all enamored of the anti-war crowd. I was a Marine back in that era too. Started two tours of South Vietnam as a grunt Marine, didn’t finish either one. I got wounded and shipped back to CONUS twice. I spent several months, twice, in the Navy hospital in Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco and just down the road from Berkeley. Both hotbeds of the radical anti-war movement. Too damn many of those anti-war people decided to protest members of the military too. In doing so they made a hell of a lot of enemies, including me. Sure, the story had a sad ending. But so did Vietnam, and it wasn’t fiction.

very sad and beautiful!

Served during that era. Was from the DC area. Well evoked.

This is directed to Anonymous, the Marine combat veteran of Vietnam.

I am sorry about your experiences with anti war demonstrators, and feel the need to apologize collectively, because I was in the anti war movement during the War. I respected combat veterans of the War. I never saw anyone show them disrespect. I am sure it did happen.

In retrospect, I think the anti war movement prolonged the War. The disruptive behavior of some anti war protesters angered many voters, and provoked them to vote for hawks, who continued the war effort.

That said, I still think the War in Vietnam was tragically futile. In his memoirs President Eisenhower estimated that as many as 80% of the Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh. The decades since the War have reinforced my belief that Vietnam was unimportant to American security and the U.S. economy.

I have known and liked American combat veterans of the War in Vietnam. I have known and liked Vietnamese war refugees. I lived in downtown San Jose, California during the early 1980's, when the area was engulfed by Vietnamese war refugees. They were good people.

Deeply moving. My father fought in WWII and in a sense, never left it. In 1968, I had trouble earning enough money to return to college. I announced that I was going to drop out and allow myself to be drafted. My deeply patriotic father told me to do what I had to, but go back to college. Vietnam was a bad war that I shouldn't get involved in. Even he understood that Vietnam was wrong. Vietnam affected everyone. Some much more than others. Your story captures the uneasiness everyone felt. I appreciate that you didn't succumb to giving the story a happy ending since there is none for those who cannot get beyond it.

@JohnEngelman This story conveys a bleakness and a “lost” quality that breaks my heart, there is an Art Cinema feel to this story in the best tradition of that genre. The story is very well written, the characters are very well drawn and the chosen scenes add to the feel and colour of the piece, 5 stars from me, for possibly the most atmospheric piece I’ve read here on Lit.

Thanks for writing and posting, cheers, Ppfzz.

John, a very well written and touching tale. While the sentence structure is generally fairly simple, this is a much more nuanced and moving story than your "Richard and the Seven Brigands," which I found and read first. You've added flavor and a real sense of feeling in this story by letting the reader "be there" with the protagonist, as if living and feeling the events, rather than just reading about them as in the other story. Great job, 5*

Great little story. Thanks for sharing.

Needs a better ending. Could have been a great story.

Great story, it is tough sometimes to know why someone left you.

I like to reserve judgment about a story until I have time to reflect. That being true here, I found this story to be moving. The ending could have been different, as noted by a previous comment, but then that would not have been true to the lead character. Enjoyable read.