 Gloria Fluck |
We were part of a generation brought up to believe in family, God, and country.
You had your family and your ability to worship God because of the country
you lived in. You defended it. You stood up when the flag went by. You honored
the president and the office-which I can't say I do now. But then I did.
His name was James Cassel Fluck. He was funny, adventurous, and daring. I
was into studying. He was into running around. Then he got his draft notice
and enlisted. He wanted to be in the Army, Special Forces. I think he looked
at it as an adventure. So he went to Vietnam, and I went to nursing school.
When Jim came back from Vietnam, he went into the First Armored Cavalry at
Fort Meade, which meant he could come home on weekends. I didn't notice the
changes at first. But things started to show. He couldn't be out in a crowd.
He didn't sleep a lot, had nightmares. Then he hit a commissioned officer.
I think it came from his frustrations and his fears. He had spent twelve
months sleeping in the jungle, and suddenly he can't make his own decisions.
He was given the choice of a general discharge or court-martial, and he chose
the general discharge.
You know, it makes so much sense. You take a nineteen-year old out of this
area (Lancaster County, Pennsylvania), and this area twenty years ago was
a lot more country, a lot more laid back than it is now. You knew your neighbor;
you didn't lock your house. You take him out of here, you send him thousands
of miles away to the jungle. He's never seen a jungle. You put a gun in his
hands and say go fight. He's fighting someone he doesn't know or know anything
about. He's spending every second of everyday wondering if he's going to
see tomorrow. It's got to affect you. Especially if you're young.
He didn't want to talk about it. Nothing. Well, once in a while he'd talk
about the snakes and the jungle. And once he told me he had shot someone
and they later found out it was a kid, around sixteen. In my mind, he just
tried to block it out as a chapter of his life he wasn't going to revisit.
I respected his silence. I knew that eventually if people want to talk about
something, they will. The only comment he'd ever say is, "If I ever have
any sons, and there's another war, I will personally drive them to Canada."
He came home and started college, but he just couldn't do it. He got into
plumbing, and from plumbing he got into business with a friend of his selling
cars. Nothing seemed to work. We went through a phase where, if I lost weight,
he said I had a boyfriend, and if I gained weight, I was fat.
The last year was bad. We were in a bankruptcy. He lost his business, the
house, everything. I was working full-time, trying to keep the family together.
I always took very high-stress, high-level positions because they gave me
some time flexibility and a better salary. I was working nights and I really
didn't want to leave him alone with the kids, so his mother came. We got
up one morning and he had no idea where he was, didn't even know his mom.
He was totally and completely out of touch with reality.
4.12.07