Now: Fight To Win - Thirty years later, 1997, I sit in an office at a job I have managed to keep for 20 years, off and on. I've complained verbally and in writing of the safety hazards we have to put up with daily and it seems the company cannot, or will not, visualize the dangers---only the costs of safety. They are not there when fingers are lost, skin is torn and bones are broken---but I am, and when these things happen, my mind is back in '67 and I need to take control.
      The injured are no longer fellow workers, but members of my squad and we must stick together. The accidents and constant trips back to my past are getting to me, and I push heavily for changes. Management have never seen injuries caused by failing to take safety precautions. I have. They have not seen death that can quickly follow these injuries, and don't realize the stress that it brings me personally.
      Fill out the correct paper work---that's all that matters to them. I continue to push for changes, until one day I'm called into the office, again, and this time I am told that my services are no longer needed. It's like facing that Claymore again ... I've been doing this work for 20 years... I'm 50 years old ... what am I going to do to support my family? Everything seems to crash down on me, until it finally clicks about what I had gone through thirty years before. I made it through then and I'll make it through now, only this time, instead of my platoon leader I'll have an attorney, and instead of my M16, I have my computer. I am at war again! I faced an enemy that tried to kill me thirty years ago, and came out ahead---and I'll be damned if I let anyone get the better of me now, in the present. I will win. I will fight to the end ... or go down fighting.