Homber

Homber “How To Tell A True War Story” had quite an impact on me. My father served in Vietnam, and I realized while reading this that he never told my family about the time he served there. That’s when I realized that the most powerful war stories are probably never told. I remember when I was young, around eight or nine years old, I was helping my father and his carpenter friend put a new roof on our house. My brother and I spent most of the day picking up scrap pieces of our old roof, sorting out what could be burned safely, and throwing the rest of the trash in a dumpster. It was getting late in the day and my father and his friend decided to call it quits. I was in our back yard burning up the scrap lumber we had accumulated throughout the day. My father walked over and started breaking up the larger pieces of wood. We eventually got to talking, and somehow we got on the subject of when he served in the Army. I asked him what it was like to be a soldier. He didn’t have much vietnam, about, war, told, never, father, after, time, served, people, back, vietnamese, probably, native, mother, good, day, asked, young, years, wrote, started, spent, scrap, say, said, roof, rest, remember, realized, quite, pieces, old, off, natives