Mr. Smaha Response
The Mr. Smaha presentation was not what i expected. Going into it, I thought that he’d be telling cool stories about hand to hand combat, or even gun battles, but instead he treated us to stories that were more for the faint of heart. I enjoyed the presentation very much, but it surprised me. Yesterday in U.S. history, Mrs. Durkin told us that he had in fact killed people in Vietnam, and she told us he would tell us about that. He didn’t mention it once. In a room full of adolescents, whose first question they wanted to ask but didn’t know if it was a “mature” question was “have you ever killed anyone?” he couldn’t even mention it. I’m not saying that I don’t like that he didn’t mention it, i’m saying that it’s almost disturbing that even 40+ years after it happened, it still haunts him to the point where he couldn’t push himself to say if he had or hadn’t killed anyone in his presentation. It’s sad! Nobody should have something that they were forced to do that haunts them to the point where they can’t talk about it. It’s why the suicide rate was and still is so high in returning veterans. They’ve seen unimaginable things. They’ve seen the worse, and they can’t handle it anymore. I liked the presentation very very much, but i think there was a deeper meaning in it. He wasn’t just telling us a story, he was showing us the disturbing side of war, and for that I thank Mr. Smaha. He has obviously seen some bad things, and the fact that he has the strength to come talk to us and tell us his stories is amazing.