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Vetted Vets
By Ali Elizabeth | June 10, 2008
If you have pushed your cart down the cyber-aisles of A Ballad for Baghdad you have observed that much of the ”available fare”in my little shop is gratitude, gratitude for my country, my freedoms and the people who have sacrificed on any level for our country.
The pain of writing the book was at times substantial for a number of reasons. Knowing the amazing things that the Iraqis and the Coalition had accomplished in a remarkably short amount of time, and seeing their feats either vilified, marginalized or ignored made me hurt for them.
Knowing that once upon a time I myself would have been a passionate vilifier, marginalizer or ignorer, and in a “former life” had hurt vets by my arrogance was painful, and oddly, even recalling their amazing forgiveness held forth toward me while we were comrades in a combat zone smarted as it healed. I think that true repentance is one of those “hurts so good” things, and it is nigh unto impossible to explain its ultimate fruit of joy to those who have never experienced it.
There are several fine people who are endorsing the book, and I knew that I needed to have an unsung hero from the Vietnam war amongst them. My dear friend Loren Krenelka was the perfect choice for a number of reasons. First, I know him and his story well, and second, I know him to be a man of uncommon integrity. He walks his walk, and would only endorse the book if he honestly felt that it deserved it.
I met him when I was 12 and began to know him as a friend when I was 18, as we both attended the same theological school many moons ago.
About 18 years ago we took a walk out on his acreage while his wife Linda, an outstanding educator, was giving my children their annual assessments as prescribed by the Washington State homeschool law.
We talked about Vietnam, and there on that field I saw a pain in my friend’s face that I am sure has surfaced thousands of times on vet faces of that era all across our land. The pain had to do with feeling abandoned and betrayed by both the government as well as the people of America. Either betrayal is tough enough for a vet, but both of them together are completely inexcusable and immeasurable in their damage.
At that time I did not have a full picture of just what I had done to guys like my friend. I didn’t get that picture until I lived in Iraq and saw them in action, and knew that while I could never go back and undo what I had done in ignorance, now that I knew who they really were, I was responsible to tell their story.
Loren recently sent me the text for his endorsement, and I hope that the publisher, Morgan James out of New York will let me use all of it. It seems that I had caused him pain again, by having to revisit some things that he had stuffed down for decades. But at least this time I could say that I had caused him a healing pain, one that, like mine, “hurt so good.” He was sad that there had been no MWR “angels” in ‘Nam, and glad that now there was so much more available to his younger fellow soldiers.
Loren Krenelka is what I call a “vetted vet.”
“Vetting” by definition has to do with a process of examining and evaluating, often in connection with potential employment, and once upon a time before we became friends, I came to a completely erroneous conclusion regarding his season as an intel NCO in service to our country. I glibly quipped in all my pride, “Military intelligence is a contradiction of terms.” Then in the early ’70s I met Loren again along with other soldiers and officers and began to see how wrong I had been.
He and thousands like him are “vetted” because they have gone on and loved our country in spite of people like me. They passed the test. They have been “examined and evaluated,” and this time, because of their mostly younger “brothers and sisters,” in Operation Iraqi Freedom, I came up with a completely different conclusion, one to which I’ll passionately cling for the rest of my life.
I only hope that as the soon-to-be-experienced whirlwind season of book tours unfolds, I will have the chance to look into the eyes of multitudes of Lorens while signing their copies of A Ballad for Baghdad and say, “I am sorry I’m late. I got lost 40 years ago on the way here, but a soldier like yourself stopped and gave me directions.”
Topics: Ballad for Baghdad, the Book | No Comments »