“He sighed. All good intentions aside, sometimes he wondered, who am I kidding? Because sometimes he wondered if what was really driving him was guilt; guilt for walking away that November morning, through the acrid smell of burning fuel and the burning rubber smell from the bombed-out Jeeps; for looking at his hands and counting his fingers while the smell of the moist earth ejected by exploding Viet Cong shells mingled with the stench of burning flesh; and most of all, for being able to walk at all and for being able to see, smell and experience the nightmares that still haunted him nightly and the visions that still came during the day. He was guilty for feeling relief— relief that it was not his mangled body lying half-in and half-out of the blackened shell of a burned-out military vehicle; it wasn’t his headless torso next to a crater; and, it wasn’t his body zipped into one of the dark plastic body bags that lined the edge of the tarmac, waiting for pickup and removal by the C-130 transports the day he went home.” MemoriesMilitaryGuiltVietnam WarAction NovelThe Past Is Never Gone Book:Turbulent Skies: A Jack Coward Novel Source: Turbulent Skies: A Jack Coward Novel