A dream. My brother in the Vietnam war.  

I felt shame I didn't serve. I was young still in school. However, everyone I had grown up with did. They were conscripted. They fought they suffered they came back with wounds seen, and unseen. As my mother said: "They took my son and sent back a stranger."

They told me all in their way that I was well out of it. If they could they'd have stayed home too. My sense of betrayal remained. Not country but to them.

Till that dream.

I was with my brother. We were in the war. Just he, and I out in the open. My brother John was calmly explaining how to stay alive. How to tell if gun fire was coming towards you or moving away. I had wanted to be with John to help him get back alive. However, here he was tutoring 'me' to do the same. 

I loved him. 

He pointed out trip wires ...mines. Some hidden in trees just above head level. He said as to how they "...really hated them fuckers." Mortars coming down. Their screams visceral. John said that so long as you can hear them you're okay. If not you either die or you don't. On que the screaming stopped. John said, "...this is how we die."

There was no explosion no death. 

The dream morphed as they do to other places other times. I had shared my brother's war. Now I knew some small piece of it. We went our ways.