The guest vet

I was very impressed with the guest speaker that we had. He seemed really well spoken and was willing to talk about a good number of things that happened to him in the war, which surprised me. When I was studying Tim O'brien last year I actually had my dad come and talk to the class, because he was in the Navy while he was in Vietnam. So it was very interesting to me to hear another perspective about the war. Granted my father did not see much action being in the Navy but he was very willing to talk to the class about the effects of being drafted into the Army, then enlisting into the Navy during a war, had on my dad. He had received a letter from the army in which he was sure was his draft orders, so he went with his father to the Navel recruiter, a friend of my Grandpa's, and was able to enlist as a higher rank because he had not opened the letter yet. I mention my dad's experience here because it seems to be a big contrast to that of our speaker. Where our speaker saw a lot of action and was right in the middle of things, my dad really experienced the mental aspect of the waiting and not knowing what was going to happen part of the war. My dad did a complete 180 during the war; from the straight laced MP he was at the beginning, to a complete full 8 inch long beard wearing hippy who looked exactly like Tommy Chong he turned into by the end of it. So by contrasting my dad's story of the war and with our guest speakers I really can see how Vietnam can change a person. With our speaker, it gave him a greater connection to Christianity, granted he was already deeply involved with it but there is no doubt that the war solidified his beliefs in ways nothing else could. As with my dad, it did some what the opposite. My dad experienced a war in his mind much like the "dull period" that is found earlier in our book, and as a result he separated from some of his former beliefs. Our speaker experienced the war first hand and as a result trusted more and more in God, my dad did not so trusted more in the popular rebellious beliefs of the times...