Guest Writer – Thurman Woodfork; I Left a Little Part of Me

Thurman and friends in Vietnam

Thurman Woodfork was a US Air Force Ground Controlled Intercept (GCI) radar repairman. He served his tour on Trai Trang-Sup in Tay Ninh, Vietnam attached to Detachment 7, 619th Tactical Control Squadron from ’66 to ’67. Trang-Sup was an Army Special Forces CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Group) training camp.

Thurman has shared one of his poems with us, please enjoy it.

Thurman and Larry Moore, one of the Green Berets he served with, some forty years later

I Left a Little Part of Me

I think I left a little part of me

In an old French fort in Vietnam;

Unaware I’d miss it so much,

I never felt a twinge of alarm.

In fact I didn’t even know it was gone,

As Vietnam dwindled and vanished behind;

I was just relieved my war was done,

And I swept it to the back of my mind.

But it seems I had made a bit of a trade;

Part of me had eased quietly away,

While a nebulous malaise took it’s place,

And remains with me to this very day.

Did a measure of compassion, joy or patience,

Slip away unnoticed, forever lost?

I stepped aboard that freedom bird,

Not fully cognizant of the total cost.

That strife had exacted, bit by bit,

Like water flowing against the shore,

Eroding, erasing, wearing away,

Something vital in my core.

If I only knew where in me it grew,

What part of my being, the war stole;

Perhaps I could find it and nurture it anew,

To ease the conflict in my soul.

                ***

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