Viet Nam Vet Lost a Leg, But Not His Heart

We'd been at the Cindy Sheehan's Camp Casey outside of Crawford Texas for about 45 minutes. My wife and 16 year-old daughter and I had milled through the booths, saw dozens of pictures of fallen American Soldiers, and I'd met Eliza Gilkyson. Eliza is a folksinger who, if you haven't yet discovered her, please do. And if you're one of those roll-your-eyes-at-folk-music types, you haven't discovered Eliza.

She had her guitar in the bed of a pickup, and an amp nearby and I said with a smile "Is that thing here for a reason?" "Yeah, I'm gonna play a few songs in a little bit." "Excellent." I walked toward the road where I saw my family.

I passed a guy with a ball cap with silver-tipped brown hair and a great big blonde walrus moustache. He was proudly holding a Veterans Against the War flag. As I walked by I said "We need to see more of your type here!" He took that as an invitation to speak, and yes, he did speak.

He wasn't fond of Bush or his administration for the cuts to benefits for veterans. He stated clearly his support for the soldiers, but not of the administration which sent them there. His clear blue eyes and freckled skin (the kind you see on a lot of redheads) were intense and vivid. He spoke animatedly without the accent of a Texan. His name was Tim Origer from Santa Fe, and spent only a month in the DMZ zone in Viet Nam.

"So you were in the war?" I asked. "Well, yeah..." He looked down toward his legs. His left one wasn't there, replaced by some kind of steel pivoting limb with a shoe that allowed him to walk. I'd been standing about 2 feet from him for several minutes, deep in conversation and hadn't even noticed.

He told us about the rocket that destroyed the artillary battery he was manning, and sent him flying 40 feet up the hill. If I understood him correctly, he actually remembered the event, and that it wasn't terribly unpleasant. But then a flare got shot directly into his leg as he lay there, burning and destroying his leg, and turning it all into a hellish nightmare of pain.

My family listened to the story intently, trying, but failing to comprehend the horror of what he'd been through. We transitioned to another subject.

"I like your button--where'd you get it?" my daughter asked. It was a skull and cross-bones on a black field, with W's face where the skull should have been. He pointed to a guy who had a bag of them, and that guy gave us one. I tried to give Tim a few bucks for it and he refused. Finally I stuffed the bills into his compadre's pocket. Hell, it cost them money to produce the buttons. Why not give them something to at least meet their costs?

A while later I went to get water, and more people were arriving. A line of people had formed to wave and greet the cars as they got there. As I walked back I saw that my daughter was crying, overwhelmed by the moment. Standing next to her was Tim, still waving his flag with one arm, but the other was around my daughter. She later said he hugged her for several minutes, and that it was a real help for her.

Part III: a Pro-Bush Protester Shows What He's Made Of