Vietnam Picture Tour, from the lens and poet’s pen of a combat infantryman.

My name is Gary Jacobson. I served with B Co 2nd/7th 1st Air Cavalry '66 - '67, as a combat infantryman, we called ourselves "Grunts," operating out of LZ Betty near beautiful downtown Phan Thiet, Vietnam, participating in an event that took the innocence of many a young boy, and changed us all indelibly and forever. I'm now on 100% disability rating with an extra hole in my head and shrapnel the size of a quarter imbedded in my brain, compliments of a trip wire booby trap that triggered a grenade, that in turn detonated an artillery round...and in the process completely ruined my whole day.

"Vietnam Picture Tour," http://PZZZZ.tripod.com/namtour.html Take a walk in "the park" grunts called Vietnam, with the 1st Air Cavalry on combat patrol. Experience chilling reality to leave the sweet and sour taste of "the Nam" pungent on your tongue, the smell of "the Nam" acrid in your nostrils, and textures of "the Nam" imbedded in you as though you were walking beside me in combat.

My poignant Vietnam poems directory, pictures and artwork to show the essence and feeling of war on young "boys next door," http://pzzzz.tripod.com/nampoemsNpix.html For us coming from Vietnam, there was no closure...so we buried our feelings deep, and that's never healthy. Many of my combat brothers cannot speak of the horrors of Nam that truly fester in their souls, even today, for it is still too painful...it is for them that I speak. My message is cathartic. It promotes healing in not only myself, by excising the demons still haunting me, but my brothers too. Thousands of messages I have received from Veterans and families of Veterans convey my writings of what we all experienced do help in the healing process, though I write, as now, through a river of tears.

My goal in writing and pictures is not only for remembrance, but to educate people who have not the foggiest idea of the realities of war on "boys next door," the death and destruction, and the immense horrors. This trauma affected vets not only physically, but mentally and morally in ways that turned our value systems topsy turvey. War was an all-consuming experience that ingrained itself permanently into the lives of those who served, and still infests the minds and actions even today, 30+ years after the fact. I wish stories of what happened there in Vietnam to never die.