Uniform Wasn’t the Only Thing They Buried

What We Bury Still Breathes

They never really talk about it until you ask. And even then, there’s a pause—a scan of the perimeter. Like they’re back there for a second. Because they are.

What comes out is never clean. It wanders. It contradicts itself. It flashes from memory to metaphor to bitterness to silence. You’ll get a tangent about wrestling, or a jab at politicians, or a sudden dead stare through the wall. This is not nostalgia. This is the residue of a war we asked young men to carry home in pieces.

We paint them in parades. We market them in beer ads. We Photoshop them onto T-shirts and call it tribute. But underneath the costume is something rawer—a trauma we still don’t want to name, because naming it would indict us too.

Some saw things so violent they stopped believing in truth. Others watched their leaders get shot in the back—not by the enemy, but by their own men. Gung-ho lieutenants from prestigious academies, barking textbook commands in a jungle that obeyed nothing but its own chaos. One night, their own platoon would decide they'd had enough. The bullet came from behind.

And no one asked questions.

Somewhere in a bar, decades later, a veteran’s voice cracks as he tells it. He doesn’t cry, exactly. He shuts down. He stares. He tries to remember whether his friend ever made it out of the desert alive. He isn’t sure anymore.

These aren’t war stories. They’re warning shots. They echo down bloodlines. And sometimes, they land in the ears of someone finally ready to listen.

So this is for the ones who never talked, and the ones who did but were never heard.

We see you now

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