Reflections On Memorial Day, 2017 At The Vietnam Memorial Wall-Fritz Taylor’s Endless War

Reflections On Memorial Day, 2017 At The Vietnam Memorial Wall-Fritz Taylor’s Endless War

By Josh Breslin

[My old friend Fritz Taylor from down in Fulton County, Georgia was from what I heard from others, from his contemporaries like my oldest brother, Laurent and of course Peter Paul Markin, known in his younger pre-draftee days around his old neighborhood as the Scribe and thereafter as the Be-Bop Kid when he got back from that hellhole, not him, one of the bravos of the Vietnam War. Had a few medals, well won, which he eventually threw over the fence at the Supreme Court building down in Washington, D. C. in if I remember correctly 1971 when a bunch of Vietnam veterans who had turned against the war they had helped fight, had been marked forever by, decided that such a gesture was an appropriate way to show their fierce opposition.

But that was not the end of it not by a longshot either politically or mentally for Fritz Taylor. The mental part first. Whatever it was that happened to Fritz over there in that hellhole he carried those psychic wounds around with him for a long time, still does. (As did my brother and sad to say every time I bring up that bastard’s giant oversized name Markin who cashed his check early, died of some demons egged on in Vietnam down in Sonora in Mexico when a drug deal he was involved went bad and he went to a potter’s field grave) Went through the usual drug (cocaine and speed as he will freely tell you in order to keep some demons at bay anyway), divorce (two, first to his high school sweetheart whom he married out of despair when he got those dreaded orders to report to Fort Lewis for transport to Southeast Asia, homelessness (drug habits drain resources, and friendships, fast, “recovery” always a very close thing cycle familiar from life experiences among fellow soldiers until he was able to keep his demons somewhat in check and function in a reasonable manner. Know this though this is an on-going struggle even today almost fifty years later so you know some serious shit happened, he saw and did some stuff that will never let him be washed clean, so you know a little why the demons had him on the run for a while.    

All during this psychic drama though Fritz never lost his hatred for war that he had experienced at first hand once he, as the late Peter Paul Markin also a Vietnam veteran and the man who introduced me to Fritz long ago used to say, “got religion,” got on the right side of the angels on the questions of war and peace. Successively Fritz had belonged to Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and Veterans for Peace after the former organization kind of petered out. It was as part of a contingent of VFP members who were going to protest the Trump government’s desire to increase the bloated military budget by 54 billion dollars that found him in Washington this Memorial Day, 2017. Found him as always drawn to the Vietnam Memorial adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. He, as always, paid his respects to those he knew from the war, and from his old neighborhood. But he would also always have a moment of bitter reflection about some comrades who did not make the wall-and should have. This is what he expressed to me when he came back and I spoke to him about his trip. The words are mine but the thoughts are his. ] 

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Fritz Taylor, Vietnam veteran, 1969-1971, 4^th Infantry, always claimed long after he had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace, after he had earned the right to oppose the bloody damn thing having been up close and personal that some of his fellow veterans had been shortchanged when it came to the crying wall, crying for him every time he went down to D.C. and was drawn to, had to pay his respects to his fallen comrades. He knew that each name inscribed on that black granite had paid their dues. No question.       

This year he happened to be in D.C. on Memorial Day as part of a contingent of Veterans for Peace to protest the latest round of the military again feeding at the public teat. As it turned out quite by accident while he was doing his “duty” to his fallen comrades from the 4^th Infantry, and to his hometown boys Eric Slater and Jimmy Jenkins forever etched in stone there, he had caught part of the annual ceremony. Righteous Fritz who when he went over to the peace side of the equation probably had logged more jail time than was good for him with acts of civil disobedience those time he wanted to make a point about the current wave of endless wars, moreover did not have any issue when new names of those who were missing in action somehow had gotten repatriated or had been accounted for by some other method. (See above for additions to this year’s crying wall). What grieved Fritz was those like his friend from Vietnam days, Johnny Ridge, a working class kid from Steubenville out in Ohio near the river who after many years of suffering psychic wounds received in Vietnam jumped into that Ohio River. (The bridge Fritz thought had since been taken down for other reason.) Or another friend from anti-war soldier days, Manny Gibbons who spent his last few years fighting cancer which the doctors directly related to his exposure to Agent Orange. Then there was Markin, Peter Paul Markin, who helped him get “sober,” get sober the first few times, whom he had met when he was a “brother under the bridge” out in Southern California and Markin was doing stories about guys like him who hadn’t adjusted to the “real” world after ‘Nam who fell down himself in Mexico on a busted drug deal driven by who knows what demons. There were others whose stories Fritz knew but those two first accounts and Markin’s whom I knew and loved ever since I met him out in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 before the evil draft got its clutches into him will do to make this point. I still cry over Markin but never felt it was place to think about why his name wasn’t etched in stone either.   

Fritz, righteous Fritz, that day once again promised his lost comrades that he would work until he went to his own not too distant death to get their names etched in stone, etched in that benighted black granite. Vietnam will never end for one Fritz John Taylor, or for a lot of other guys either.