a soldier's telling

“His name was Fred Falkner,” the eulogist said. “He was a husband, a father, a good fellow and a friend. I can’t tell you stories about his life with his family. They can do that. I can’t tell you stories about his life’s work. His colleagues can do that. What I can tell you about is who he was when I was with him, next to him, for nine months in Vietnam. We knew the same mud is how we’d say it, back then – and I’m cleaning it up a bit, here, for this ceremony. That part of him I can tell you about and with certainty, because if there’s anything war’s good for it’s for the truth. There’s no place in that hell for lies. No one fakes his way through that. No chance. In this day and age, we overuse the word ‘hero.’ It wasn’t thrown around back then, like that – the word. Fred wouldn’t’ve liked being called a hero. So, I won’t call him that. What he was, was a soldier. I think he would’ve liked being called that because that’s what he was – a soldier. Us old soldiers will miss him. He was one of ours.”