Here is a photo of my late father, Luis (Luca) E. Rosas after several weeks of nightly mortar fire at An Khe Fall of 1965. He was with the U.S. Army’s 1st Air Cavalry Air Mobile Division / 15th Transportation Corps Battalion Delta Company at Camp Radcliff, An Khe in the Central Highlands of the Republic of Vietnam 1965-1966.

The man didn’t sleep much even years after he came home. My mother said he would have nightmares that someone was trying to kill him. My father spoke very little about the war but near the end he brought it up alot. Most of what I know is from interviews with the surviving members of his unit I could find. By writing his book, My Father’s War In Vietnam, I discovered the reasons for my existence, our troubled relationship, why I have medical problems, and why my children have birth defects. Here is a picture taken from 2011 with my father, my youngest child and myself. Had I known the truth I would have served. Not only would I had fought in my generation’s war but my father and I would not have fought so much with each other and I would have been a better man. They say the truth can set you free and the process has enlightened me.

It was three years ago that I got the call that my father had passed away in the night. He went quickly from Pulmonary Fibrosis which doctors linked to a scarring of his lungs from a “toxic substance” at the ages of 25-26. It was during that time that my father was an Avionics Specialist 4th Class serving in the United States Army in Vietnam where he had been repeatedly exposed to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in an effort to deprive the Viet Cong of the sanctuary of the jungle for cover. He lived an extraordinary life despite being shortened by ten years and left large shoes to fill, which to this day I continue to struggle to fill.

We inducted him into the VVMF’s Memory Day Ceremony on June 20, 2015 at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington DC.
~ Louis Rosas, Author of My Father’s War In Vietnam, available on Amazon www.amazon.com/My-Fathers-War-Vietnam-…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

We are grateful to Louis for sharing his father’s memory and honoring his service and encourage all children of Veterans to post their stories and picture with us on Comes A Soldier’s Whisper, where we are all connected. War changes the soldier. It changes his/her family too.

God bless all who serve.

STORY LINK: medium.com/…/the-truth-can-set-you-free-2aed6865e26…