This is a little story of Vietnam and Moral Injury. I am in Vietnam. It’s 1968, maybe already 1969, and my tour of duty goes on. I’m a Marine, a mortar man, 81mm mortars, and I’ve been on the hospital ship U.S.S. Sanctuary with malaria. The fevers were no fun and the corpsman tearing a trench in my arm trying to get an IV in by flashlight before I got the chopper to the ship wasn’t a lot of fun either, but being here was almost pleasurable — a bed with sheets, no mosquitos, no incoming, and no humping all that weight of the gun, the rounds, and the gear.

But now it’s time to go back to the outfit, back to the bush. I’m walking on the wide wharf the ship has tied up to. It’s hot, it’s Vietnam and there’s no sea breeze generated by the ship moving. There are a number of people getting off and walking in my direction and just as many walking toward me, getting on.

Approaching me is a young Vietnamese girl, maybe 10 years old, but not much older. She’s just walking toward the ship, not looking afraid or in pain but her head is tilted to one side. When we are about to pass each other, I see why she tilts her head — she has no choice. There is a web of skin reaching from the side of her head to her shoulder, skin melted by napalm. It’s not something she was born with.

I do not stop, or even slow down. This is Vietnam, this is war, and I have an outfit to get back to. Sure, all true, but it hits me right in the gut, a sensation I still feel today, 50-plus years later, 2025. This is not right. There will never be a right to this wrong.

Cliff Adams

Bristol