Axar.az presents an article "Don't Read This " by John Samuel Tieman.

I've seen war. So, I'll tell you this. War is surprisingly ordinary. But before I get into all that, I'm going to ask you, my reader, this favor. I don't want you to read this. This isn't exactly an essay. So don't rationalize this one. I want you to feel the stories, feel the vignettes. Feel. Don't think.

On the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in D.C., the names of the war dead are not listed alphabetically. The tour guide says the names are listed by date, thus making it more historical. It's also poignant, even intimate. This guy is listed alongside the buddies with whom he died. But the most prosaic reason they are not listed alphabetically is also the simplest. There are 667 guys named Smith on that wall. War is as ordinary as a sergeant named Smith.

Not long ago, I listened as another war vet, a World War II vet. He spoke of memories he never shared. I thought smugly to myself, “Thank God that, with all my therapy, I'm so open ...”. When it occurred to me that there are stories I never tell. Not because I can't, but because many of my Nam stories are so ordinary. Cruel, sad, horrific, but ordinary. I hasten to add that I did nothing either heroic or noteworthy. I was just a soldier, just a witness.

Once I was flying to somewhere – I don't remember where – in a CH-47 helicopter. This was mid-1970. The door gunner catches my attention. He points down to a village, and above the engines, he hollers, “That's My Lai.” The news of the My Lai Massacre had broken shortly before I shipped out for The Nam. American soldiers had murdered hundreds of defenseless Vietnamese civilians. But what I saw that day was – there is only one word – ordinary. An ordinary village. Huts. That now-famous drainage ditch in which so many were slaughtered was just a ditch, just an ordinary drainage ditch. How many Vietnamese killed at My Lai were named Nguyen, the Vietnamese Smith?

I've seen a lot of war movies with lots of heroes. I wish that war was more heroic. But Tim was just the guy the sniper picked. Greaser veered left instead of right, and that's how he came to step on a landmine. Events can be dramatic, of course. Violence can also grow so common as to be ordinary. Sam, a Korean War veteran, told me how he was so tired one night that he used the dead body of another soldier as a pillow.

Stan, a veteran of the Air Force, dropped out of university because of the pain in his right foot, which was crushed when a missile dropped on it. Stan didn't sacrifice for his country. The accident, according to Stan, was meaningless. A winch broke, and the front half of his foot was smashed.

Bob died from a gunshot in The Nam. Bob had his face blown off because a rifle misfired in what the army termed a "misadventure". Cal, Bob's dad, died of a broken heart shortly thereafter. A Vietnamese poet, a former infantryman, said that each time he aimed at an American, he first aimed at the heart of that soldier's mother.

I remember Mark. Mark, from the south side of Chicago, was quiet, unpretentious. We shared a barracks in Basic Training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. He was Polish-American. His name is on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. No one called him a hero. He was drafted. Mark didn't sacrifice his life. His life was torn from him.

There was a fellow I once walked past in Vietnam. He was on guard duty. I passed close enough to chat. For a second, I thought I knew him from Basic. But I didn't. So, I moved on. He died that night. He was killed while guarding the Finance Company of the 4th Infantry Division. You don't think of accountants dying in a war. Yet die he did. He wasn't a hero. I heard later that he fell asleep on guard duty.

Williams Bridge spanned a small river in An Khe. Specialist 4th Class Eric Williams died while building that bridge. I never met him. He died four years before my tour of duty. He was not a hero. He did not sacrifice his life. He drowned in an accident. 406 folks named Williams died in Vietnam.

Don't get me wrong. There are heroes. I knew a fellow who won two – Two! – Distinguished Flying Crosses in Vietnam. Then there's Eric Williams. Then there's My Lai. And that's how ordinary war is. Ordinary as a sergeant named Smith or a kid named Nguyen. Ordinary as falling asleep during a long night on guard.