The Lord's Prayer

Everyday I see Mr. Walker walking his dog.  A silver ghost of a dog, leading a silver ghost of a man.  He walks him twice down our road.  Once in the morning when I’m jogging and again in the evening, as I return from work.  Every day is the same, I run or walk by and he nods to me, head always bent towards the ground.  This occurred every day for almost a year.  Then, on October third, he looked up when he walked by.  Mr. Walker had beautiful blue eyes, a strong nose, and that was it.  I couldn’t help but feel some shock to notice that the lower half of his face was missing. 

His bright eyes dimmed to see my shock and horror at discovering such a disfigurement.  He quickly lowered his head once more and tried to walk by.  I knew that if I did not show that I was not revolted by him, but by the horror done to him, he would never look at me again.  So, I stopped jogging and walked over to him.  As I reached out for his shoulder, he spun around and walked quickly towards his house.  For once, he was leading the dog, pulling him was more like it.  My shoulders slumped and I watched as he reached his front door. 

Once there, however, he stopped and looked around.  Spotting me still in the road, he waved me over.  I approached his home with some trepidation.  I had no idea what was in store for me, and naturally I paused before stepping over the threshold and into his home.  There, in front of me was a hallway that led to another door, this one I assumed led to the backyard.  Mr. Walker led me into the first room on the right, a parlor. 

In this room, sat a computer with a pair of large speakers on either side.  As I watched, Mr. Walker sat in front of the computer and began to type.  I was surprised to hear the voice coming out of the speaker, although, looking back I should not have.

Hello, the speakers said, I apologize for startling you.  I know how awful my disfigurement is.

I quickly responded, “I’m so sorry for my reaction, I did not mean to hurt your feelings.”

You did not hurt my feelings for long.  You are the first person in a long time to attempt to rectify the pain.

It was then that I knew that poor Mr. Walker had led a lonely life.  I stayed at his house for a long while, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask him what had caused the disfigurement.  At least not on that visit.

My visits to Mr. Walker’s became more and more regular, until it seemed as if I was over there very nearly every day.  One day, a nurse came by while I was there.  I didn’t know it at the time, but she was a hospice nurse, sent only to those patients who didn’t have much longer to live.  She and I chatted for a while, and she also expressed a curiosity to know what had happened to poor Mr. Walker.

After several months of visits, I finally screwed up my courage and managed to ask, “Mr. Walker, would you mind if I asked what happened to you, that is, what caused your disfigurement.”

After a pause, he spoke, Certainly not, if you wouldn’t mind, please hand me that box that’s sitting by the television.

Having noticed the wooden chest on previous visits, I must admit that my curiosity had extended to include the contents of it as well.  At this chance to have not one, but two mysteries solved, I rushed to bring him the chest.

Open it, he said.  When I opened it, I saw it contained a medal of valor, the Purple Heart, awarded to those injured or killed during service to our country.  I received that in 1972, shortly after I was returned to the United States from Vietnam.  I guess you want the whole of my story.  I was 18 when I was drafted into the Army.  I was flown from my hometown to North Vietnam, thousands of miles away from my home and family and friends.  When I landed, it was in the middle of a battlefield, or at least it seemed that way to me….

Private First Class, Michael Walker looked around him in fear.  All around him, new friends and leaders were dying.  He’d just arrived two days before, flown in from the United States and dropped off at one of many US camps.  As he watched, two more of his colleagues were shot down.  He heard the choppers coming, but doubted they would make it before the Vietcong gunmen would take them. 

Walker looked up over the lip of the ditch and took aim.  As he fired, he couldn’t help but be disgusted by the sights around him.  “Walker, fire at the cong, c’mon boy,” Corporal Lance called over to him.  Walker glanced over just in time to see the corporal thrown back as a bullet hit his shoulder.  The corporal, pissed as hell, kept hold of his rifle and continued firing, “Fire now boy!”

“But sir, they’re people, I ain’t killed no one before.”

“It’s you or them, son, priorities is what it’s about,” the corporal bit out between shots.

“Sir,” he got out before he was interrupted.

“Fire the goddamn gun private, that’s an order!”

Walker fired into the group closing in.  As he picked them off, he recited, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want; He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul.  He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.  Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

“Pretty good Walker,” Corporal Lance said, crawling over a fallen soldier to take a better aim.  “Keep reciting and we may all get out of here!”

Miraculously, the platoon came through that fight and a few others.  At each one, Walker recited the Lord’s Prayer as he fired.  Sure in his heart that the Lord didn’t care why he was killing his fellow man and that he was going to go to hell.  One day, during the platoons long marches through the marsh land that was everywhere, they came across what appeared to be an abandoned village.  As they searched the huts, they noticed the lack of people and supplies, becoming more and surer that the village was actually abandoned, not that it just appeared to be.  Just as they relaxed their guard completely, the Vietcong hiding in the muck and mud that was everywhere rushed them.  It began what would be almost two years of capture.

Walker, Lance, and a handful of others from their platoon were thrown in what amounted to cages dug into the ground with a hut constructed over them.  They were forbidden to talk and torture was performed regularly.  In one instance, men were latched to a wall for almost 15 hours at a time, when they saw that wasn’t working; the men were beaten at two hour intervals.  Then, it seemed as if they had been forgotten.

For a while, the men were content to be forgotten.  Then, the whispers started, they started to formulate a loose plan to escape.  The guards were already confident that their prisoners would not try anything, after all, they hadn’t as of yet.  But, without the daily torture, their bodies were able to do more than they were before.  The men began to dig hand and footholds in the dirt walls of their cells.  They’d noticed the guards didn’t lock the bamboo gates on their cages either.  So, one night, the men climbed out of the cells and fled into the jungle.  They had thought about fighting the guards, but they were severely out numbered in both manpower and firepower. 

They ran through the jungle for four days and nights, weaponless and bleeding.  Two of the men developed malaria, one of them, Banks, disappeared one day while they were walking.  One minute he was there, the next gone.  The other, Wallace, kept moving, even with fever burning him up.  Walker and the others did what they could for him, but there wasn’t much they could with no supplies and no weapons.  So, they marched on.

The morning of the fifth day, they ran into an ambush.  It seems they had been spotted by a fishmonger and his son, who reported their movement to the local Vietcong.  They made quick work of Wallace, cutting him down where he stood, Lance and the others made it away, but Walker was recaptured. They took him to a different POW camp this time, where he was put in a cage again, but this time in an empty hut.  They refused to look at the bullet wound in his arm, and before long, it was a festering infection.  He began to hallucinate that he was home and seeing people from his past.  It wasn’t long until he began to see the men he’d shot down on his third day in Vietnam.  Then, he began reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over and over. 

The Vietcong began to beat him to get him to shut up, and while the beatings cleared his mind for a while, the men he’d killed always came back and he would begin reciting again.  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He makes me lie down in green pastures….”  Over and over again he repeated the litany, day and night, until he would pass out from exhaustion or from the beatings.  One day, during the beating, the man beating him became enraged that he was still talking and quickly grabbed up a machete and cut out his tongue.  Walker had at this point lost all semblance of humanity and struggled with the man, causing him to cut the sides of his face as well.

Blood loss quickly caused me to loose consciousness.  When I awoke, I was in an American hospital.  The nurses were kept out of my room, only doctors were allowed to see me, it was considered too horrifying for them.  The Vietcong that had sliced off my tongue and sliced up my face had attempted to solder the wound closed to stop the bleeding.  This had caused more damage than good, but it succeeded in its purpose, the bleeding was stopped.  They told me that I had been held captive for another two weeks, coming in and out of consciousness until the local Vietcong were defeated by a group of Marines that stumbled on the camp.  Fortunately for me, there were other prisoners in the camp, just not placed with me.  They told the marines where I was and that was that.

The horror I felt at what he had told me must have shown on my face.  “But, why,” I asked?  “Why would anyone act so inhumane?”

Was it inhumane, oh yes indeed it was, but at least they had vindication that we were at war.  I was their proven enemy, for I had killed some of their people.  But, what has always struck me as inhumane was the way I was treated when I returned to my home.  I was reviled as if I were the enemy.  There was no reason for us to be at war with Vietnam, I agree, but I was merely doing as my country asked me to.  Yet, I came home not expecting a hero’s welcome, but would a welcome at all have been so awful.  Instead, mothers shielded their children from me, children who could stare at me, and grown men refused to treat me with the respect they gave other men.  Instead of welcoming me home as a fellow man, I was treated as a leper in biblical days would be.

Much later, as I was at my own home, getting ready for bed, I couldn’t help but think about all I had learned that day about my neighbor and friend.  I firmly opposed the War Against Terrorism, and had been involved in many demonstrations against it.  Until this very day, I had been proud to have spoken out against many soldiers, sailors, and airmen who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I never thought the day would come when I would be ashamed of my support against the war, but I was.  For instead of welcoming home the men and women who fought over their, who gave their lives for me and all Americans, I had defiled them and sneered at them and looked at them as being less than me for participating in a fabricated war. 

Mr. Walker died two months after that, he left this world the same way he lived his life, silently and alone.  His funeral was a small affair, with only me, the hospice nurse, and a few others in attendance.  As I stood over his grave, his words came back to me, and I thought of the soldiers like him that I had ridiculed for being a party to this war and my parting words were for him and every other soldier, sailor, and airman that had lost his or her life, limb, or sanity fighting for our country:

“The Lord is my shepherd,

I shall not want;

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters;

He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness

for His name's sake.



Even though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death,

I fear no evil;

for You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.



Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life;

and I shall dwell in the house of the

Lord forever.



Psalm 23”