HEAVEN’S CAFÉ
It did not take long to learn that Vietnam was a country that fed upon our flesh and blood, a place that sucked the breath from your lungs and the hope from your bones, because everything that moved, and much that did not, seemed bent on our ending, killing, wounding, or taking us away into the green oblivion. The numbers of the dead, ours and theirs, rose beyond reason, beyond counting, beyond meaning, until they were no longer numbers at all but a dull and constant thunder in the mind. And still, far away, the U.S. would not yield, would not turn, no matter the cost of our blood.
Each day came at us with a fresh and ancient fury: the enemy we could see and the enemies we could not: the choking jungle, the sucking mud, the rain that never ceased, the heat that wrapped itself around your throat, the insects, infections, the fevers, and the slow rot of spirit. We learned to live with the nearness of death as one accepts the weather, expected and unavoidable. The idea of returning home became a distant and fragile dream, while the dark certainty before us hardened into the only truth we knew.
And then, without ceremony, there came a crossing of the mind: we no longer feared death, because we had already given ourselves to it. Each mission began with the quiet conviction that we were walking as dead men, and in that surrender, there was a strange and terrible freedom. To steady the hands, to still the tremors of fear, I created a space for us: a place that did not exist except in the telling. I called it Heaven’s Café, and the men would ask for it repeatedly.
“Well,” I would say, “when you come to the gates, and the keeper asks where you belong, you tell him you’re bound for Heaven’s Café.” And then I would lay it out for them: a white-sand shore beneath a flawless sky, to an open pavilion where the sea lay in endless blue and laughter carried on the wind. There, beautiful angels would move like music, bringing cold drinks and warm food without end. And we would sit together again, alive in the way we dreamed, laughing and remembering the lives that had slipped beyond our grasp, bound in a brotherhood no war could break.
It was only a story, but it held us together. It gave shape to the unspeakable and softened the edge of what waited.
If you have not read Vietnam Uncensored – 365 Days in a Nightmare, I invite you to walk with me through that time, the missions, the memory, and the making of Heaven’s Café. The first chapter and the NPR feature are available at
Proceeds benefit the Kaufman Fund, serving veterans in need.