May 25th, 2020

Sometimes you can't repay people for an act of kindness, loyalty, charity, sacrifice, or courage, but you can try -- sometimes life is in the effort...

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"He did not understand the war --

"He understood the blistering injustice of it; the stroke-like fear in the faraway sight of the raped as they blamed him for not being there; the accusing eyes of the children that leered from atop distended bellies even as they starved; the seeping lines of grief lacerated into the faces of fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives who had lost all they loved; the tortured and the maimed becoming in part or in whole separate from who they once were; and the Dali-draped carcasses of the dead…
"The evil of the war bored into his heart, twisted with agony until he learned to ignore it --
"Until he could ignore it no longer."     - from The Invisible War aka The Forgotten War, a short story by Kevin O'Kendley
 
  
"He’d seen a lot of death in his life but it hadn’t inured him to the pain of it, the tragedy, the loss, the suffering.  On the contrary, it had a cumulative effect: on darker days this effect swamped him in a Tsunami of emotion, after all the smaller waves passed, a big one threatened.  He would watch it nearing shore with a rising dread…"    - from Chandler's Bar, a novel by Kevin O'Kendley


Happy Memorial Day to my father, Major Patrick O. Kendley, U.S.M.C. retired, who served as a decorated enlisted Marine in Korea and as a decorated lieutenant and captain in Vietnam.

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edited 3/7/26

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​Please give to The Paralyzed Veterans of America: VA Palo Alto Health Care System/
3801 Miranda Avenue/ Palo Alto, California  94304/ 650-858-3936/ And: 
The Wounded Warrior Project: National Processing Center/ P.O. Box 75840/ Topeka, Kansas  66675/ 877-832-6997