Taft: What Donald Trump will never know

I farm in Garfield Township, Jackson County, Wisconsin. I am 71 years old. I am safe, happy, prosperous and grateful for all the blessings life has given me.

Fifty years ago at this very time, I was a member of 3rd Platoon, A Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines. A Company and its platoons was heavily engaged against North Vietnamese forces in a place called Con Thien. We had been sent there to reinforce B Company, 9th Marines Bravo 1/9.

B Company 9th Marines was then known to Marine grunts as “busted Bravo.” Bravo 1/9 had been providing perimeter security for the firebase at Con Thien. Con Thien was about a half mile from the North Vietnamese border. No larger than one of my smaller hay fields, the firebase had been under constant bombardment, assaults and ambushes from well-positioned artillery and skilled infantry.

Just before our arrival, B Company had been reduced to nine men alive from an original force of more than 175. Many of the dead rotted in the relentless mid-summer sun, in front of our position.

After days, the fighting subsided and what was left of A Company swept forward to recover the dead Americans of Bravo 1/9. I remember vividly the bodies of those once proud Marines, and they gave testament to American citizens at their best: There were Latino Americans from New York, New Mexico and the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. There were Native Americans from Wisconsin, Wyoming and the plains of Oklahoma. There were African-Americans from Alabama, south Los Angeles and the flats of Cleveland. There were Japanese Americans from Hawaii, Seattle and the Central Valley. And there were white Americans from Iowa, Kentucky and the industrial North.

Blown away, dead and wasted.

Over the years, as I milked the cows, tilled the fields, raised my family and enjoyed the fruits of a long life, I often think of those at Con Thien who would never be here among us. In the words of another Midwestern farm boy, in deed and spirit, they gave “their last full measure of devotion.”

Still among us all are those whose wealth, connections and privilege were used in the usual, predictable ways to avoid such tests of spirit and devotion.

Apparently, they just couldn’t be bothered.

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president is one of those. This potty-mouthed punk shares a place with the numerous chicken-hawk, country club types, and assorted fraternity boy fixers the Republican Party has burdened all of us with for the past 30 years.

He equates his quest to avoid venereal disease as his Vietnam. He mocks grieving parents of our war dead.

Strutting like a rooster, that’s Donald Trump.

Mike Taft lives in Osseo.