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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Douglas leaves Vietnam memorial with heart full of memories

WASHINGTON – It was a day of healing and homecoming at the Vietnam War Memorial on Friday for Glen Douglas, a Lakes-Okanagan Indian and combat veteran of three wars. It was his day to confront his memories of war and to ask the Creator for forgiveness.

Douglas, who served in the Special Forces in Vietnam, entered the sacred grounds of the memorial from the west, first making an offering of loose tobacco to the 58,000 spirits who dwell there. Then he moved slowly through the crowd to the center of the memorial bearing the names of war dead.

He did not have to face the wall alone. His wife, Lesley, was there to help him pray. John Davis, a retired Air Force captain and Douglas’ friend and chaperone on this trip to Washington, D.C., was there to support him as the aging warrior offered a prayer of healing in his native Salish.

“Oh Grandfather, there is one war left that is raging,

Worse than all the wars I have survived.

Oh Grandfather, I need guidance, patience and

Understanding as this final war rages within me.

Oh Grandfather, help me overcome this turmoil within

My heart and mind, bring peace to my mind,

End these feelings of hatred, of hurt, of death,

Of revenge, and replace them with love, compassion,

And caring for my people.

So that I can live the rest of my life in peace.”

Lesley Douglas wiped away her husband’s tears with a piece of buckskin tanned by his grandmother. She wiped the invisible blood he feels on his hands as Douglas freed his mind of the memories that keep him awake at night and put them in his heart.

“The longest journey that one can take is from the mind to the heart,” Douglas said. “Many work with their minds rather than their hearts, where kindness comes from.”

With Davis at his side, Douglas then walked to the east end of the memorial, where his wife of 24 years had already taken up her position for the “welcoming home” ceremony, the one he didn’t have when he returned from Vietnam in 1966.

By now, the crowd of children and adults at the wall Friday were aware of this veteran’s presence and parted to let him pass. At the far end of the wall, he began to sing his native song.

“I come here for the cleansing and asking of forgiveness from the people whose lives I have destroyed,” he said. By Douglas’ reckoning, their numbers are legion and include his family from a previous marriage, which was shattered by the trauma he brought back with him from the battlefield.

Douglas’ “homecoming” ceremony ended in Lesley’s arms. Then, in this place of countless outpourings of emotion, a line of perhaps a dozen strangers formed, waiting to be held against the warrior’s heart. Among them was a teenage girl. Douglas told her she would be carrying within her the hope of a nation.

And there was a boy. “I did this for you,” Douglas told him. “I’d do it again for you.”