Perry Dee Ekker

Diary of a Sky Soldier Perry Dee Ekker

Diary of a Sky Soldier is a true story of a young American sent to the Vietnam War by his country. When he returned from Vietnam, he wanted nothing but absolute seclusion from the experience. He utterly blocked the traumatic experience from his mind and deliberately avoided all contact with anything that would remind him of the war. He did not, and could not, consciously share the experience or its related nightmares with anyone-not even those that he dearly loved. There was a sobering event that changed his emotions about Vietnam. When his mother and then his father passed away, he and his siblings were preparing the home for sale; he discovered a box of his Vietnam letters, newspaper clippings, and magazines in the house his mother had saved. With this find, he had a strong desire to write this book as a means of healing from the psychological trauma that burned within him. The driving force was a diary he kept in Vietnam that demonstrates the everyday emotions of war in a handwritten style. The book is in full color to reflect the true feelings of the scanned images of diary pages, letters, and photographs. This book is a day-to-day narrative based on the diary entries, and the personal war experience many years after he lived it. It portrays his feelings as a low-level private with the 173d Airborne Brigade working his way through combat to a squad leader buck sergeant. It expresses the hardships endured with the loss of true comradeship and the struggles of human attributes that are sacrificed during war. He left to serve his country when it was united in purpose, united in spirit, and united in a common bond of patriotism. He returned to a world of disinterest, of disbelief, of resentment, of oppression, outrage, neglect, and draft dodgers. He returned, no longer a young innocent boy, but bewildered, confused, and uncomfortable expressing experiences to an unfamiliar society-an opinionated country that would change America forever.