“Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don 't want to make eye contact while doing it." Jimmy Cross is not a professional writer but he writes his own personal stories about his experience in the Vietnam War. “These stories have never been published, but they are a way to cope with everything I carry”, says over coffee in Sam’s A.M coffee shop.
At the age of 38, Jimmy Cross is a Vietnam veteran and recently a mechanic in his hometown, New Jersey. He graduated from the Mount Sebastian College and during his college experience he joined the Reserve Officer Trainer Corps to earn a few credits, he says. After graduating he enlisted in the troops sent to Vietnam in March 1965. During the war he was First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, in charge of the Alpha Company made up of seventeen men. There he was a leader of the
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He is still in love with her, but she never felt the same way. “I would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. I would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, I wanted Martha to love me as I loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love”. During those years, he only thought about Martha, not about his men or the war. It all changed when Ted Lavender died in front of him when he was daydreaming about her. Since then, he decided to forget about her for the sake of his duty and for his self-conscience. “… But I reminded himself that my obligation was not to be loved but to lead… and because I realized she did not loved me and never would.” That day he burned everything, all the letters and photographs, but still that feeling never went away. Today he carries another photo of her, a recent one, in his