brutal war vet dad

Sierra's father was at war in Vietnam when she was born so she has to accept what her mother tells her about him being a very different person before he was sent away.

"For all the time I've known him my dad was a brute - and not just a brute but a killer," says Sierra.

"I don't mean the people he killed in the course of the war," explains Sierra, "but the people he allegedly killed or maimed or threatened to kill in civilian life."

"Mom blamed his behavior on the war - and that's why she never left him," says Sierra, "but as I grew up and met more kids born to Vietnam Vets I could see that my dad's behavior was not typical - in fact he behaved nothing like the other dads who were mostly very gentle."

"Even though mom denies it, I believe that there must have been something evil in my father long before the war," sighs Sierra. "How else could the so-called nice guy my mom married have turned into a monster? "

"It's possible his experience of Vietnam was more terrible than anyone's elses," says Sierra, "but I still don't think that's a legitimate excuse for how he treated us."

"He terrorized my brother and I - and my mother," explains Sierra. "Hardly a day would go by without one of us being physically assaulted, tortured or threatened with a throat slitting."

"At nights it was very bad but it was also horrible when he would take us out in the car for a drive somewhere and threaten to kill us all in a car smash."

"He would deliberately drive up a hill and then take the car out of gear and let it run crazily backwards," says Sierra. "My brother and I would sit in the back terrified and crying while my mom would try to find the break and he would laugh like a mad man."

"He drank a lot and smoked dope but I don't know whether substance abuse in itself would cause such behavior."

"When his boss at the factory died in suspicious circumstances dad got questioned by the police," says Sierra, "but they never pinned it on him."

"We know better because dad boasted that he had booby trapped the guy."

"Several other people died around dad in similar suspicious circumstances but he evaded every inquiry."

"We lived in constant fear - not only of our lives but of those around us."

"He was even more brutal towards animals," sighs Sierra.

"I brought home a stray dog one day and because it howled throughout the night dad slit its throat."

"I will never forget waking up that morning and finding the dog dead."

"As far as our material life was concerned dad never wanted for much and neither did we," says Sierra. "He was involved in drug dealing and stuff like that."

"Mom was more concerned about the stuff he brought home than the people he was killing," sighs Sierra.

"I suppose she feared that by accepting stolen goods she would be classed as an accomplice - but it never stopped her from using the stuff."

"At one time he had five stolen cars on the front lawn."

"We moved around a lot - never staying in one place long - so dad was never reported by concerned neighbors for assaulting us or for stealing stuff."

"Dad's brutality finally caught up with him when he was seen knifing a guy outside a bar," says Sierra.

"I was fourteen and my brother was twelve when dad was sent to prison."

"My brother and I didn't cry but mom did - she still blamed his behavior on the war."

"The legacy of a childhood lived with a brutal father includes nights when I wake up at the slightest noise - fearing my father will lurch through the door with a hammer or a knife in his drunken hand - and days when I refuse to drive up hills - fearing the car will slip back - but it also covers such things as not wanting to have children and not even wanting to have a pet."

"After seeing that poor little dog with its throat slit I couldn't bear to have a pet."

"I sometimes wonder whether the evil that resided in my dad is genetic," explains Sierra. "If I had too much to drink or if I smoked dope, or if I got sent to war, would I turn out like him?"

"Or, when our government teaches men how to kill, is it unleashing something terrible in some men that they can never control?"

generations of stepfathers

Dania’s life dramatically after losing her father during the Vietnam War – as her mother’s life did when she lost her father during WWll – and she doesn't want her little grand-daughter to suffer the same fate of being raised by a stepfather and always wondering about what her life may have been like had her father not died in some stupid war.

"My son is only 22, the same age as many of the dead soldiers we watch every day at the end of the PBS News Hour on television," says Dania. "It breaks our hearts to watch this slide show of the young, fresh faces of boys once full of hope -- now dead -- and it should be mandatory watching for everyone responsible for this carnage, those in the White House and the Pentagon and every boardroom in the nation."

"My grand-daughter is the same age I was when my father got drafted," explains Dania, "and if my son gets drafted and he dies in some stupid civil war between Sunnis and Sh'ites in Iraq that has nothing to do with us then another generation of my family -- and millions of other families -- is going to grow up with stepfathers replacing their own fathers."

"I'm not saying that all stepfathers are bad -- mine wasn't," says Dania, "but I don't believe any stepfather can have the same sort of connection with children as real fathers can."

"My mom went on to marry someone else and had three more children," says Dania. "She tried hard to keep the memory of my father alive for me, but the pressures of a new marriage and new children made it an impossible task."

"My stepfather objected to pictures of my dad in my bedroom," says Dania. "He didn't like the idea of 'ghosts' in his house and made me keep all of my dad's stuff in a box which I kept under my bed. He definitely treated me differently to my half-brothers and sisters (his own kids)."

"If my son were required to defend his country from invaders, he'd be the first to volunteer," says Dania, "but he's as angry as I am over the terrible loss of young life in Bush's war for oil and world power in some God-forsaken place a long way from home, and if a draft were to come in he'd head for the hills rather than become a military slave."

“It is bad enough that many children lose their natural fathers due to unavoidable accidents," says Dania, “and we really don’t want to perpetuate this totally avoidable generational step-fathering through stupid wars.”

“Children need their natural fathers, not some guy who merely tolerates them because he’s in a relationship with their mother.”

Read more by Dania:

wars and fatherless grandchildren