I had this idea earlier to write a one-shot inspired by the Edgar Winter song "Dying to Live". The song was about the Vietnam War, so I made the story about the Vietnam War. The lead character is Harvey Ketchum, father of Delia and grandfather of Ash.
I don't own Pokemon
It's 1971. Harvey Ketchum has been fighting in the Vietnam War for some time now. He has heard people say that there is beauty in distortion. This was especially true about the Vietnam War.
He has been fighting in this war for almost a decade. He has lost all sense of humanity that he once had in himself.
He now even finds humor in misfortune, especially among the Vietnamese people. The war had changed him, a lot. He had no idea if he would ever see his young daughter, Delia again, and quite frankly, he didn't even care anymore if he did.
He was thinking to himself as he was shooting Vietcong, "I wonder if they'll laugh when I am dead". He had good reason for thinking this. He had heard of tales of mistreatment of Vietnam veterans who had returned home from the War.
Another thought crossed his mind. "Why am I fighting to live if I'm just living to fight?" This was the thought of many Western world soldiers who had managed to survive to this point in the Vietnam War.
Harvey Ketchum was a broken man inside. But deep down inside him, was the man he once was. It was buried in him, but it was well buried. Whether this Harvey Ketchum would emerge again was not known at this point.
Yet another thought crossed his mind as the battle wore on. "Why am I trying to see when there ain't nothing in sight?" And indeed nothing was in sight for Harvey. No return home, no reunion with his family, and most important, no end to this war.
Harvey had lost a lot of his war buddies in the near-decade he had been fighting in Vietnam. And the fact that he was still alive bore a heavy burden on him.
It was at this point in the battle that another thought came to him. "Why am I trying to give if no one gives me a try?" He thought that his superiors in the Kanto Army were not giving him his due for all he had accomplished in the time he had fought in Vietnam.
For this reason, he wanted to go AWOL. Desertion felt like the ultimate "screw you" he could give to his superiors in the Kanto Army. But he just couldn't muster up the courage to do so. Every time he wanted to do it, he chickened out.
The most important thought of the day came to him at last. "Why am I dying to live if I'm just living to die?" He knew death was inevitable. He just didn't care whether it came in the war, or years down the road.
The problem being, if he was a war causality, he wouldn't get to see his family again. He couldn't do that now could he? He had a young daughter at home who was eagerly awaiting his return from Vietnam. She had spent most of her life without him, being raised by her mother and uncle instead.
Harvey had heard some people say over the years that values are subjective. However, he thought that these people were speaking words that someone else had said.
So these people, who were in fact other soldiers from countries helping out South Vietnam, were living, fighting, and killing without any objective, in the eyes of Harvey.
Harvey had fought in the war for so long, that it had sometimes become hard to tell the living from the dead. To him, people were people, whether they were alive, dead, or something in between. Whether they were white or Vietnamese.
When Harvey spoke to other soldiers, he used to weave his words into confusion. That made it hard for others to understand him, considering how broken the war had made him, this was not surprising.
But now he spoke clear as day. He wanted people understand him when he was through saying what he needed to say. The battle that was raging made him realize a lot of things that day.
He had lived the past near decade as an illusion. This was a common thought for many soldiers in the Vietnam War, whether they were American or Kantonian. The war was particularly hard on Harvey because he was forced into it. Drafted, after his daughter had been born.
But now reality was going to make his dreams come true. The battle looked like it was ending soon. Kantonian forces were about to earn a rare victory in this war, which overall had been a losing effort.
Harvey made some decisions that he felt he needed to make at this moment, for he might not have any other opportunity to make these decisions later on.
He decided first that he would keep fighting to live until there was no reason to fight. Inevitably, Kanto involvement in the Vietnam War would one way or another, come to an end. Most likely it would occur through Vietnamization, as the American side was also proposing.
He would also keep trying to see until the end was in sight. If he lived to go home, he would see the rest of his daughter's life as a juvenile through, until she became an adult. He would also be a better husband to his wife, who was also waiting for him to come home after all these years. That was a promise he planned to keep.
Since he was trying to give, he wanted his superiors to give him a try. He had done well for the Kanto Army all these years, and he wanted his superiors to know it. He planned on letting them know that he was going to give it all for the rest of the time Kanto fought in the war.
And most importantly, Harvey was dying to live until he was ready to die. He had no idea when his death would come, but he hoped it would be after he came home to his family. And if he died in the war, so be it.