Kenneth Klemm

Ken Klemm served in the US. Navy from 1985 to 1989, and spent three years on board the U.S S. Claude V. Ricketts, DDG-5 as a Sonar Technician (STG). During that time he made a forward deployment on a six-month cruise of the Mediterranean, where he got to see France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Egypt and Israel. He currently lives in Burns, Oregon and enjoys photography, writing and doom scrolling through animal themed videos on YouTube. He has been featured at Returning Soldiers Speak readings and is published in the organization's anthologies.

Dusk Woman

Sitting on the dock of the bay. Wasting time, watching the tide roll in and roll back out again. The girl sits at the end of the fishing pier, framed in the golden late afternoon light of a setting sun. The artist can’t tell if she is twenty four or fourteen, but he thinks maybe it says more about him than it does about her.

First-Time Playwright Speaks

What’s in a play, write? A lot more than I thought before participating in the Returning Soldiers Speak Letters Project. I had endured numerous stage productions in the past, mostly reluctantly (and don’t get me started on musicals!), but never before had I written one word with the goal of writing a play. I’m a U.S. Navy veteran, and this project was like my period of service-I had no idea what I was getting into until I was in, and then it was too late to get out until the project ran its course.

A Memorial Day Reflection

As we take time to remember the military heroes who sacrificed for this country, let us also remember those who served and returned. Some of them came back changed, never to be the same, or never to be what they could have been had they not been sent to war. And let us not forget those who served in eras of greater peace, who although never called to serve in combat, nonetheless served their country. I am one of those who served in an era when things were much quieter. I served in the U.S. Navy from January 1985 to