The History
History: the term “Shadow Chaser” started In Vietnam for our group who were chasing the shadows in black pajamas across the borders from-to Vietnam, Loas and Cambodia. They became like shadows, unseen, but there, until we ran into them.
Then we became shadow chasers, we were like ghosts intercepting and eliminating them in the jungles and deltas of a hazy undefined warzone. After the army I did a lot of commercial diving for a deep-sea marine aquarium fish called “Tinker Butterfly” a beautiful small fish found typically at 200 ft. and deeper. This is a twilight zone where the lack of sunlight causes everything to be dim, murky and black/ white, like a shadow.
So, my boat was named Shadow Chaser.
What It Means Today
That term today signifies the existence of many veterans who have dropped out. They are the overlooked, unseen, and forgotten proud brothers and sisters of the military services who stood beside us in time of peace and combat. Now for many reasons too many are homeless, often drug and alcohol dependent, shadows of their former selves and forgotten by society.
We search them out, ‘shadow chasing’, to help bring them back from their shadow existence and to bring light, hope and success back into their lives. To give them support, respect and tools to help them return to a useful contributing part of society.
They can’t do this alone, they need our help to find the path back, thus we become shadow chasers to find and help them. We, as a society owe them a great debt for their service, and who has the best chance than us veterans, who they can trust and relate to, and understand what they have gone through.
You can be a shadow chaser if its in your heart to help them get back. Everything looks different depending on where you stand. We all need to stand in our fellow veteran brothers and sister’s shoes where they stand, to understand their needs and to reach out a helping hand to fill their needs. It’s the least we can do.
