Still, even I had to admit, the prospect of a twenty-five-hour flight was terrifying, especially considering where I was headed—Vietnam.
On Sunday, March 2, a group of people from twenty-four states, the bulk of them the adult children of soldiers killed in the Vietnam War, departed Los Angeles’s LAX for Vietnam. The goal? To return to the battlefields where our fathers died.
I didn’t ask Linda to go with me. I knew better. In November 2002 I’d tried to get her to go with me to Washington, D.C., for the twentieth-anniversary ceremonies of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I even offered to help pay her way, but she said no. The recent sniper shootings around the D.C. area had contributed to her concerns about the trip. But mainly she was afraid of her own grief. “I’m afraid if I start crying, I might never stop,” she said.
I understand Linda’s fears about the power of grief. But sometimes I wish my brother and sister would join me in this journey. I know in some ways it’s a compliment. They think that I’m strong enough emotionally and spiritually to do the things that they shy away from, such as going to the Wall. But I think they sometimes fail to realize that I hurt every bit as much as they do.
Thankfully, God has sent others alongside me who understand that my grief is what compels me to do these things. Charlie Harootunian is such a man. I met Charlie, a Vietnam veteran, while I was in D.C. A volunteer with the National Parks Service, he performs his duties with unfailing devotion. He makes it a point to stay in contact with the families he meets at the Wall, and he has become a dear friend who constantly encourages me to find ways to keep my father’s memory alive. When I complained to him about how lonely this journey is at times, Charlie reminded me that the past is too painful for my family, especially Mama. He encouraged me to give her more time to work through her grief. He also told me how proud he was of me and that he knew Mama was, too. I draw my courage and strength from veterans like Charlie. These men and women enable me to pick up the razor blade and slice slowly through all the sorrow, to get at my father’s marrow.
In 2002 I went to D.C. at the invitation of my friend Pauline Laurent, a Vietnam widow and author of the book Grief Denied: A Vietnam Widow’s Story. Pauline had been instrumental in helping me obtain my father’s personnel and death records. And she encouraged me to connect with Sons and Daughters in Touch, a national organization that seeks to bring together the adult children of American servicemen killed or missing in action as a result of the Vietnam War. At her urging, I joined SDIT.
On Wednesday, November 6, Terry McGregor walked into the lobby of Washington, D.C.’s Key Bridge Marriott, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a tan overcoat and a broad grin across his face, and welcomed me to town.
Previously, our only contact had been e-mails. Terry lives in Los Angeles and I live in Oregon, but we both belong to Sons and Daughters in Touch. Our fathers paid our dues to this exclusive club. Their names—Donald V. McGregor and David P. Spears—are just two of more than 58,000 etched in black granite and embedded in the earth at D.C.’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. We are children of the Wall.
Terry was six years old when his father was killed. Captain Donald McGregor, twenty-nine, was a military advisor assigned to the 1st Battalion, 51st Army of the Republic of South Vietnam. He was slain by sniper fire on August 13, 1963, near the village of An Hoa. He’d been in country six weeks and was on his first mission in the field. Captain McGregor left behind two other sons, Jerry, nine, and Charles, three, and his beloved bride, Leola, twenty-nine.
Terry told me about his family as we walked in darkness, searching with a flashlight for Panel 1 East, Line 26, and Panel 9 East, Line 71, scanning the Wall for our fathers’ names. Terry’s last memory of his father is not of a sober father-to-young-son talk about war. He does not recall a lingering hug or tearful good-byes. Instead, what he remembers of those last moments is the timbre of his father’s laughter and the buzzing motor of hair clippers. “I remember him standing on the sidewalk outside our little house in Idaho and someone was shearing his hair. I don’t remember who it was, but they were shaving his head and the two of them were laughing, having a good time. That’s my last memory of Dad.”
Other than my own siblings, Terry was the first person I met face-to-face whose father died in Vietnam. Meeting him was like finding a childhood pal after decades of separation, or finding out that you aren’t the only green Martian on planet Earth. Terry and I share a history of similar sorrows because our fathers share a history as slain soldiers.
At Terry’s urging, I’d signed up with the National Park Service to read my father’s name for the commemorative service of the twentieth anniversary of the Wall. There had been only two other occasions at which all the names on the Wall were read—at the Wall’s dedication and at the tenth anniversary.
It takes four days to read through all the names. Since both our fathers died in the early years, we were among the first readers scheduled. Jan Scruggs, president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, introduced Terry on Thursday afternoon.
It was ten-thirty Thursday night when I approached the podium. Puddles of rain made the stage slippery, so I walked across it gingerly. Behind me the ground lights cast an eerie glow on the black surface. My father’s name was almost directly behind my back. I’d asked Terry if I could say something besides my father’s name. We’d discussed this matter at some length over dinner. He’d encouraged me to say whatever was on my heart.
Thanks to an elaborate sound system, the names of soldiers, dead and gone but not forgotten, reverberated throughout the grounds. I took a deep breath and began reading the list of thirty names before me: James Kevin O’Leary, Richard Norman Payne, Thomas Frank Presby, Ronda Lee Raglin. I paused between each name. Finally, I came to Dad’s name: “And my father—you were a hero to me long before Vietnam—David Paul Spears.”
When I walked off the stage, Terry wrapped me in a bear hug.
While we were in D.C., Terry bugged me constantly about joining Sons and Daughters in Touch on their journey to Vietnam. I knew about the trip from the SDIT newsletter. It had been in the planning/fund-raising stages for three years. But I couldn’t imagine going. Where would I come up with the money? Besides, I didn’t have much of a desire to go. Most of my life I’d harbored a deep-seated resentment against the Vietnamese. Weren’t they the ones responsible for my father’s death?
But something happened there in D.C. on Veterans Day that totally broke me. My friend Kathy Crisp Webb was with me when it happened.
A self-described “Daddy’s girl,” Kathy was the second of four children born to Master Sergeant William “Bill” Crisp and his wife, Peggy Lou. Kathy was nine when her father was killed in action in Vietnam. Her sister, Linda, was twelve and her brothers, Billy and Mark, were six years old and twenty months. Like me, Kathy has vivid memories of her father.
She and I were talking about our fathers as we entered the east end of the memorial grounds. Despite the hard rains that fell earlier that morning, thousands of people were gathering for the afternoon ceremony. Up until that point, I had not collapsed in tears as Linda had feared she might if she’d been there. Oh, sure, I’d been emotional reading Daddy’s name. And I’d teared up standing there in front of the Number 9 East Panel looking at my father’s name. It felt great to finally be able to see Daddy eye-to-eye. Still, I had not experienced that overwhelming grief that frightened Linda away. But as Kathy and I passed under a maple tree dripping with gold, I looked off to my left and noticed a group of Vietnamese soldiers, dressed in tan uniforms, holding flags. An American flag and a flag from the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN). When I saw those Vietnamese veterans standing in honor of their comrades-in-arms, our fathers, my spirit collapsed.
I cried for the entire day. Nothing I did could ebb the flow. Kathy tried her best to console me, but it wasn’t consolation I needed. I wasn’t weeping tears of anger. I was weeping over the humility and honor of those men, and for the great losses both our nations had suffered.
Nothing, not even Senator John Kerry’s tremendous speech that day, moved me nearly as much as that Vietnamese honor guard. I knew then that I would join Sons and Daughter in Touch on that journey to Vietnam.
THE DECISION TO GO to Vietnam came at a great cost to me, personally and professionally, and to our family, financially and emotionally. At the time, I was working a full-time job as a reporter and columnist for a Washington newspaper. I enjoyed what I did, and it showed. I’d won numerous awards and had a good rapport with readers, many of whom wrote to tell me how much they looked forward to my weekly column.
But when I approached my boss about taking the trip to Vietnam and offered to write stories about the trip, he said, “I’m not interested in any stories about children returning to the battlefields where their fathers died, and I don’t think our readers will be, either.”
I was stunned. I thought it was the cruelest thing anyone has ever said to me, bar none. It was callous, cold, and simply mean. I felt that way then; I feel the same way now.
My boss continued, “Your vacation is denied. If you make this trip to Vietnam, we will consider it job abandonment and that you have voluntarily resigned. Choose the job or choose the trip.”
My decision to give up a full-time job and half our family’s annual income didn’t trouble my husband one bit, even though we both knew I could not stay in eastern Oregon and expect to work as a journalist at that level again. Tim didn’t care about the money, or how the lack of it might hurt us with four kids in college. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, “So what? Go. You have to go.”
And now he was here, beside me at Portland’s International Airport, making sure my bags were properly tagged, my tickets and passport in hand. I knew he would love and miss me but that I had his blessings and his prayers. His love humbles me every single day.
As Tim and Linda hugged and kissed me good-bye, we all fought back tears. I knew they understood how frightened I really was, and not because of the long plane flight. A friend had once said that if the Vietnam War doesn’t confuse you, it’s because you don’t understand all the issues. Our family had long considered Vietnam a terrifying place. For many families like ours, the country represented nothing but crushing grief and oppressive sorrows.
While our nation debated a possible war in Iraq, my mother dropped to her knees and asked the good Lord to bring her daughter safely back home again. It was the same thing she’d prayed for Daddy more than thirty-five years before. Mama was worried sick. The last time she’d sent a loved one off to Vietnam, he didn’t come home alive.
“You be careful over there,” she’d said when we spoke shortly before I left. “War is breaking out all over the world.”
“I’ll be all right, Mama,” I replied. “Don’t you worry.” I managed to spit it out with a lot more confidence than I really felt.
CHAPTER 31
vietnam 2003: in honor, peace, and understanding
JOINING US FOR THE TREK IN COUNTRY WERE A DOZEN OR SO VIETNAM VETERANS, A COUPLE OF PRIESTS, several widows, and a handful of nurses who had served in regional hospitals near the battlefields of Da Nang, Bien Hoa, and Quang Tri. Even a few dignitaries—Tom Corey, president of Vietnam Veterans of America, and Rich Sanders, president of VietNow.
But for most of us, this was our first trip to Vietnam. The plane flight included pit stops in Taiwan and Singapore. Strong headwinds created such a choppy ride that it was akin to navigating the Columbia River in a motorboat on a very windy day. You couldn’t help but feel a bit queasy at times. And without some very powerful drugs, catching some shut-eye was nearly impossible. I’d spent most of the night chatting with veteran Ned Devereaux, of Portland, and fellow SDIT member Rob Wilde, of Bend, Oregon. My incessant questioning was probably driving them both crazy.
Morning found nearly everyone milling about the plane’s cabin. Only Mokie Porter, editor of Vietnam Veterans of America magazine, The Veteran, remained unconscious. Yet, even Mokie awoke when the plane started its descent into Ho Chi Minh City at around 4:30 P.M.
As the plane dropped within sight of the Mekong Delta, I elbowed my way to a window, half expecting to see the Viet Cong wielding guns and shouting unintelligibly. Instead, I saw a quilted agricultural landscape, similar to farmland I’d viewed from American skies. Other sons and daughters, widows and veterans rushed to the windows as the plane continued its descent. Crowds formed around the windows on the left side of the plane. Given our collective weight, I’m surprised the pilot didn’t start veering right in an effort to correct. We were leaning over one another, three and four to a seat, our noses pressed up against the panes, like kids gathering around Macy’s windows at Christmastime. We were oohhing and ahhhing and laughing as salty tears trickled down our cheeks. Vietnam didn’t look so scary after all. Relieved in so many untold ways, we gleefully hugged one another, sat back down, and buckled up for the landing.
Our tour guides from Global Spectrum, the Virginia-based tour company that specializes in such trips for veterans, had prepared us for all the rigmarole at customs. Have passports ready. Don’t fool around. Stay with your group. Don’t wander off. Hang on to your bags. I felt like a kid at church camp.
Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City didn’t look like it could have changed much in the past thirty years. Having never been there before I can’t be certain, but there’s none of the bright chrome, neon lighting, or automated machinery found in our nation’s airports, and security didn’t seem to be much of a problem because of all those military police with their red-and-gold badges tacked on the sleeves of their green uniforms. One wiry fellow stood up from his seat at the customs desk and gestured angrily, indicating that we weren’t in a straight-enough line and that we’d best form one as soon as possible.
Yanking on my bag, I turned and smiled at Treva Whichard, widow of Captain James Atchison, who was with her daughter, Agnes. Treva returned my smile. I marveled silently as the afternoon sun streamed in through the grime-streaked windows, forming an ethereal glow around Treva and her daughter. Then Treva made a comment that I would find myself pondering repeatedly for the rest of the trip. “I feel like I’ve finally come home,” she said.
That stunned me. I couldn’t imagine how a Vietnam war widow could feel at home in Vietnam. I understood that our grief bound us to this strange and distant shore. It bound us together the way only death can, the way it had bound our fathers to one another, the way it binds our countries still. But hanging around Tan Son Nhat airport, I didn’t feel one bit at home, especially not with all those armed guards standing post.
Our first few days were spent at the Rex Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. According to local lore, or maybe more aptly, tourist legend, the hotel’s rooftop was used each night by the U.S. Army brass to map out the next day’s maneuvers. The hotel retains a certain 1950s charm. Bamboo chairs are scattered about. Crystal chandeliers drip from the ceiling. An hourlong massage costs 75,000 dong, the equivalent of five dollars. The hotel staff even changes the carpets in the elevators daily. In the morning the rugs read: GOOD MORNING, REX HOTEL. And later in the day the rugs read: GOOD AFTERNOON, REX HOTEL.
We spent the first couple of days touring, but on the third day, as most of the group shimmied into the dank, dark tunnels at Cu Chi and marveled at the bravery of the men designated as tunnel rats, I begged off the trip, along with two of my teammates, Kelly Rihn and Cammie Geoghegan Olson. I tried to explain to our team leader, veteran Dick Schonberger, that we were weary of sight-seeing. We just wanted a day to hang out, to poke around the shops in Ho Chi Minh City, to have a relaxing lunch, get a manicure, and be pampered before we embarked upon a grueling trip to the country’s interior. “What are you? A bunch of candyasses?” Dick bellowed, when we broke the news that we wouldn’t be joining the rest of the team. Cammie cowered. Kelly and I laughed. From that moment on, we three girls were affectionately called the Candyass Team.
Cammie Geoghegan Olson of Virginia was only five months old when her father was killed. L
ieutenant John Lance “Jack” Geoghegan, twenty-four, was depicted in the book We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, by Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore and war correspondent Joseph Galloway. Geoghegan and all but three of his men were slaughtered in the Ia Drang Valley on November 15, 1965. Jack Geoghegan was helping a wounded soldier named Willie Godboldt when they were both gunned down. The two soldiers’ names are next to each other on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Kelly was seven months old when her father, Specialist Joel Coleman, died. He received his orders for Vietnam in November 1965 and was assigned to Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. He shipped out to Vietnam on December 22, 1965. In early May 1966, Alpha Company was sent up the coast to Bong Son for Operation Davy Crockett. On May 5, 1966, after a day of searching villages, a bone-tired Alpha Company dug in for the night near a green rice paddy bordered by a thin wood line. Shortly after they settled in, thirty rounds of machine-gun fire popped out from the tree line. Joel Coleman, twenty-one, was killed by hostile ground fire. Neither Kelly nor Cammie have any memories of their fathers. For them and many others, going to Vietnam was a way to make a memory out of something their fathers knew.
I’m pretty certain Cammie will never take another cyclo ride again in her life. As the noon hour approached, we girls bartered rides from three fellows pedaling their three-wheel bikes to carry us from the Ho Chi Minh City market to the Caravelle Hotel, about five blocks away. The deal was we’d pay two U.S. dollars each. But the cyclo drivers decided after we arrived that they wanted 200,000 dong, more than ten dollars each. After I paid the sum we’d previously agreed upon, the drivers began to yell at us. The three men circled Cammie and demanded more money. Frightened, she started pulling out every wad of dong she had stuffed in her pocket. Kelly and I grabbed her by the elbows and herded her away. If Cammie lived in Ho Chi Minh City, she’d be out on the streets handing out every last penny she could scour up. Kelly and I voted her captain of the Candyass Team.
After the Flag Has Been Folded Page 32
