“The New York Times begins the three-day publication of leaked portions of the 47-volume Pentagon analysis of how the U.S. commitment in Indochina grew over a period of three decades. The Pentagon Papers disclose closely guarded communiqués, recommendations and decisions on the U.S. military role in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, along with the diplomatic phase in the Eisenhower years.”

—The Vietnam War Day by Day

43

Saint Christopher

Late June 1971

The war was over, for me at least, and in any other measurable and meaningful way it was finished.

June 26, 1971, was my last day at Mace. In a few hours, I would depart for Bien Hoa to catch a freedom bird to the real world, if it really existed. I could hardly wait to go, and my thoughts were concentrated on a life with my new family. Sandy was always in my thoughts now. I began to measure myself by the yardstick of my future as a husband and father. I remembered how disappointing our R&R in Hawaii had been, and I was afraid that I would make the same mistakes again. I hoped not.

My experiences in Vietnam had marked me in ways that could never be changed. I carried with me experiences that shaped my behavior and my view of the world. I had met people whom I admired considerably. I had seen Americans and South Vietnamese die for causes that neither country was fully committed to. I had experienced courage, fear, pain, hunger, hate, and love. I would always have those by my side, along with fellow prodigals who shared them.

Abruptly, I found myself standing in the mess hall with Lieutenant Colonel Spry beside me. I heard him speaking, but I really wasn’t listening; my thoughts were elsewhere. Then it hit me that I was actually leaving, and I found that my eyes were misty. I was, surprisingly, pulled between my strong desire to go home and a reluctance to leave the family I had bonded with in the cavalry. Spry placed a prized cavalry bugle in my hands, I muttered a few forgettable words, and I was on my way to Bien Hoa before I absorbed what had happened.

Dearest Sandy,

    My fondest dream is to have you meet me at the airport in Columbus so we can begin exactly where we left off one year ago. A lot of things have changed and we have missed a lot during this year. However, I think when we meet at the airport this time we’ll be a lot closer to each other than at the same spot a year ago. You know our marriage has had every opportunity to fail, but because we both wanted it, we held it together. I love you and I’ll see you soon.

The corrugated tin roof radiated heat downward like a convection oven into the passenger terminal at Ben Hoa Air Base. Heat transformed oppressive humidity into steam off my khaki uniform shirt. It smelled musty from storage in a damp metal container for twelve months, waiting for its owner to recover it—if he left Vietnam alive. How many times had survival assistance officers shipped the uniform and other possessions to the next of kin? In my case, I wore my uniform. Amazed to actually be alive at my own departure, I was happy to have made it this far.

A line of uniformed young men, lost in their own feelings and thoughts, meandered ahead of me. I believed that, like me, they contemplated their futures. For some that meant leaving the army and finding a civilian job, for others it meant being reunited with a girlfriend or wife, and for some it foretold only uncertainty or unhappiness. As for the future, none—not a single one—would return to the same world had left only a year before.

Our world had changed during that year. It changed in the hometown drugstore; it changed in the houses where we grew up. Ball fields, streets, and pool halls had all changed, as had the people who frequented them. Our friends and neighbors were changed: those fine people would never see us in the same way again. But the most profound changes were in ourselves. We were afflicted by our experiences, some more, some less, some just differently; some would recover and adjust completely, others would not. Hardly any of us knew he was different, but would soon encounter the inevitable truth.

For me the minutes clung like the sweaty shirt to my back. Time would allow me to cross the tarmac and climb the long ladder of the Flying Tiger 727. Once on board the freedom express, nothing in the world would stop me from leaving an insane place and winging to a better one. The only thing between freedom and me now was a dwindling line of soldiers—and a lone military policeman.

I finally reached the head of the line. There I stood, a captain, veteran of two years in combat in the only war we had. A warrior, resplendent in a uniform distinguished by two and a half rows of ribbons, stood where a youth once stood.

The MP stopped me. “Sir, I’ll need to see your orders, ticket, and identification.”

“Here you go, Sergeant.” I offered the documents to him. I had observed those ahead of me in line and was prepared in advance.

“Thank you, sir. I need to inspect your carry-on bag.”

I sat the bag on the metal table and unzipped it for the customs inspection. I knew I had no drugs or war trophies, so it was no big deal.

I was startled by his next words. “You can’t take this with you, sir,” the MP said, pointing to the green ledger in my bag.

I stared incredulously at the book. Routinely, for the past year—in rain, heat, and darkness—I had hidden under my hot poncho, smelling my own unwashed armpits, using a flashlight to write letters home, and then entered our military activities and my personal thoughts into my journal. The letters were mailed every week, but my journal stayed with me, wrapped in a plastic bag and carried around Vietnam on my back. The journal had aided in tracking our daily activities, planning future operations, and recording experiences and lessons learned. I poured thoughts into my journal that I could never send home. Deep feelings, which were mine and mine alone, resided there. My journal was the bridge between the past incredible year and the future. Without my journal the past would be lost in shifting sands of time and a fading memory.

I panicked. I could not part with my own history. I would rather give up a limb than my journal. The journal represented an irreplaceable part of me. I could substitute a leg or an arm with a prosthetic, but I could never replace my own history.

I protested. “Sergeant, this is a personal diary which has no military value. I won’t leave it. I’m taking it with me for my personal records.”

The MP represented a serious obstacle to freedom. “I don’t care what it is, sir. It’s written on a government ledger. You can’t take government property. Drop it into the ‘no-questions-asked box,’ or I’ll detain you for an investigation. You can’t leave until it’s completed. The choice is yours, but decide now, because the airplane is loading!”

Why hadn’t I just mailed it home? Why hadn’t I written on notebook paper? Why had my government, for which I had willingly placed my life on the line, decided I was a criminal for stealing blank paper worth $2 in the supply store? Didn’t he know I had turned in $90,000 I could have kept? Why couldn’t I just go to San Francisco to be spit on by hippies? Why was my beloved army persecuting me? Why all of it? Why now?

I felt sick at my stomach. My knees were weak and my hand trembled. An entire year flashed before my eyes. Not only the last year, recorded in a green ledger, my personal history was at stake. What was a future without a past?

The son I had never seen waited to get his life under way with a real dad. My wife held her breath for my return. My parents prayed for my safety every day. And new challenges waited for me at Fort Hood. Why this dilemma? Why now?

At the moment of decision I caved in. I surrendered to the arbitrary forces of bureaucracy. Dropping my precious journal into the box, I recovered my orders, tickets, and identification card, glared at the robot military policeman, and trudged across the hot tarmac to my freedom flight. I wanted desperately to turn around, attack the MP, and recover my notes.

I remember little of the flight home—but I’ll never forget the fury I felt at myself for capitulating. I had never surrendered to any challenge in two years in Vietnam, yet I felt my final act there had been ignoble. I had witnessed incredible sacrifices by good people, and I had given up their stories without a fight. I had let them and myself down. We were cheated—the final insult of an ungrateful nation.

In San Francisco I eventually encountered hippies who spat on my uniform. Far worse were the looks from white men in business suits: their scorn for a returning warrior.

We flew through heavy fog to the airport in Columbus, Georgia, forcing the pilot to make two passes. On the second approach, he powered through the fog and the ground appeared just before the landing gear touched the wet runway. I had not known what time I would arrive in Columbus until I made the connection in Atlanta: I called Sandy from the Atlanta airport and rushed to my flight. The flight to Columbus was only forty-five minutes, so she was not there when I arrived. As I waited in front of the terminal I reached inside my shirt and found my dog tags—and the tangled Saint Christopher medal—realizing the blessing of Saint Christopher had brought me back safely. I thanked God and peered into the street until I saw an old Chevy approaching. Greeting me was my beautiful wife in a sundress that clung in the heat, and in her arms was the son I had never seen. It was my future—a sight I will never forget.

My life was changed forever by Vietnam, and my only hope was that my family would become my anchor in the storms tormenting me. Sandy would have to forgive my many faults. The army had been a wonderful life, and I intended to blend a military career with my family’s life for the next quarter-century. I didn’t know whether that was possible, but it was my hope.

I forgot the journal for a long time, blocking it out of my mind along with everything else that had accompanied those years. Once, though, I was cleaning out a footlocker in a crowded basement, preparing for yet another move, and found a shoebox. I expected to find canceled checks when I opened the box, but instead, discovered a stack of letters. My first thought was that my wife had a lover and that she was saving his letters. I was right. My hands trembled as I examined the envelope containing one letter. It slowly registered that this was a letter in my own hand, written to Sandy from Vietnam. All of them were in the box. I didn’t know she had saved them. Ghosts from the past assembled around me.

As I read my own words from long ago, I remembered the journal. Then I cried for a long time. I live with the pain, and I will never give it up. Pains, like scars, are our history.

So this is where it ends. This is the last real chapter, but it is also the beginning of the real story. To reassemble it all I worked backward through the letters, recapturing my journal through the words written home each night in the rain. Then I used the pictures from my first year, annotated and saved for me by my parents. Armed with those little jewels I was able to resurrect the first year.

Once the journals were composed, they were tucked away to gather dust. Attempts to type and edit them were too personal and painful. Each effort ended in failure; I invariably stopped typing with one page written and a bottle of Scotch emptied. The story finally unfolded, like dark figures emerging from a dense fog, hardly visible, yet fully recognizable, images in letters and pictures, names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall—bastard stepchildren who appeared unwanted and unloved before now greeted me like prodigal sons.