The Viet Nam War still looms large in my family’s history, as I’m sure it does in very many others.
It’s coming up on the 58th anniversary of my mother’s older brother’s death in that war. He would have been 77 this year. The other day, she was looking at some old photographs of him with his high school sweetheart and realized that she couldn’t remember what her name was. That really bothered her. She spent some time digging through old letters and papers trying to find it or jog her memory. It was important to her to remember it, but…nothing. One more link to him and his life gone.
I don’t think she’s ever gotten over his loss. She joined the Army herself as a nurse and served at Cu Chi because…she had to do something. She just couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t let him go.
Sometimes casualties didn’t reach the hospital till days after they were hit, and when she removed the bandages the wounds were seething with maggots. I know that because I have read letters she wrote home. She’s never spoken of her experiences beyond saying that she thought she would never be able to get the blood out from under her fingernails.
Another of her brothers served much later in the war as an Army helo pilot, and was involved in Lam Son 719, where he was shot down while trying to take off from a hot LZ. He only spoke about his experiences to me once when I was a kid, after an off-roading accident that totaled his old IH Scout and left us upside down with the engine roaring and gasoline pouring on us. He got us out of that with cool efficiency and on the long walk back instructed me on how to manage your emotions and do what you have to do to survive when you find yourself in hell.
My dad flew F4Js with TF77 in the early 1970s, a genuine Yankee Sky Pirate. Hundreds of missions over the North, and into the South during the Easter Offensive. He flew missions during Linebacker II, attacking targets in and around Haiphong.
MiGs and SAMs and AAA, friends being lost over and over again, sortie after sortie until they mounted into the hundreds. And what did he ever say about any of it? Nothing.
Well, once he said it was the most useless war in history. Otherwise, if you asked him, he would tell about this time on liberty…, or some funny stories, or maybe he would discuss some technical aspects of flying the old bird. But that’s it, and don’t push him for more. You wouldn’t get it.
Well, here’s to you, my very dear male parental unit, my wonderful mother, my uncle and all the other Viet Nam vets; that war is a very long time passing.
