After the Flag Has Been Folded (34 page)
Read After the Flag Has Been Folded Online
Authors: Karen Spears Zacharias
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.
vietnam 2003: in honor, peace, and understanding
J
OINING US FOR THE TREK IN COUNTRY WERE A DOZEN OR SO
V
IETNAM 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 dignitariesâTom 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. Lieutenant John Lance “Jack” Geoghegan, twenty-four, was depicted in the book
We Were Soldiers Onceâ¦and Young,
by Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore and war correspon
dent 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.
Because the Rex Hotel maintains computers with Internet connections, I was able to post a letter to the Virtual Wall so that veterans
and loved ones, particularly Mama, could log on and read about the journey as it was happening. This was my journal entry for Friday, March 7:
As brother Mark Pitts and I walked back to the hotel from the Saigon bar last night, a boy approached me. (Can you walk on these streets without someone somewhere approaching you to buy something?)
“Jerry's my American name,” he said, in the best English I've heard from a Vietnamese person yet. Jerry proceeded to tell me that he needed to sell $20 worth of goods before he could go home. It was already 10:30 p.m. “I have to pay for my school and my brother's school. I only have a mom. Dad left us for another woman,” Jerry explained. “In my school I have the best English, but my writing is bad.” I know how he feels some days.
Jerry, 14, took my hand and led me across the streets near the Rex Hotel. Not an easy feat. It's kind of like bungee jumping into early morning rush hour. Stop, go, bounce, dodge, OHMYGOD THERE'S 1,500 motorbikes headed straight for me! “Don't look. Follow me,” Jerry said. Jerry was able to weasel a couple of bucks from Mark, who said as he handed over the dough, “Jerry, you've got game. Now go away.”
Our group started out at the Apocalypse Now bar but had to change plans when a fellow took a special liking to our great leader, Tony Cordero (son of MAJ William E. Cordero). Wrong crowd at that bar, we decided. But Brother Terry McGregor could not escape the clutches of the most cunning 8-year old girl who wrapped her arms around his waist outside the bar. She pleaded with McGregor to buy her wares. When he refused, she cast slurs his way. “Charlie! I no like you!” Beggars are on every street corner in every place we've been so far. Outside the Rex last night, in a red and white dress with a peter-pan collar, stood a girl, about 7, begging folks to buy her flowers. There was no parent in sight. Nothing. She was absolutely beautiful, with her big almond eyes, pleading and holding
flowers up to the bus windows or in front of pedestrians. “Please, madam. Please, sir,” she begged. But even her poverty didn't compare to what we saw along the Mekong Delta on Thursday.
A three-hour drive from the Rex, the Mekong is flecked with banana, pod and palm trees. But everywhere we went there were people. In the most rural, remote areas, people squat and eat
pho
from ceramic bowls, or sit on plastic chairs. People pedal bikes loaded with straw, or balloons or baskets, three and five bikes deep as buses and vans, and cars whiz past, blowing horns. No one flinches. Not ever. There is a motorbike repair shop in every block, even in the country. And graves, likes those in Louisiana sitting above ground, are scattered randomly about. Stuck in between the rice paddies or the bike shops. They are brightly decorated and often have miniature temples built into them. A place for sacrifice and incense.
The Mekong River reminded me much of my beloved Chattahoochee River in Georgia. It was muddy and wide and surrounded by thick vegetation. Flowers, scarlet, ivory, and lavender, grew among the wildest brambles. We ate a lunch of elephant fish, pork, chicken, rice, rice, and did I mention rice, at this far-out-of-the-way place, which was a nursery of some sort. Lots of potted flowers about. Instead of kids begging for stuff, however, a group of children handed us purple and pink roses as we disembarked from the boat. We toasted our dinner with rice whiskey. I shared a shot with a friend. Have you ever tossed back a shot of diesel fuel? Then, you understand. My head was spinning within seconds. I kept eating, hoping that would help me center myself once more. Geeish! Then, after dinner, the dessert. No, not passion fruit. But the delight of holding a 50-pound python in my very own hands. A truly spiritual experience for me. If you haven't read it, you should read Dennis Covington's
Salvation on Sand Mountain.
The story of a journalist who, while on assignment, gets caught up in the spirit and ends up taking up the rattler like those faith-based southern folks he's writing about. I love that book. Not because I've been a member of those churches,
but because I think being able to grasp in our hands the things we fear most is a powerful thing. Even if we can only hang on for a moment.
I lived my early life in fear after Daddy died. He was the center of what made me feel safe. I've spent much of my adult life trying to regain that sense of security and safety and to not feel so threatened by the powers of this world that are beyond my control. So it seemed only spiritual that I should come to Vietnam and pick up the python. The place where my fears began and now the place where I have held those fears in my hand, if only for a moment. Brother Mark Pitts didn't have quite the same spiritual experience with his snake-handling momentâ¦. Yes, us fatherless children of 'Nam have all sorts of fears. But we are here facing them. The way our fathers did before us. Today we split up for the first time, to head to the sites where our fathers fought their battles. Keep us in your prayers. Courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to press on in spite of it. You veterans taught us that. Thank you for that.
O
N
S
ATURDAY
, M
ARCH
8, we split up into smaller, color-coded teams, to begin our trek in country to visit our fathers' death sites. I was part of the Orange Team, which all the veterans agreed had the most grueling itinerary.
We were headed into one of the most remote areas of Vietnam, the Central Highlands. Our team boarded a bus at o'dark-thirty for a ride through Ho Chi Minh City. We stared bleary-eyed as people clustered like starlings in parking lots and grassy knolls, contorting their bodies into tai chi pretzels as part of their morning exercise regime, and buzzing into markets with baskets of fish and fruit, and baskets of baskets. Heavy-equipment trucks, a rare sight, roared by us. They are allowed on the streets only during the dark, Viet, our guide, explained, because it's too dangerous during daylight when the city's
fifteen million people are hustling about on mopeds, bikes, and
cyclos
.
At Tan Son Nhat Airport, we boarded a turboprop plane and headed into Pleiku, in the Central Highlands. The plane was cramped; a national soccer team filled up most of it. Our group of ten sat near the back, and the turboprop engines were so loud we couldn't hear one another over their roar.
Most of the way, I studied a Vietnamese family sitting just ahead of me. The young mother nestled down on the inside seat as the father tended to three girls. The youngest was a dark-eyed cherub obviously proud of her new walking shoes, which she kept untying and her daddy kept retying. The toddler ambled about the aisle the entire trip.
