Bringing It All Back Home (34 page)

I wanted the name and address of the next of kin. I get Thurman Wolfe, and I get William Di Santis; I get their next of kin. I sat down and wrote a letter to the families and told them who I was and that I was with their sons. Wolfe's parents or mother—they were from Robeline, Louisiana. I had pictures of Wolfe, a couple of pictures just like this, and I sent them. And the neighbors advised her don't write [back] to him, he's probably looking at trying to get your insurance money. So she wrote me and said please don't write back.

One day, I get a letter from Aurora, Illinois, and I open the letter and it said, “I prayed to God for somebody like you. You did not put your telephone number in your letter. When you get this letter, you call me, even if you have to call collect.” That was Bill Di Santis's mother. And I called her as soon as I finished reading the letter, and she said to me again, “I prayed to God for somebody like you.”

She says, “I have to ask you; did my son suffer when he died?” I asked her, “Well, what did the Army tell you?” She replied, “They indicated he was in a bunker that took a direct hit.” And I said to her, “That's exactly what happened, and there is no way Bill suffered; it was too fast.” And she said, “Thank you.” I then said, “Well, I want to come to see you,” and she said, “When?” So we set up a time.

I flew out to Chicago, rented a car, and drove to Aurora, based on the directions they had given me. They lived on a semi-farm, and I remember driving up like off this long road and then into their property and the house was like off in a distance. I drove up, stopped the car, and got out, and there was a man on the lawn mower, and he stopped and he looked at me, and I looked at him. He said, “You must be Mr. Wallace.” I said, “You must be Mr. Di Santis.” We shook hands and we went up on the porch and we talked awhile and we talked about his son. I told him about when you guys were sending the care packages and we would—you'd send the pepperoni and how Bill shared that with us and we got—we talked about those few things, and he then took me inside and I met Bill's mother and his sister, and we talked. And we—they fixed dinner and we talked more and more, and I went to stay two days. I ended up staying four days.

He was an engineer for Burlington Northern, and that next morning he took me to his job, the train yards, and every place we would go, he'd say, “This is Tony Wallace. He's from New York. He was with Bill in Vietnam. He was with Bill in Vietnam.” He took me to relatives. He took me to Bill's grandmother. He took me to so many folks, and they all greeted me with warmth; they treated me like a king. Then I have to say that there was no question about me being a brother, Bill being [white] … there was no question—no feeling of anything where you'd be afraid or apprehensive of going into this setting. No way.

He took me to the college he [Bill] went to. He even took me to the cemetery to see where he was buried. He took me fishing, and I had really never been fishing, but he took me fishing. And the thing was, we were able to talk, and I was able to share certain experiences that we had over in Vietnam. He thanked me for making this effort to come and see them. He said, “You'll never realize what it meant to the family to do what you did by coming out here.”

When I got back home, those guilt feelings began to dissipate.

Wallace has also continued to make peace with his experiences by remaining engaged with them. He speaks to school groups in Brooklyn about his time in Vietnam. He takes part in events aimed at younger veterans at Brooklyn College. He's created a database of the casualties sustained by the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam, his unit, so that he can better understand how the unit worked. In spring 2012 he will become a docent, or “Yellow Hat,” a National Park Service volunteer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. In that role he will help people find names on the black granite wall and share his experiences.

Folks often ask, why do Vietnam veterans say [to each other], “Welcome home”? They don't realize where that came from. The fact is that when you came home, no one said “Welcome home” to you. So we have to do this for ourselves. When a man sees another Nam vet and they greet them and shake hands, they say, “Welcome home.” That's the appreciation that they know and have an idea what that person went through and can appreciate who they are. Nobody else can have that. That's their special time, and when they're able to do that, nothing else has to be said. They can keep walking.

Over the years that have elapsed since I began this project, Tony Wallace and I have grown close. We have made many trips together on Veterans Day. In 2008 we spent a cold, drizzly afternoon at the wall in Washington, listening to various speakers tell us of their experiences and about the meaning of the wall. The green of the National Mall lawn was covered with folding chairs and umbrellas as the afternoon wound down. As we were leaving, Tony sought out a homeless veteran he had met at the wall earlier in the year and gave the man a new coat and a new pair of shoes that he had brought from New York just for that purpose. We chatted with him for a while and took photographs as the night gathered.

After we got back to the hotel room we shared and prepared for sleep, from the other side of the room Tony said,
I think it is time for you to see this.
Already in his pajamas, he knelt down and peeled back the pajama top, revealing the deep and ugly scars from the blast that had killed Wolfe, Pepe, and Di Santis. The blast had changed his life forever. There on his knees he exposed his back to me for several moments. It is very hard to describe what I saw. The skin had been torn; it was discolored. There were scars that had not healed properly, and you could see the effects of several skin grafts that had been done to try to close the wounds. Where the skin was not torn, it was peppered with scars where shrapnel had entered his body. Tony rose and rebuttoned his top.

Now you know
was all he said.

After his return from Vietnam, John Hamill (at left) joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and was arrested on the steps of the United States Supreme Court. As he was hauled away, John remembers a woman shouting out, “I don't think what you're doing is good for the troops.” John replied, “Lady, we
are
the troops.”
(Photograph by Bernie Edelman, courtesy of John Hamill and Bernie Edelman)

John Hamill enlisted at the age of seventeen. Later on, he wrote his own caption for this picture: “IT WAS ALL OVER BUT THE FIGHTING—for John Hamill as he smiled for the camera, relieved to be done with the rigors of Airborne training in 1967. A month later he would join the hard-fighting paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade as a combat medic in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.”
(Photograph courtesy of John Hamill)

Nurse Susan Kramer met her future husband, Paul O'Neill, in Vietnam. Paul took this picture at the time. After the war, they became involved with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and later joined the Peace Corps.
(Photograph courtesy of Susan and Paul O'Neill)

Joseph Giannini commanded a Marine rifle platoon. He has practiced criminal law on Long Island for more than thirty years and hosts a local television show,
East End Veterans
.
(Photograph courtesy of Joseph Giannini)

Anthony Wallace in Tay Ninh Province, March 1970. After the war, Wallace earned a B.A. from Brooklyn College and returned to work at Con Edison, where he is still employed.
(Photograph courtesy of Anthony Wallace)

Joan Furey worked as a nurse at an evacuation hospital in Pleiku, in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, from January 1969 through January 1970, earning a Bronze Star. Much of the area was inhabited by indigenous tribal peoples known as Montagnards. Furey recalls: “This was a Montagnard's baby whose father brought her to the hospital in critical condition due to severe dysentery. We treated her, actually saved her life, and he was so overjoyed, he showed up with some rice wine and Montagnard bracelets for us … If you look closely at the baby, you'll note she has a bunch of them on her left arm. At the time, everyone said that meant she was a Montagnard princess, but I don't know if that's true or not.”
(Photograph courtesy of Joan Furey)