On Thursday, April 26, 2018, the men of BRAVO! lost their Skipper, Lt. Colonel Kenneth Pipes, USMC Retired.
I had talked to him the day before. We laughed, reminisced, talked about other vets, the kind of conversations we always had.
He didn’t say to me that he thought the end was near, nor did he complain about the many ailments that tormented him. He was stout and incisive and funny.
Kenneth Pipes
If I wasn’t so slow-witted I might have picked up some hints that he sent me, but I didn’t get them right away. They eased their way back into my recall as I sat there the rest of the day and on into Thursday. Our last conversation was a moment where the ties that bound us became much more apparent than I’d ever noticed. How deep and wide and long and thick the bonds were.
As I sat there thinking of him and how intimate our conversation had been, how what we said to each other bore into the inner shields I have managed to keep in tact for over fifty years; it sunk in that he was telling me that he was moving on.
And just as I finally got it, we got news that he had passed on and the rest of us who are left behind to grieve his leaving won’t have that rock-steady, low key, humorous leadership and advice that had become so much a part of our lives.
Ken Pipes at Khe Sanh.
The Skipper was a career Marine. As the saying goes, “A Marine’s Marine,” but he was also a fiercely loyal, compassionate, intuitive man who could dig right into what might be bothering you and help you expose it to the light of reason.
He commanded a company of Marines throughout the Siege of Khe Sanh. Under his command the company gained fame—if somewhat belated—but the casualties that ensued in that horrible and ugly 77-day battle rode him. And the load was heavy.
Besides a career in the Corps, Skipper Pipes was a longtime volunteer with the San Diego Sheriff’s Department and retired recently at the rank of Captain. As a mark of his standing with the SDSO, there were only two volunteer captains—a sign of the Skipper’s abilities as a leader of women and men—when he retired.
Skipper Pipes at the 2010 Khe Sanh Veterans Reunion in San Antonio, Texas. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers.
In that final phone conversation between us, he spoke about his wife, Sharon and their family. He spoke about his fifty-plus years of marriage and how much Sharon meant to him and how she had helped him carry his burden. It was all there in that last conversation, his final goodbye.
I could write for pages and pages about my relationship with this man, but this is not the time for that. It’s the time for those of us who knew him and loved him to hole up and let the pain rack us until we can move on while never forgetting how fortunate we were to have known and served with Kenneth W. Pipes.
On leave at home in Arizona, waiting to head to Camp Pendleton for my next Marine Corps billet, I spent a lot of time partying and sleeping and driving around at five AM on dusty farm roads, moving at 70 MPH or faster in my parents’ brown Buick LeSabre, a chilled can of Coors on the seat between my legs.
Feeling guilty because I’d promised the men of Bravo, 1/26, special things that I would send along when I got home: brownies, cookies, a fifth of Chivas Regal. Instead of arranging to send those goodies, I got drunk and ate home-cooked chow and aimlessly drove amongst the cotton and alfalfa fields like a sheriff’s deputy speeding to a bank robbery.
Cotton crop ready for harvest near the author’s original home in Arizona
Later in the Arizona mornings, with a newspaper on the kitchen counter and a cup of Folgers steaming in my hand, I read about the war. Most of what I read concerned news about battles in places I did not know, head counts of dead people, both the enemy and our folks. I suspect I hoped for news about the men I’d served with, but 1968 was a tumultuous year for the war and a host of stories were out there; too many, I imagine.
Even though I tried, I couldn’t shove scenes of my year at war out of mind. Wrecked helicopters and busted sandbags and triple canopy jungle that hid who knew what, the tangle of vines, and the last two-and-one-half months of my tour, the thump and thunder of incoming, incoming, incoming.
All the images and sounds of war got mixed up in keg parties in the foothills north of Tucson and me in the Buick LeSabre, sitting in the drive-through lane at six in the morning at Pinal Liquors waiting for them to open, or on a date in Tempe with one of my old girl friends, me not having anything to say about anything that was familiar to her about English 101 or Sociology or what kind of swimming suits her other friends were planning to wear when they went water skiing at Saguaro Lake the next weekend.
On Easter, my mother demanded I go with her to church where she had volunteered me to deliver a speech about the war in Vietnam. I stood up in a church for the last time—unless it was for a wedding or a funeral—and tried to get the words out that might enlighten folks about what it was like to crawl through mud and slime to save your life.
Afterwards, all the ladies in the church who were friends of my mother’s cornered me with attempts to tell me how glad they were that I made it home, but to me it was like being trapped, under attack by an enemy I could not understand. I didn’t think I could somehow explain that instead of a brotherhood based on Jesus like we’d heard about that day, I survived because of a brotherhood based on the 7.62mm bullet and the bloody bayonet and the M79 grenade launcher, and that my salvation at Khe Sanh came in part from men I didn’t even know—nor probably ever would—who sortied out of Thailand and Guam with B-52s loaded with tons of bombs and by jet pilots who dropped napalm on the NVA hidden in the valleys to our front and all the supply flights that kept us knee-deep in ammo and fed with a minimum amount of chow.
So I fled church for a Camel cigarette and another sortie down to the liquor store for a six-pack of Coors and a pint of Old Crow. Ooorah! And then I drove around the streets I used to know, and thought and remembered.
When I pondered then and think now about Khe Sanh—the Americans who died in that place, and who knows how many of the enemy—I see the red dust on everything and the red mud that got on your hands and face and stuck like cement to whatever it came in contact with: M16s, entrenching tools, jungle boots. I see trenches roaring with runoff from rain, rain, incessant rain, and I see Marines standing knee-deep in the torrent as the black night surrounds them, choking down their thoughts of home. I see men crammed into bunkers sharing lies about sex and home and cars and fighting. I see grunts storming up the sides of steep hills choked with jungle grass that sliced their skin. I see bodies on the ground, their faces the yellow tint of the dead. I see myself leaning over to find out if I know who the dead might be. I see a hell of a waste of lives spent over a piece of land that, when matters settled out, wasn’t that important.
Blogger Ken Rodgers at Khe Sanh just before the siege began in January 1968. Photo courtesy of Michael E. O’Hara.
I see young men who went to war as Marines and who for the most part proved eager to quash the evil of the world. In my mind’s eye I see many of their names etched into the black stone on The Wall and who they were and what they did in Vietnam will weigh down my thoughts as long as I am able to think.
The memories of the dead—and the living—are strong.
***
NEWS!
BRAVO! is now available in digital form on Amazon Prime. Please check it out if you are interested, and please consider sharing this news with your friends and contacts whom you think might be interested in seeing the film. And please ask them to give us a review if they would. It will help get the film out to a broader audience.
This link will take you directly to BRAVO!’s Amazon Prime site where you can take a look at the options for streaming: https://amzn.to/2Hzf6In.
***
ON THE SCREENING FRONT:
At 3:00 PM on May 27, 2018, BRAVO! will be shown in Paris, TN at the Krider Performing Arts Center. You can find out more about this event and the Krider Performance Art Center here.
***
If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town, please contact us immediately.
DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a teacher, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/store/.
On April 7, 2018, BRAVO! was screened to an over-flow crowd at Nampa, Idaho’s Warhawk Air Museum. The day began with a bluster but turned off to be beautiful as people from all over Idaho’s Treasure Valley and beyond came out to see the film and participate in the panel discussion that followed.
Around five hundred folks showed up and were greeted by the friendly museum staff. A bonus to anyone who came to see the film was a chance to tour the Warhawk’s spacious environs and spend time learning about the warplanes on exhibit and the lives of warriors whose memorabilia has been shared with the museum.
Vietnam veterans visit with members of the Eagle chapter of the DAR. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers.
If you come to Idaho, this is one of the places you might want to visit. The bulk of the exhibits are intensely personal and speak to the visitors about the men and women who have put their lives on the line for something they believe in, their country.
Besides the exhibits, the Warhawk is instrumental in working with schools to ensure that the military history of America gets taught. They are also involved in Honor Flights for World War II vets to visit Washington DC. An additional asset they provide the community is interviewing veterans on video. The finished products are sent to the Library of Congress as well as the interviewees. The Warhawk schedules a wide variety of special events as well as a monthly Kilroy Coffee Klatch on the first Tuesday of every month where guest speakers present programs of interest. The Klatch is free to veterans.
At the screening, the Eagle, Idaho, chapter of the Daughters or the American Revolution provided snacks and water, and the Boise Police Department’s Honor Guard sang the National Anthem à capella.
Boise Police Department Honor Guard singing the National Anthem. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers.
As always, when large groups of people gather to view BRAVO!, the combined empathy in the facility was palpable. And the emotional power emanating from the crowd poured over into the discussion afterwards. On hand to talk about the Siege of Khe Sanh were BRAVO! Marine Ron Rees who came over with his family from the La Grande, Oregon area, Dennis Ross, also from eastern Oregon who flew B-52s over the battlefield of Khe Sanh, Dave Crosby, a flight engineer on C-130s that came in several times a day to keep us supplied with ammo, chow and mail, and Phil Nuchereno, who served with Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines at Khe Sanh during the Siege. BRAVO! co-producer and co-director Ken Rodgers was also on the panel.
The audience heard some different points of view from what normally arises in these panel discussions following screenings of BRAVO!. Besides hearing about the men trapped in the combat base, we heard from men who flew bombing missions to beat back the NVA and men who made the dangerous journeys into the base to keep the warriors of Khe Sanh stocked with the necessities of surviving a siege and men who were outside the base, on the hills, running patrols to interdict NVA forces moving to overrun the base.
One of the surprises of the day happened right after the screening and before the panel discussion when we asked everyone who had been at Khe Sanh to come forward for a group photo. Five additional men who had served with the Army and the Marines came forward and we got to meet some new friends.
A big thanks to the Warhawk Air Museum’s John and Sue Paul, Colonel Pat Kilroy, Heather Mullins and the crew of efficient, personable volunteers who made this event one of the big milestones in BRAVO!’s history of film screenings. Thanks too, to veteran Frank Turner who came up with the original idea to screen the event to commemorate the Siege of Khe Sanh after fifty years.
Mike Shipman of Blue Planet Photography shot photos for the event. Mike has been a stout supporter of BRAVO! from the beginning. So here’s a shout out to Mike and you can find out more about his work here.
Some of the Khe Sanh veterans who attended the screening at the Warhawk Air Museum. Photo courtesy of Mike Shipman/Blue Planet Photography.
Thanks also to Barbara Grant and the caring members of the DAR for their unsung work providing repast to our audience.
We would also like to thank KTVB Channel 7 for enthusiastically getting the word out, and the Idaho Division of Veterans Services for helping sponsor the event.
Screenings like this are one way we keep the discussion rolling forward about what war and its aftermath is really like and as a way to recognize our military veterans.
Ooorah!
You can find out more about the Warhawk Air Museum and all they do for veterans and the community at large here.
*** NEWS!
BRAVO! is now available in digital form on Amazon Prime. Please check it out if you are interested, and please consider sharing this news with your friends and contacts whom you think might be interested in seeing the film. And please ask them to give us a review if they would. It will help get the film out to a broader audience.
This link will take you directly to BRAVO!’s Amazon Prime site where you can take a look at the options for streaming.
***
ON THE SCREENING FRONT:
At 3:00 PM on May 27, 2018, BRAVO! will be screened in Paris, TN at the Krider Performing Arts Center. You can find out more about this event and the Krider Performance Art Center here.
***
If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town, please contact us immediately.
DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a teacher, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/store/.
I fidgeted inside a Continental Airlines 707 in Okinawa waiting for the B-52s lined up on the flight line to take off. I glanced at the tattered and dog-eared pages of a Max Brand book I’d been trying to read for months about a buckaroo named Destry. Then I peered around at the others on the flight, all of them Marines (other than the crew), none of whom I knew. I looked out the port hole and studied the B-52s again. Their dark fuselages ginned-up images of hell, avengers and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. When the B-52s finally rolled forward, their long wings drooped and prompted metaphors of sharp-taloned hawks.
And then we were airborne, over the Pacific, headed for home, my thoughts saturated with scenes and noises and stenches of the battlefield. And even though I tried to read about Destry, nothing else managed to crowd into my mind except memories of Khe Sanh.
We flew over Iwo Jima. It looked like a distorted version of a figure eight and I wondered about all those men who had died over that little piece of volcanic rock.
Iwo Jima from the air.
At El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, we deplaned. I wanted to drop down, do a pushup and kiss the deck, but I didn’t. We put up with Marine Corps hassle as we processed to go on leave and then board a bus to LA and the airport.
After I got my airline ticket to Tucson, I called home, trying to tell someone that I needed a ride, but no one answered. I finally contacted the mother of my best friend who told me she’d make sure someone showed up to get me.
I waited in the airport lounge, smoking Camels and drinking real beer—Coors beer—wanting someone to say something about me being home, being alive, being a Vietnam vet who’d sacrificed for his county. Nobody said a damned thing except the bartender who muttered “thanks” when I left him a tip.
Not long before I climbed aboard my flight, a young Marine came in and plopped down at the bar in a seat next to me. He was going on leave before shipping out for Nam. He wanted to know what it was like. I said, “Keep your head down.”
On the flight to Tucson, I sat next to a girl who seemed about my age. She wouldn’t look at me. I could have struck up a conversation but I didn’t know what to talk about. I didn’t think she’d care about 152mm artillery rounds that shook the ground, severed arms and legs, and if they landed too close to you, forced blood out of the pores of your body.
At Tucson, my parents met me as I headed down a set of stairs to baggage claim where my best friend and his fiancé waited. I could tell by the way they all stared at me that I wasn’t quite the person they’d expected.
We went to a well-known Mexican food restaurant in Old Town. I craved green chili. After we sat, I ordered a Coke. I wanted a beer but didn’t think my mother would approve.
Our meals arrived and I talked about Khe Sanh, what I saw, how I felt. They didn’t look at me, just turned to on their ground beef tacos, their green chili and queso enchiladas.
For decades after, when thinking about that moment, the top of my father’s balding head would invade my mind. It was what they showed me as they ate: the tops of their heads.
Blogger Kn Rodgers at Khe Sanh in 1968. Photo courtesy of Michael E. O’Hara.
At the time, I thought nobody was interested in what happened and maybe, in general, that was the attitude of a lot of Americans; they didn’t want to have to consider the particulars of death and carnage. But now, I think, my family and friends just didn’t know how to respond to what I described, since the Siege inhabited a universe too far outside the ken of their experience.
So, I just shut up.
By myself in the back seat of my parents’ Buick, riding through the black Sonoran Desert night, I looked out the window and thought about Khe Sanh, the siege, the dead, my fear, the memories of which I naively imagined would just slip away.
*** NEWS!
BRAVO! is now available in digital form on Amazon Prime. Please check it out if you are interested, and please consider sharing this news with your friends and contacts whom you think might be interested in seeing the film. And please ask them to give us a review if they would. It will help get the film out to a broader audience.
***
ON THE SCREENING FRONT:
At 3:00 PM on May 27, 2018, BRAVO! will be screened in Paris, TN at the Krider Performing Arts Center. You can find out more about this event and the Krider Performance Art Center here.
***
If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town, please contact us immediately.
DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a teacher, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/store/.
Dear friends of Bravo! – Our film has just hit Prime Video on Amazon! We couldn’t be more excited because now this profound story is available via streaming to an entirely new audience!
It has been a long and wonderful journey to bring our labor of love to this point, and it’s all due to the many people who have come alongside to make it a reality. First was receiving Bravo Company Skipper Ken Pipes’ endorsement, then the encouragement from film experts Lance and Pamela Thompson. We knew we were on our way when the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation gave us a start-up grant. Next came the men who said, “Yes, I will tell my story,” and making the connection with the late Mark Spear who became our perceptive videographer. Of course Bravo! would not be the film it is today without the heart, talent, and expertise of our incredible editor, John Nutt, who provided the top-notch editing and post production.
BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR
Since then, we could never begin to list the people who have become a big part of Bravo! with their encouragement, financial support, feedback, screenings, DVD purchases and a myriad of other efforts that have spread this story far and wide, ultimately helping to touch the hearts of thousands of veterans and others. Now we believe that on Amazon, our film will touch thousands of more lives.
Amazon will help Bravo! reach this new audience if it gets 100 reviews before the end of April. We’d be most grateful if you and your friends would show your support of these courageous men by leaving a heartfelt review (however brief), and a rating. Could you take a few minutes to help us with this? If so, click the link below and stream the film (you can let it run in the background if you’ve already seen it, but you must stream the entire film).
THANK YOU for helping us with this exciting milestone for Bravo!. As always, we really appreciate your support.
Click here to go to Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor on Amazon Prime.
We have posted poems here friends as well Marines who fought at Khe Sanh and elsewhere during the Vietnam War, including poetry from friend and supporter Betty Plevney, Vietnam veteran and Marine Barry Hart and most recently Bravo Company’s Skipper, Ken Pipes. Poems are a good way to capture the imagery and action related to combat.
Recently I wrote a blog about the Payback Patrol of 3/30/1968. One of our friends, Susan Parker, who is an ardent supporter of BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR, read that blog and was moved to compose a poem.
Susan Parker. Photo courtesy of Susan Parker
She captured, in my opinion, both the agony of combat and the disconnect between the world at home and the world of war. Check it out!
Juxtaposition—March 30, 1968
By Susan Parker
Dressed in jungle green, you ran through the hell fires of war, blood trickling down your face, the stench of phosphorus and death pungent on the tropical air, dragging dead and dying men through a muddy trench, grenades and bombs exploding, sounds of gunshot ringing in your ears.
Fearless in facing the enemy, you were “cutting the mustard.”
Dressed in virginal white, I strolled the length of a red-carpeted aisle, sheer tulle veil covering cheeks ablush with excitement, high-heeled satin pumps pinching manicured toes, gardenias glistening with morning dew softening the early spring air, organ music of “Here Comes the Bride” echoing through the church.
Ignorant of your courage and sacrifice, I was cutting the wedding cake.
Writer and poet Susan Parker was born in a small town in Northern California but never enjoyed the cold, gray and damp weather. One who embraces change, she traveled south throughout the years finally moving to Tucson, Arizona where she found warmth and inspiration for her writing. Susan is the author of Angel on My Doorstep—An Ordinary Woman’s Journey with Those from the Other Side, an autobiography of her lifelong paranormal adventures, with emphasis on those that took place before, during and after her husband’s passing. She has also published a book of poetry, Lady by the Bay, and recorded a CD, She Rode a Wild Horse, which includes her original Western poetry along with poems written by others.
Susan Parker on the left with Vietnam veteran Eric Hollenbeck of Blue Ox Millworks, Eureka, California. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers
About her inspiration for her latest poem, “Juxtaposition—March 30, 1968,” Susan says that during one of her conversations with Ken several years ago he mentioned the importance of the date to him. Susan realized that this was the same date that she married her first husband, and how different their lives were on that day. With a twinge of guilt, she thought to herself, Ken lived in a nightmare world while I lived in a fairy tale world, oblivious to the horrors of war.
Reading Ken’s blog post this March 30th, she was moved to tears. Her muse shook her by the shoulders and shouted, “You have to write this, this juxtaposition of your lives on that day!”
And so she did.
***
On the screening front: On April 7, at 1:00 PM Bravo will be screened at the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa, Idaho. following the screening, there will be a panel of Khe Sanh survivors who will talk about the experience. You can find out more about the event and the Warhawk Air Museum here.
At 3:00 PM on May 27, 2018, BRAVO! will be screened in Paris, TN at the Krider Performing Arts Center. You can find out more about this event and the Krider Performance Art Center here.
***
If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town, please contact us immediately.
DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a teacher, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/store/.
Early that morning, I got the word to go home. Staff Sergeant A stomped down the trench and told me as I sat with Marines of 3rd Squad sharing C-ration coffee and unfiltered Camels and palavering about women and GTOs.
He’d told me twice before that I was going home: once, the day after the Payback Patrol, and then two days later, only to find out he was joking, as he liked to call it. When he said that, “I’m just joking,” he laughed and leaned over and slapped his quadriceps.
I didn’t think it was funny. And on this particular morning, as I looked at him like he was full of crap, he glared at me like all staff non-commissioned officers in the Marine Corps were wont to do. I still didn’t believe him, and I sat there looking into his eyes and I’m sure my feelings swarmed across my face.
Photo of Dong Ha, 1968. Reminiscent of the transient barracks where the blogger spent the night of 4-4-68. Photo from Pinterest.
He said, “Get up and go home, Rodgers. That’s an order.” And he clomped off.
I followed him down to the platoon command post and stuck my head in and Lieutenant D said, “Good luck, Rodgers, you’ve been a pretty good Marine. Occasionally damned good. Sometimes not so good. Gather your gear and get down to the company CP and report to Captain Pipes.” He got off his cot and stuck out his hand. His big mitt enveloped mine as we shook.
I divvied up my M-16 magazines and poncho liners and other gear among any of the men who needed them and figured I’d fight it out later with the supply personnel when I showed up short of gear in Phu Bai.
I walked up and down the trench slapping hands and jive-assing with everybody in 2nd Platoon that I knew, and then marched for the company CP. When I stuck my face into the bunker men crammed the innards: radio operators, the company gunny, the executive officer and Captain Pipes who sat against the sandbagged walls with his arm in a sling and other parts of his head and torso bandaged due to the wounds he received on the Payback Patrol.
The executive officer told me I was a day early, and that I should go back to 2nd Platoon. Captain Pipes asked me what platoon I was in, and when I told him I was in 2nd Platoon and was the platoon sergeant’s radio operator, he asked me if I’d been out there on Payback (we didn’t call it that, then, we called it March 30th). I nodded and he smiled. In an earlier blog where I wrote about Christmas Eve, I said that when Captain Pipes smiled at me back then, it was the only time a Marine Corps captain had ever smiled at me. But it wasn’t because he smiled as I stood there at that moment. And he said, “Let him go.”
The executive officer sent me down to Battalion where I explained my situation to a bunch of corporals who sent me to see sergeants who referred me to staff NCOs who sent me on to see a major who sat alone in a big room in a deep bunker. This is one of the damndest memories I have of this experience. When he asked me if I’d been on the Payback Patrol and I said, “Yes, Sir,” he took my orders and signed them and then he stood, snapped to attention and saluted me. For a moment I felt flummoxed, and then I saluted him back. Then he shook my hand. That was pretty amazing, a major saluting me in reverse order of how it should be.
I headed for the LZ where the helicopters came in to deliver men and gear and pick up men and body bags filled with people killed in action.
On the way down there, I stopped and looked off to the southwest to Hill 471 which was under assault from elements of the Walking Dead, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines. As I watched the tiny figures head up that hill, I thought about hand-to-hand combat, bombs and incoming, dead people. And then I went on down to the LZ where I sat for hours as chopper after chopper came in. When I tried to get on each one, the crew chief would shake his head or yell, “That’s a negative, Marine.”
Sometime during my wait, another Marine showed up who’d been through training with me back in The World. He was also going home. He was a lance corporal whose last name was R. He looked battered, skinny, his face gaunt after seventy-some-odd-days of incoming and pitched battles. He needed a new set of dungarees.
We chatted, but not much, mostly just sat there as I pondered all I’d seen. The horrors and the blood and the flesh separated from the tendons and bones of men I’d come to revere. Every time a loud noise sounded, R would flinch and so would I, and I wondered if I looked as bad as he did, and then I understood that I did.
A pile of filled body bags were stacked against a sandbagged revetment. I kept looking at them and wondering if I knew any of the intelligences that had once inhabited the remains.
Blogger Ken Rodgers at Khe Sanh, 1968. Photo courtesy of Michael E O’Hara.
Late in the day, a CH-46 came in and R and I got on along with those body bags. On the flight to Dong Ha, even though I was ordered to do so, I refused to sit down in case we took anti-aircraft fire through the bottom of the bird. I wanted to make the smallest target possible.
At Dong Ha I checked into the transient barracks and spent over an hour in the hot shower trying to get the red mud of Khe Sanh out of the pores of my skin, as if cleansing myself of the dirt of that place would purge me of all that I had seen.
Later, after chow—real chow, hot chow—I stood outside the mess tent with a group of Marines, one of whom I’d known well in boot camp and ITR. For several hours I listened to men talk about Tet and Hue and Con Thien, including that Marine. I could tell by the way he kept staring at me that he wanted to hear my tale. But I didn’t say anything about anything.
No words could dig their way from my thoughts to my mouth.
***
On the screening front: On April 7, at 1:00 PM Bravo will be screened at the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa, Idaho. following the screening, there will be a panel of Khe Sanh survivors who will talk about the experience. You can find out more about the event and the Warhawk Air Museum here.
At 3:00 PM on May 27, 2018, BRAVO! will be screened in Paris, TN at the Krider Performing Arts Center. You can find out more about this event and the Krider Performance Art Center here.
***
If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town, please contact us immediately.
DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a teacher, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/store/.
