We will be screening BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR in West Jefferson, North Carolina at 3:00 PM on Thursday, November 18. Come join us at the Parkway Theater. Filmmakers Betty and Ken Rodgers will be there in person to talk about the film along with Bruce and Francine Jones. Bruce served with the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines at Khe Sanh as did filmmaker Ken Rodgers.
On November 20th at 10:00 AM at the Library in West Jefferson, we will be screening our second film, I MARRIED THE WAR, about the wives of combat veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq. Francine Jones, one of the strong and courageous women in the film, will be on hand to discuss the project along with the filmmakers, Betty and Ken.
As Veterans Day approaches, our thoughts turn to the wars fought in our lives and our friends and loved ones who served, some living, some now gone. We think of them, see their faces, hear their voices.
Our films speak to some of the issues surrounding war and combat. We wouldn’t have been able to create these stories without the help of all our friends and supporters, who are many. Thank you!
Our first film, BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR, was about a lot of things: History, war, courage, danger and trauma. And a more visceral understanding of trauma may be one of the messages that many viewers have taken from that film.
Our new film, I MARRIED THE WAR, addresses the types of trauma that come home with some of the warriors of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan. The trauma that moves in with the family. The wives who must deal with helping their warriors integrate with the family, the world.
Here’s news on your chance to see this film now:
I Married the War: A Virtual World Premiere
Betty and Ken Rodgers at Syringa Cinema have announced the virtual world premiere of their documentary film, I Married the War, a story of war, homecoming, loss, resilience. A story of love.
The event will stream on Nov. 6 at 7 PM EDT and will conclude with a live Q&A with women featured in the film. Tickets are $12 each at eventive.com and can be purchased via https://imarriedthewar.com. (One dollar from each ticket, plus all additional donations, go to the Elizabeth Dole Foundation Hidden Heroes program, which seeks solutions to the tremendous challenges and long-term needs faced by military caregivers.)
I Married the War was edited by BAFTA award-winning veteran of the film industry, John Nutt. Director of Photography, Bill Krumm, a Silver Circle inductee of NATAS, has received multiple Emmy Awards for his work. The musical score was composed and performed by the celebrated composer, pianist, teacher, and blues/rock/soul singer-songwriter, Sarah Baker.
As long as mankind has waged war, women have waited and welcomed their warriors home, only to discover that the conflict dogs their husbands’ footsteps, bringing with it hyper-vigilance, isolation, anger, substance use, and emotional escapism—all manifestations of post-traumatic stress.
I Married the War gives voice to 11 wives of combat veterans from World War II to present-day Middle East wars. They are known as military caregivers, and they represent more than 5.5 million such caregivers in our nation alone. Listen as these remarkable women expose the emotional cost of war and its painful impact on their families. Learn how they cope, how they heal, and how they protect those they love. Share their struggle to hold on to their own hopes and desires.
The women of I MARRIED THE WAR
When Betty and Ken Rodgers married nearly forty years ago, Betty knew nothing about Post Traumatic Stress, Traumatic Brain Injury, and the many other manifestations of the trauma of combat. Ken had served as a Marine and experienced the 77-day siege of Khe Sanh during the Vietnam War. While producing and showing their award-winning film Bravo!, Common Men, Uncommon Valor, a documentary about the men who lived through that siege, Ken and Betty met hundreds of military caregivers. Betty recognized herself and her own marriage and personal xperience in the lives of these women. The pair realized how silent and unseen the plight of military caregivers is, and they were determined to make it visible. Six years in the making, I Married the War is now poised for this premiere.
The filmmakers
A portion of the proceeds of this screening will benefit The Elizabeth Dole Foundation’s HIDDEN HEROES project which provides programs to help spouses and other caregivers deal with what comes home from war with their loved ones
The entire team at Syringa Cinema wishes to thank Optum, Recovery Idaho, BPA Health, and Magellan Health for sponsoring this virtual event and honoring America’s military caregivers.
What others are saying about I MARRIED THE WAR:
“…a nuanced, heart-breaking, and, most of all, magnificently inspiring film.” — Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone
“A moving, fascinating, informative, haunting, inspiring film. It’s utterly stunning.” — Jean Hegland, author of Into the Forest.
Our new documentary film about the wives of combat survivors, I Married the War, is now finished.
The conversation is just beginning.
November 6th – 7:00 pm Eastern
Join us for the much-anticipated World Premiere of the groundbreaking film, I Married the War, and be among the first to see stories that expose the hidden costs of combat paid by women and families who welcome their warriors home from war.
This is your mother’s story, your spouse’s story, your sister’s or daughter’s story, YOUR STORY. Be with us on November 6th, 7:00 pm Eastern Time. AND don’t miss this opportunity to invite friends, family and other folks you believe need to see this film. You’ll enjoy this exciting virtual event from the comfort of your home.
Join friends all across the US and share in this moving tribute to courage, perseverance and, ultimately, love. Once the film concludes, we’ll go directly to a live Q&A panel discussion with the remarkable women from the film.
Many of you have made this film possible! It truly wouldn’t have been completed without your involvement, encouragement, and support. We’ve worked hard to get here, and we want you to be part of this exciting celebration!
Here is the link to purchase tickets and save your place.
Proceeds will enable further public education and provide logistical support for additional programs about this important and too often neglected subject. $1.00 from each ticket, plus ALL donations you make in addition to the ticket, will go directly to the inspiring Elizabeth Dole Foundation Hidden Heroes Program. The foundation is “the preeminent organization empowering, supporting, and honoring our nation’s military caregivers; the spouses, parents, family members and friends who care for America’s wounded, ill or injured veterans.”
Most of us have experienced the power of storytelling. We remember, catalogue, and relate our lives through story.
In the making, sharing, and viewing of BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR, we all learned a lot about war, combat, warriors, and post-combat issues. We also learned the healing power of film.
Now, Betty, our team, and I are in the final stages of sharing another story, that of wives of combat veterans. Stories that those of us who have experienced war know, but are little known outside the veteran population.
We want to share these stories and we need your help to get them out to the world. Interviewing for this film has been therapeutic for the women who are featured. Their openness and candor will be helpful to spouses everywhere who feel alone, who think there is no help for them and their families.
The photo below is of the eleven wives of I MARRIED THE WAR.
Today, we have launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign and we need your help to finish and share these stories of the wives of combat veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Join this effort by contributing today, or if you cannot donate right now, please share this information about our campaign with your family, friends and colleagues.
You can find out more about the campaign at https://igg.me/at/IMTW.
Together, we can get these stories out to the world!
Greetings from BRAVO!. We have some really great news to share.
Last year we sold out of DVDs and it took a while to choose the best source for manufacturing a new lot. But we got it done, and are happy to say there are plenty of brand new DVDs in stock. If you’d like one for yourself, or have been planning to gift DVDs to a veteran, friend, relative, or library, they are again available for purchase here.
If you prefer to watch your movies through digital download, BRAVO! is still available on Amazon Prime Video here.
For your friends or family in the UK, BRAVO! is also available here.
And because you’ve had such a positive impact on our passion for exploring large issues through intimate stories, and educating the world about the cost of war to humanity, we invite you to learn more about our current film project, I MARRIED THE WAR. This new documentary, now in post-production, is the story of wives of combat veterans from World War II to the present. As with BRAVO!, it, too, can educate the wider public and has the potential to reach thousands—if not millions—of citizens who can be helped by this story.
We invite you to join the effort with your financial support, and to learn more about this new endeavor here.
Thank you for your continued interest, encouragement, and support of our efforts to foster a dialogue about the lasting costs of war.
Betty and I journeyed to my old home town the week of March 4 to screen BRAVO! at the historic Paramount Theatre. The event was sponsored by Casa Grande, Arizona’s Marine Corps League Detachment 901 and was part of a larger slate of events including the Arizona Marine Corps League’s annual spring gathering along with the arrival of The Wall That Heals. You can find out more about The Wall That Heals here.
While in Casa Grande, we met with a group of Vietnam vets and helped raise and lower the colors at the Wall That Heals. We were introduced to Marine Corps League dignitaries and spoke to the League’s leaders about BRAVO! and the power held by a story of committed warriors fighting on in the face of long odds as did the Marines, Sailors, the Army, Air Force and ARVN personnel who were present at the Siege of Khe Sanh.
The Marine Corps League Meeting at the Paramount Theatre, Casa Grande, AZ. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers.
We screened the film twice, once to a small group of veterans and other interested folks, some of whom were present at Khe Sanh during the siege. We also screened the film to a large general audience and it was gratifying to see some of my old friends the Millers, the Hoopers, Marine Corps veteran Charlie Pierce and his wife Nancy come and watch the story. A lot of Vietnam veterans came to this showing and a number of them were in some way affiliated with the siege: pilots, crew chiefs, recon Marines, grunts, Seabees, communicators.
At both screenings, we had lively discussions about filmmaking, Khe Sanh and war.
Much thanks is in order to our wonderful new friends, Retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Ross Scanio and his wife Renee, for putting the events together, and to Debby Martin, who provided the beautiful space for the screenings. Kudos, too, to Palmer Miller III and Lyle Dillie, warriors turned artists who provided combat art to enhance the experience. Thanks to Palmer and the Scanios for making a generous gift of one of Palmer’s unique American Flag paintings to Betty and me.
Left to Right: Ken Rodgers, Betty Rodgers, Debby Martin of the Paramount Theatre, Ross Scanio. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers.
Renee Scanio was very interested in helping us get the word out about our new film, I MARRIED THE WAR, (you can find out more about the film here.) and voiced an appeal for funds to finish the editing of the film. Many thanks to Renee for her enthusiasm and support, and to Ross for his passion to serve fellow veterans.
On the evening of March 8, Betty and I attended a candlelight ceremony complete with bagpipes at The Wall That Heals. Some of the names on the wall are kids I went to school with: John Henry Armstrong and Wes Patterson and Efren Carmona and Guadalupe Rendon to name a few. I remember their vitality and how those moments we shared as boys are forever etched in my recall.
Betty and I also spent some time finding the names of men I served with in Vietnam and knew in some regard: Ed Furlong, Dutch Vercouteren, Ken Claire, Don Jacques, Greg Kent, Jimmy L McRae, and David Aldrich, to name some of those warriors. And with each and every one, images of those Marines and other veterans stepped out of the mist of remembrance to look me in the eye and it felt like they wanted to speak to me, but too much time and too much life had intervened.
At The Wall That Heals, March 8, 2019, Casa Grande, Arizona. Photo courtesy of Ken Rodgers
On March 29th we will be in La Grande, Oregon, to screen BRAVO! in recognition of National Vietnam War Veterans Day. The event will be held at Eastern Oregon University, in Room 102, Huber Auditorium in Badgley Hall Building, One University Avenue. You will be able to get tickets at the door and the donation will be $10.00 and $5.00 for students under 18. Proceeds will go to benefit veteran programs of American Legion Post 43. This will be an opportunity to meet Ron Rees, one of 14 Marines in the film, and his dynamic wife and veteran’s advocate, Tami.
Doors open at 5:00 PM for refreshments. Film will begin screening at 6:00 PM and will be followed by a Q & A session.
For more information about this screening, check out our Facebook event here: or contact Tami at 541-805-9565.
Here’s a copy of the poster for the La Grande Screening:
Poster for La Grande, Oregon screening of March 29, 2019
***
BRAVO! is now available in digital form on Amazon Prime.
This link will take you directly to BRAVO!’s Amazon Prime site where you can take a look at the options for streaming: In the US you can stream at https://amzn.to/2Hzf6In.
For BRAVO!, in many ways, this was a banner year. We continued to meet new people, screen the film, and in early April we managed to get the film up on Amazon Prime. In the process, we received over 130 great reviews that reinforced our decision to make this documentary and spend the next eight years getting it out to the public.
But in one way it was a profoundly sad year for us and the surviving Marines and Corpsmen of Bravo, 1/26. We lost our Skipper in late April, and it hurt. Ken Pipes was a man who profoundly affected the men whom he led during the Siege of Khe Sanh. He was our leader, adviser, our good friend; and his leaving left holes in our perceptions of our world, the future and where we go from here.
As so often happens with funerals, we were fortunate to meet up with a lot of our Khe Sanh comrades and other friends of BRAVO! at both the memorial service for Ken Pipes as well as his interment ceremony in San Diego at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. If you get the chance to pay your respects, you will find that the Skipper rests in one of the most beautiful locations in California.
Filmmakers Betty and Ken Rodgers. Photo courtesy of Don Johnson.
On the screening front, in early April, BRAVO! was shown to an enthusiastic crowd of close to five hundred folks at Nampa, Idaho’s Warhawk Air Museum, and over the Memorial Day weekend, friend of BRAVO!, Vietnam Veteran Marine Barry Hart, hosted a very successful screening in Paris, Tennessee.
When we began this journey, we didn’t know where the path would lead us and we are continually surprised by the people we meet and the places we go related to this film. Over the last ten years, many times, I’ve foreseen the end of the road, only to have it veer off in a new and surprisingly satisfactory direction.
Even as we make our new film, I MARRIED THE WAR, (See more here) about the wives of combat veterans from World War II to the present conflicts, I suspect that BRAVO!, as Steve Wiese likes to say, “will live on.”
So, to all our friends and followers, we wish you a fabulous 2019. We are eternally grateful for your interest, friendship, and support. Our work wouldn’t be possible without you.
***
On a separate note:
Betty and I are making another film titled I MARRIED THE WAR, about the wives of combat veterans from World War II until the present. We have finished interviewing eleven dynamic wives and have now embarked on turning their stories into a documentary film.
I Married the War
We are soliciting donations to help us get this movie edited, sound mixed and color corrected. If you are in a giving frame of mind, please check out the website for the new film at http://imarriedthewar.com/ and scroll down to the section about donating.
We appreciate our friends and followers and know we cannot succeed at our filmmaking efforts without their generous support.
***
BRAVO! is now available in digital form on Amazon Prime.
This link will take you directly to BRAVO!’s Amazon Prime site where you can take a look at the options for streaming: In the US you can stream at https://amzn.to/2Hzf6In.
The Christmas season is upon us and as I do every year, I think about many of the Christmases I’ve lived through including my tour with the 26th Marines in Vietnam.
In the house where I grew up, we celebrated Christmas with lots of hoopla and family and giving and eating and singing Christmas carols, getting bicycles and sleeping bags and new shotguns. So when I went to Nam, I harbored expectations that Christmas might still be something special. But it wasn’t, at least not in the traditional sense of the festivities to which I was accustomed.
A story that I often see mentioned in articles on the internet describes Christmas on the Western Front, World War I, 1914. Across the British-German trench lines, combatants on both sides met and observed spontaneous and unofficial truces and exhibited a more Christ-like behavior to one another than they had been practicing during the preceding months. Although in some places, this apparently did not happen and there were some vicious battles fought on Christmas Day between Allied and German troops.
Christmas on Hill 881 South, 1967. Jimmie McRae. Photo courtesy of Michael E. O’Hara.
I don’t think Christmas truces happened in World War II or Korea, but I believe the opposing powers, the NVA and Vietcong and the US and its allies, declared one every year from 1965 through 1972 in Vietnam. It seems to me the truces served as an attempt to recognize that some level of humanity remained in the most savage of human interactions.
In 1967, the Christmas truce was in effect, but few of the Marines with Bravo 1/26 up on 881 South believed it would come to pass. We ran a long patrol the day before Christmas, we ran a short patrol on Christmas Day followed by hot chow that was delivered up on the hill via chopper from the combat base. We got some mail and although I can’t say for certain, I suspect I received hand-dipped chocolate bonbons and cookies and white cotton socks and candles from my family, all of which I shared around the squad.
On Christmas Eve, we had a church service and before I went on watch, I decided to go down and participate. On the way to the tent where they held the service, I listened to men softly speaking about the holiday and whether or not the truce would hold.
Blogger Ken Rodgers at Khe Sanh, 1968. Photo courtesy of Michael E O’Hara.
In the church tent, the chaplain and his assistant led a non-denominational service that included some songs, communion, a sermon with some readings from the Bible. One of the songs, I think it was the last one we sang—which I didn’t sing even though we had been given reproduced copies of the words—was altered from the original “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” (also known as the Navy Hymn) written by William Whiting and adapted with the all-service lyrics and an added stanza composed specifically for the Marine Corps which read:
Eternal Father, grant , we pray, To all Marines, both night and day, The courage, honor, strength and skill Their land to serve, Thy law fulfill; Be Thou the Shield forevermore From ev’ry peril to the Corps.
While everybody else was singing I heard the words, “Fire Mission called in to the 81mm mortar battery just outside the church service. That was followed by mortars leaving the tube, the crash of them off to the west, towards Laos, and I wondered who was out on Christmas Eve, during the Christmas truce, that needed a fire mission. Maybe it was just the regular interdiction barrages we sent out, or maybe it was a recon team out there in danger.
I thought it all pretty weird. Truce and Christmas and Jesus’ birthday and the words to that hymn and killing and 81mm mortars.
It jarred me on a spiritual level. Deep and hard and so damned incongruous.
I went back and hit the rack but soon was awakened by the words, “Red Alert.” So, there wasn’t a Christmas truce at all, and I wondered who decided there was or wasn’t, and we all stood watch, all night, the fog so thick you could almost lean up against it. Gloomy and full of the ghosts of doubt and death and fear.
But we weren’t attacked that night. We didn’t hear any sound of sappers sneaking up to the wire. We didn’t hear anything but the occasional cough of a Marine on watch or the soft cries of someone in a nightmare.
***
On a separate note:
Betty and I are making another film titled I MARRIED THE WAR, about the wives of combat veterans from World War II until the present. We have finished interviewing eleven dynamic wives and have now embarked on turning their stories into a documentary film.
I Married the War
We are soliciting donations to help us get this movie edited, sound mixed and color corrected. If you are in a giving frame of mind, please check out the website for the new film at http://imarriedthewar.com/ and scroll down to the section about donating.
We appreciate our friends and followers and know we cannot succeed at our filmmaking efforts without their generous support.
***
BRAVO! is now available in digital form on Amazon Prime.
This link will take you directly to BRAVO!’s Amazon Prime site where you can take a look at the options for streaming: In the US you can stream at https://amzn.to/2Hzf6In.
It’s 2017 and as always my mind turns to thoughts of the coming months as well as the approach of the anniversary of the Siege of Khe Sanh.
What I am going to dwell on right now is the stories we tell through our films BRAVO! and I MARRIED THE WAR, which is now in production.
Recently I had a discussion with a retired Army veteran about what we are trying to do with these projects.
Initially, with the making of BRAVO! I think we saw the effort as storytelling in its simplest notion. We saw the film as a narrative about a small unit of Marines at the Siege of Khe Sanh which, having lived through it, I personally thought was an amazing tale of bravery, death and endurance.
I don’t know that I can speak for Betty here, but for me, in the beginning, it was just about getting the story told and I wasn’t thinking about what good the film might do in terms of secondary reasons.
Nevertheless, during the journey we have made with BRAVO! from 2009 to today, we have become keenly aware that there are other reasons to make and screen these films about war and its aftermath.
In 2013 Terry Hubert, who was a Marine who served in Vietnam and was instrumental in helping us screen BRAVO! in a variety of venues in the west, advised us that our duty as filmmakers—or our primary duty as filmmakers—is to educate.
I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of American citizens have very little knowledge of the true cost of war—both during deployment, during combat and the years after the warrior comes home.
Betty and Ken Rodgers, co-producers, co-directors. Photo courtesy of Don Johnson.
So, I think it’s fair to say that for both Betty and me, filmmaking is a process by which we can help educate the American public—the world—about the costs of combat. In addition, these films are an opportunity to present some history that a lot of our citizens are not aware of, or if they are aware, it’s often in a way that doesn’t reveal the visceral magnitude of war and its aftermath.
But there is something more to be said about these films and the mental chronicle of their participant’s lives, and a large number of those stories beg to be told and by making our films we allow the folks we interview, as well as viewers who have similar stories to relive, to rethink and revalue certain experiences that have been part of their lives.
Stories of being trapped in battle, seeing the death of friends, and being shunned for the most part by your fellow citizens, are important narratives not only as educational tools but also as vehicles for the storytellers to articulate and examine their lives and the meaning of their experiences.
This type of benefit seems to drill down, for me, to something more personal, more individual. A woman or a man tells her or his story of war and horror and caregiving that has for all intents and purposes remained untold. After telling the story, the load seems to lighten to some degree. It happened to me and I know it happened to a number of the men we interviewed for BRAVO!, and there are indications that the same is true for at least some of the women in I MARRIED THE WAR.
A similar benefit of these stories happens when a viewer of one of these films has his/her own moments that allows him/her to process experiences.
One particular instance comes to mind. We screened BRAVO! in California a few years back and one of the folks who came to see the film was a Khe Sanh Veteran who had survived the Siege as an artillery man and who went on to stay in the Corps and reach the rank of gunnery sergeant before getting out. After leaving the Corps, this gentleman’s life nosedived and he found himself living in a dumpster in San Francisco.
When we met him, he was in a halfway house for folks trying to kick abusive addiction. I spoke to him before the screening and found his dialogue to be extremely fractured and the folks hosting the screening were concerned he may have a breakdown if he watched the film.
So, as he watched, we watched him. After the film was over he came up to our co-producer, Carol Caldwell-Ewart, and very calmly and coherently touched his chest and said, “Thank you for making this film. It relieved my heart.”
That scene is etched in my memory and every time I recall it I feel that all the resources and emotional effort spent on the film were worth it. For a moment—I don’t know how long—we helped someone, and we did so because we told a story. It wasn’t his story specifically, but in a more general sense, it was: He lived through the Siege of Khe Sanh. We often hear from other folks, too, who served elsewhere in Vietnam, who say that BRAVO! tells their story, too.
We also often hear: Wow, that’s the true story of combat.
But the reactions we hear don’t stop there. It seems the messages people gain from the film cast a wider net, such as, for instance, people commenting: Now I understand my dad, or thanks for showing our story, or thanks for not gussying the story up with nothing but images of noble sacrifice like they do in Hollywood.
Marines from Second Platoon, Bravo Company, Gray Sector, Khe Sanh Combat Base. Photo courtesy of Michael E. O’Hara
So, thanks to my veteran friend for leading me into the discussion about what it is we do with our films, which prompted me to sit and think about what it is we really do.
We educate, yes, but we really want to get down to the personal level and help people understand on a level that just reading history doesn’t often deliver. Not that reading is bad. It’s extremely important, too.
But there’s nothing like a film that pulls you in on an emotional level that makes what you watch so personal, it becomes your story, too. And you find yourself caring about the characters because you see yourself in them. This is what we also hope to accomplish with our telling these important stories and the history they impart.
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/.
Thirteen days ago Betty and I left San Antonio, Texas, after the completion of the 2016 Khe Sanh Veterans reunion. We were glad to see all our Khe Sanh Veteran friends, and to meet some folks we hadn’t met before.
We were also saddened because a lot of the men in BRAVO!, a number of whom we interviewed in San Antonio at the same location in 2010, were not able to be with us for a number of reasons. We did get to see and visit with John “Doc” Cicala, Frank McCauley and Tom Quigley who are in the film. As always, it was great to talk about the present and to remember the past. It is especially nice to sit and talk to men who are the only ones who understand what one went through at Khe Sanh.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire, New Mexico. Photo courtesy of Ken Rodger
Besides Doc Cicala and Frank McCauley and Tom Quigley, we also got to spend time with Marines and Corpsmen of Bravo 1/26, Bruce “T-Bone” Jones, Mike McIntyre, and Jim “Doc” Beal. What a heartening time we had with these fine men.
After all these years we tell our tales, our eyes big, sometimes with the faint acceleration of the heartbeat. Sometimes we slap a table top and laugh, some somber and dark moment remembered because of the black humor we employed to mitigate the constant fear that ground inside our guts.
Marines and Corpsmen of Bravo, 1/26. Left to Right: Ken Rodgers. John Cicala, Bruce Jones, Jim Beal, Mike McIntyre. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers.
While in San Antonio visiting with our friends and comrades, we spent some time working on our new project, a documentary film about the wives of combat veterans. The working title for this new effort is I MARRIED THE WAR.
We met with a woman whose husband, whom we also spent time with, served during the Middle East war. In addition, we met a couple who have been married since he came home after the war in Vietnam. In addition, we also visited with a woman from the east coast whom we will interview about her experiences as the spouse of a Khe Sanh vet.
On our journey down to San Antonio from our home in Idaho, we managed to stop and spend a few moments of reflection at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Angel Fire, New Mexico. The memorial is a somberly beautiful structure that seemed to fit in an almost ungainly way against the flaming autumn colors of the surrounding Sangre de Christo Mountains. It wasn’t a complementary fit between the memorial and the red, golds and russets of the aspen and cottonwoods and maples and oaks. It was something more with a hint of irony. The memorializing of something horrible in contrast with something beautiful. The man-created versus the natural, and the stark dissimilarity between the two, was quite marked and emotionally attractive.
BRAVO! co-producer Betty Rodgers, left, and BRAVO! Marine Frank McCauley. Photo courtesy of Ken Rodgers
Betty and I also had the opportunity to spend some time with our longtime friends from Central Texas, Mary and Roger Engle.
We got to visit with Gregg Jones, author of LAST STAND AT KHE SANH. Gregg was in town speaking to a group associated with B-24 crews from World War II about his upcoming book concerning the B-24 Liberators of World War II.
The 2016 Khe Sanh Veterans Reunion was a fine experience, and on the road home, as always, we made time to stop and spend some moments taking in the locales we passed through. Particularly meaningful was the opportunity to journey off the more beaten paths of freeways and national highways and go to Pleasant Hill, New Mexico, in search of the grave site of Ken Pipes’ great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson Pipes, who is buried in the Pleasant Hill Cemetery. Ken Pipes was the Skipper of Bravo Company, 1/26, and is dearly revered by the surviving men who served under him.
Ken Rodgers at the grave site of A J Pipes in Pleasant Hill, New Mexico. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers.
Pleasant Hill isn’t a town, it’s a community of farmers and cattle ranchers near the border with Texas. The locals congregate around a fire house, a church and the cemetery which are all separated by a quarter or half section of farm or grazing ground. The land is flat, part of the high plains where the wind loves to blow and you can see for miles.
We did find the Skipper’s great-grandfather’s grave, and it has been well maintained.
One of the many other ironies and coincidences I thought about on the trip was how, in the 1980s, I used to hunt pheasant at Pleasant Hill, New Mexico. At the time I had no idea the Skipper had relations buried in the cemetery there. I didn’t know anything about the Skipper other than he had led us through the Siege of Khe Sanh and he let me leave Khe Sanh a day earlier than my orders allowed. I can see him now in my mind as I recall him then, sitting in the Bravo Company command post, his arm in a sling and other parts of his body bandaged in clean white material already smudged with the blood red mud of Khe Sanh.
Adding to the eerie air of coincidence is the notion that my great–grandfather was also named Andrew Jackson, last name Rodgers, who also hailed from the same region as the Skipper’s Andrew Jackson.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in San Antonio, Texas. Photo courtesy of Ken Rodgers.
And then it was home for a time to get caught up before we move on with BRAVO! And I MARRIED THE WAR.
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/.
