Yesterday I awoke early, when the dark still hung from the eaves and leered into my dreams like spirits of long-lost warriors. It was January 21, 2014. Most January 21sts are like that for me…an early awakening, an early rising, coffee and pondering January 21, 1968, the beginning of the Siege of Khe Sanh.

Here in Idaho it was dark and foggy and the stench of inversion settled into every crevice it could get its stinky fingers into. I thought about the men I served with and where they are now, if they are anywhere, and what they are doing and whether or not I am in contact with them. I thought about the day before the beginning of the Siege, and how it became clear to me that my experience in Vietnam was about to become more violent, and I thought about the night before as Puff the Magic Dragon spit curving arcs of red death at the NVA out in front of my bunker. I thought about the awful shock of being awakened around 5:30 AM on the 21st by a crescendo of terror that shook the ground, and frankly, shook me, too.

Still groggy from sleep, I got my gear and bolted into the trench, and light and fire and noise drove me into the bottom of the trench, on my face. Something thudded into my lower back below my flak jacket. My back and jungle dungarees sizzled and I smelled singed flesh and I wondered if I could move my legs. I started screaming, “I’m hit, I’m hit.”

Steve Foster, who was in my fireteam, scrambled over and began to laugh. Normally you would think that someone who would laugh at another man’s wounds was really weird but if you knew Foster, well… He scraped whatever was on my back and got his face close to my ear and said, “It’s only clods.” And then he laughed some more.

Ken Rodgers at Khe Sanh, Courtesy of the Estate of Dan Horton

I rose and went to my fighting hole and someone came by and ordered me into the machine gun bunker close by which was manned by wounded men, one with a huge gash in his shin and another with his face bandaged so he couldn’t open his mouth, and his arm in a sling. We watched outside for the enemy to overrun us, but they never came. The gas from the exploding ammo dump, which was close by, forced us to put on gas masks.

It wasn’t much better for the next seventy-seven days. And a lot of those days were worse than January 21, 1968.

For years I kept my memories of that day secret. Only I was allowed access to those terrifying moments that crept up my spine and stopped me in the middle of whatever I was doing. Nobody cared much about what happened to me at Khe Sanh unless they knew me well or were at the Siege or went through something similar. All of us Vietnam Vets were hibernating, I think, until it became cool to have been a veteran of the Vietnam conflict. As long as we let our memories sleep, we were almost the same as being gagged.

But now, the stories are rolling out of us like a river that has finally thawed. We are speaking and we are telling our story, about our war—not our fathers’ war, but our war—which in its own way was as nasty and deadly as any war fought any time or place.

Part of the story of Khe Sanh has been told by Betty and me in our film, BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR. It is not the only story, by any means, but it is my story and it is the story of the company of Marines I served with and in many ways it is a story that speaks for all Vietnam Veterans and maybe even veterans of other wars.

Marine and BRAVO! supporter extraordinaire Terry Hubert says that our job—Betty’s and mine—is to educate, and we hope that the film educates folks about what Vietnam Veterans went through and what it means to us now. There are messages in the film, it seems, that speak to some universal truths about conflict and humanity.

Part of the way we are educating America about the Vietnam War is by traveling around the country to give screenings. We are getting set to hit the road and travel to my home town of Casa Grande, Arizona, where we will screen the film in the historic Paramount Theatre on February 13 at 7:00 PM. In addition to educating folks, the proceeds from the screening of BRAVO! (entree fee is $10.00) will help fund the Pinal County Veterans Memorial.

If you are in the area, come by and catch a look at this powerful and poignant film. We’d really like to meet you, or get reacquainted if we have already met. You can find out more details about the Casa Grande screening at http://www.paramountfoundation.org/EVENTS.html.

On March 22, 2014, BRAVO! will be screened at VFW Post 1924 in Fallbrook, CA. BRAVO! Skipper Ken Pipes lives in the area and will be on hand along with Betty and me when we show up to screen the film. More details to come on this screening.

On March 29, 2014, BRAVO! is provisionally scheduled to screen for veterans incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California. As soon as we know more, we will provide the information.

On March 30, Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day, we will be on board the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, The National Liberty Ship Memorial at Pier 45, Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, CA. The proceeds from this screening will benefit the SS Jeremiah O’Brien’s Memorial. Again, more details are to come.

Another way we are trying to educate the public about the Vietnam War is through the sale of DVDs. For more information about purchasing BRAVO! DVDs, go to http://bit.ly/18Pgxe5.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way we can spread the word about the film and the Vietnam War.

Early this morning I went out and walked the twenty-minute road from the guest quarters up to the Tech Building here at Skywalker Ranch. The fog hung over the surrounding hilltops and shrouded the redwood trees. Ravens squawked and robins twittered; myriad other birds tweeted, chirped and buzzed. Without binoculars I could not identify the species I was seeing.

Last night Betty and I saw flocks of turkeys. In one flock six poults no bigger than my fist scurried around with the hens and the toms as they foraged their way through the puffed white remnants of dandelion blooms and other various plants that have turned brown and stiff in the summer’s weal. As I watched them I thought how vulnerable they were to skunks, raccoons, foxes, coyotes and the various large raptors that inhabit these coastal redwood ecoregions.

That vulnerability reminded me of what we came here for. To sound mix our film. And the subject matter—the Siege of Khe Sanh—and how we were so like these poults, we young Marines as we hunkered down in our holes and trenches and waited out the constant battering of artillery and mortar and rocket and sniper fire. How we waited to become unlike the poults, these foragers and defenders, to become more like the raptors, these hunters and killers, raiders, shock troops. Move to contact. Search and destroy. How we waited. How we waited, until we could join with the enemy and then the cataclysm, the personal cataclysm, like living the most frightening Old Testament war scenes, Joshua fit the battle of Jericho…stuff like that.

After breakfast Betty and I moved up to the Tech Building and sat in a modern, high tech sound theater and watched Mark Berger and John Nutt work their craft. Patience and skill…each moment had to be perfect. The sound not too loud, but loud enough so that the viewer knows viscerally how savagery feels. Sometimes they skirmished, more often they agreed, about how one thread of sound needed to work with other sounds. The result coaxes and coerces, seduces, cajoles and scares. Betty and I and our daughter Sarah and our son-in-law Baruch sat in leather chairs and couches, as we watched Mark and John work through scene after scene. Later we went up to the main house and after a tour of the library, dined on gourmet chow.

When we left the sound theater this evening, I felt as if I had been assaulted. My stomach hurt and my nerves were shot, frayed like the ends of a nylon parachute rope. The war crouched in the back of my throat, big and blustery, sneering and dangerous.

Soon we will be finished.

Betty and I arrived in Rochester, MN with anticipation caught up beneath our lungs like gear jammed in a rucksack. What would these men of Bravo Company think about seeing themselves rendered on film like we had seen them…exposed, frightened, defiant, brave and glorious.

We were nervous. Excited. Even a little fearful.  Weather veered from hot and muggy to cool and windy, to rain, to overcast. The strawberry pannenkoeken were delicious, the Minnesota accents like cue balls clicking off the sides of nine balls. The Mayo Clinic loomed gigantic across the street and beckoned people from all over the world; all religions, and colors. The burkas, the kangas, the cowboy boots.

Every time I leave one of these Khe Sanh Veterans’ reunions I say I’ll never go to another. I have nothing in common with the other attendees but for the past experience of sitting in red mud waiting for the next NVA mortar to arrive. Waiting to live or die. Who needs those memories? Not that we don’t deal with thoughts and fears of the gulf between life and death all through our lives. But in our normal lives, life and death’s urgency gets kicked to the back of the six-by while we deal with traffic and bosses and spouses, children, the dog and cat, cleaning the garage. But at Khe Sanh, the conflict between living and dying clutched our throats moment to moment to moment. Like the hot breath of an Indochinese tiger pursuing us down the trail through a bamboo thicket.

We have nothing in common, nothing in common except….

But then the reunion date approaches and I become anxious and begin to remember forty-three years past and I begin to remember the reunion the prior year. Some men die between reunions, and I didn’t get to spend enough time with them. Some men don’t come back to the reunion, something made them angry, an incautious word may have stabbed them like a bayonet. It hurt. Some of us show up as if we are seeking things we lost and cannot find. As summer approaches, I need to move. I am drawn like a chunk of slag to a magnet.

As we showed the latest cut of Bravo! to the interviewees, I felt my heart hammer in my chest. Will they like it? Will they hate it? Will they hate us for exposing them? Did we get the story right?

I think we did. Most said so. Some acted as if we had released over forty years of pent-up rage and fear. Some said very little. Betty and I choose to believe it was a success. We pleased the ones who mattered most.

Later, we showed it again to the greater membership of the Khe Sanh Veterans. I had similar fears, and different ones, too. Would they be angry because we didn’t include them in the movie? Would they find it credible? Again, the response was generous. Men and women had tears in their eyes; they gave hugs of gratitude to Betty and me. Not that some men didn’t have issues. They did, and if they didn’t I would wonder if the movie was really effective.

So now we are back home in Boise, getting laundry done and bags packed for the next leg of Betty and Ken’s fantastic journey. On to Skywalker Ranch, Marin County, CA to do the final sound mix.

I think we are almost finished with the movie. I hope so. I need to get shed of the nightmares this movie inserts into my dreams. Now we just need to get it seen.

In the latest update to the saga of Bravo!, co-producer Betty Rodgers remembers the people who made the film possible. And the events. And a few places.

The next step on our serendipitous journey was hearing the news from our profoundly creative editor, John Nutt, that he had arranged to complete our final sound mix at Skywalker Ranch in northern California.  Yes, as in Lucas Films, as in George Lucas!  John had said all along it would be great to mix it there, but these fledgling filmmakers knew little of the possibility.  The thought sounded very exciting, but when the mixing room was actually scheduled, it was nearly overwhelming.

John also explained that we needed to call and make arrangements to stay at Skywalker Inn because the days would be very intense, and we wouldn’t want to make the long drive to and from Skywalker Ranch every day.  It is located out in the hinterlands of Marin County.  So yes, we have confirmed our reservations.

As if that weren’t enough excitement, we then learned from John, a Stella recipient himself, that his colleague Mark Berger would do the final mixing.  Mark has won four Academy Awards and several Stellas (the British equivalent of an Oscar) for his work.  The thought of being in the mixing room…at Skywalker Ranch…with Mark Berger…and John Nutt…and my own husband who was a courageous Marine and is a brilliant mind, author and teacher in his own right…wow.  This is the stuff of which filmmakers’ dreams are made.

And it’s not just in the film end of this enterprise, but in all the avenues down which we need to proceed.  We can’t help but remember one of the first people to volunteer their expertise.   Dave Beyerlein, a website developer and cousin of a dear friend of ours, knew we were trying to put together something for Bravo!  A former Marine himself, Dave patiently guided us through the steps and did most of the work setting up www.bravotheproject.com.  Our feeble attempts to learn social networking skills were then rescued by Eric Jacky, Amanda Turner, and now our nephew, Galen Rodgers.  All these youngsters are carrying us, Bravo Company, and this film with them into the future. 

Bravo! has also received media attention:  The Springfield, IL, State Journal-Register, the Alamogordo Daily News, the Idaho Statesman, the Casa Grande Dispatch, the Arizona Republic, Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star, and probably others we aren’t even aware of.  A friend of mine since high school, Frances Rae, wrote about Bravo! in northern California’s Territorial Dispatch.  Author and radio personality Amanda Turner has scheduled Ken for her show, the Writer’s Block, on September 15.  Tune in for live streaming on your computer at Noon MDT at www.radiowritersblock.com.

And so here we are today, scrambling to make all the final decisions and tie up loose ends, dealing with licensing and rights and permissions and where our dollars will best be spent.  And we realize how this project would have never come this far, this fast, without the continuing support and encouragement of our generous donors, friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, strangers, and people who know and respect the veterans who gave so much.  There are people who have checked in with us regularly with an inspiring thought, a word of encouragement, a nudge in the right direction, who understand the enormity and complexity of our undertaking.  There are people who have bent over backwards to provide helpful advice and information as we walk this path.

And all of this…all of it…because of the 18-year-old boys who were not afraid to put their own lives on the line, to go off to war on foreign soil in order to help preserve freedom and save a country from oppression.  They saw horrors they never want their children or grandchildren to experience, they did exactly what they were trained to do, they lost buddies and witnessed and exhibited heroism, and they will never forget this experience that changed their lives forever.  This is the story we are telling in Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor.   We are telling it because these men speak for all veterans, everywhere.

In the words of Alan Heathcock, author of VOLT (www.alanheathcock.com), “This film is an important historical and human document, priceless in its truth. I saw an early cut of this film and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. The men of Bravo Company, who survived the siege of Khe Sanh, deserve to have their voices heard.”

Carol Caldwell-Ewart, Team Bravo’s online impressaria, says, “I saw the current cut of the film last night for the first time, and I believe that all who see it will be powerfully moved. It tells the story of this siege and its aftermath in the lives of the men who fought there with no flash and no glorification—it simply reveals the beauty of their love and sacrifice, their pain and courage and endurance.”

We have two days left on our Indiegogo fundraising campaign.  Donors have carried us over the top, but there are many more expenses ahead.  Please help spread the word so more people can join our other generous donors and be part of telling this important story.  www.indiegogo.com/bravo-common-men-uncommon-valor.  

Bravo! co-producer Betty Rodgers is getting her camera ready to take to western Marin country.