Fifty-one years ago today at Khe Sanh, Marines from 1st and 3rd Platoons of Bravo/1/26 went out on patrol from the combat base and walked into an ambush that killed 27 Marines and Corpsmen and wrecked the psyches and memories of a hell of a bunch of young warriors.

This event, now known as the Ghost Patrol, has been written about a lot by both me and other folks, and it was the subject of a field problem in the Scouting and Patrolling Course at the United States Marine Corps Basic School where all new Marine Corps officers and warrant officers receive training. So what I say here isn’t any revelation of new events.

What strikes me now, after all these years, is how raw the memories can be when someone recalls the names, the weather, the terrain, the terror of that day.

For those who survived, the memories are indelibly scratched into the psyche and cannot be kicked out of the mind. For those of us there who witnessed that massacre in one way or another—what happened—the memories are also pretty much inescapable.

Marines on The Ghost Patrol. Photo Courtesy of Robert Ellison/Blackstar

But it’s not just the combatants who live with images of those men. There are also the families who haven’t been able to forget, either.
Since Betty and I made BRAVO!, we have had a lot of communications with folks who lost family members at Khe Sanh.

I recall one day picking up my cell phone and seeing I had a voicemail message from the brother of a Marine killed on the Ghost Patrol. He had found me by chance when he discovered a DVD of BRAVO! in a museum. He hadn’t known about the film until then, and was stunned to see his brother’s name listed in the litany of the dead from that terrible day, February 25. We talked a number of times and I told him I did not know his brother, but if I could help him with any info, I’d be happy to do so.

Then I remembered that a friend of ours had sent a donation to memorialize this Marine in the film credits. In fact, he had recovered the Marine’s remains when a patrol from Bravo and Delta Companies, 1/26, went out and retrieved them.

Here’s what really sticks with Betty and me. My Marine buddy and the brother were able to meet up and talk about memories, about what happened, and hopefully the get-together helped the deceased Marine’s brother process the recollections and questions that had flooded his mind for over fifty years.

Stark image from the Ghost Patrol. Photo courtesy of Robert Ellison/Blackstar

Not long after, I received a call from another man whose brother was also KIA on the Ghost Patrol. I knew that Marine, not well, but still, we’d arrived at Bravo Company about the same time and although he went to a different platoon, my recollections of his renown as a joker, a gung-ho Marine, an ebullient young man who entertained his comrades, matched the brother’s memories.

We discussed that Marine and the film and I could tell from the telephone conversation that what I said had helped him settle something in his thoughts—what it was I have no idea, but it was palpable over the phone.

When we set out to make BRAVO! it was an endeavor to tell the story, preserve the history if for no one else, at least for me. But the creation of the film has turned into so much more for not just Betty and me, but also for lots of other folks who have those memories and ties that they don’t want to chuck out like a set of dirty dungarees. After all the years, the intimate pain still grates.

BRAVO! lives on and as proof, we have more screenings coming up in March.

Blogger Ken Rodgers while at Khe Sanh. Photo courtesy of Michael E. O’Hara.

On March 9, 2019 at 5 PM the film will be screened at the Paramount Theatre in Casa Grande, Arizona—my hometown—in association with the Arizona Marine Corps League’s spring convention. The screening is open to the general public. The event will begin with a panel discussion followed by the film, then a Q&A will end the evening. Proceeds from the event—a $10 advance donation per attendee or $15 at the door or VIP seating at $15.00—will go towards funding the Marine For Life program that helps Marine Corps veterans and their families transition from active duty to civilian life, including education opportunities, employment and other veteran and community resources. More details about the event can be found here: https://m901.org/category/event/.

On March 29, 2019, BRAVO! will be shown in La Grande, Oregon (our Oregon premiere!), as part of the local Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans celebrations. More details soon.

We look forward to seeing you at these events, and greatly appreciate your help in spreading the word. Semper Fi.

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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.

In the United Kingdom, you can stream at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07BZKJXBM.

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If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town, please contact us immediately.

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BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject?ref=hl.

January 28th at Khe Sanh seems to have no place in my memory. Several Marines were killed that day by incoming but I don’t remember anything about it. That’s one of the things that bugs me about enduring the siege. I have great gaps in what I remember.

The American educator and philosopher, John Dewey, said: “Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart’s desire.”

If I think about that quote it leads me to conclude that today, based on my recollections as I write this, my heart’s desire must be that the bulk of my memories of living the Siege be hidden. Am I off base to make that claim? And yet so often I still find myself struggling with trying to remember what happened there.

Memory of the siege comes in spurts. Thinking of day one, I remember that horror. I also remember the listening posts, work parties, standing watch, eating chow, but not when they happened. I recall some conversations, some battles, and other isolated moments during my time there.

I remember watching the ARVN’s 37th Ranger Battalion move in front of us sometime around January 28. I remember how I felt having them out there. I remember thinking that if they got overrun and retreated to our lines, we would probably have shot them all. They were Vietnamese. Good guys or bad, we thought they all looked alike. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with those memories. Being overrun. Killing my allies because they looked like my enemy.

I remember the fall of Lang Vei, and the many days where we received in excess of a thousand rounds of incoming. I remember lying in the trench as the shells battered battered battered the red ground. The kaplunk they made when leaving their tubes. It was creepy suddenly realizing that the round was on its way by the time you heard that kaplunk. And there was the whistle or the scream or the roar they made coming at you. Messengers singing a deadly song aimed at me.

I remember feeling like I was in a little cocoon and all the world around was shaking and rattling and attacking that cocoon. The cocoon wasn’t safe, but it was all I had. What became critical was my ability to stay within my own mind—the last bastion of protection, the kernel, the essence of who I was. That cocoon.

One day, early on, I was lucky enough to survive a near hit. The thing that was branded into my memory right then was the sound I heard when that round left its tube, how it sounded on its way to greet me.

I learned to listen for the sounds of those rounds. 120 MM and 130 MM and 152 MM pieces banging away at me sent me not-so-subtle messages that they were on the way. Funny, thinking about that now: that as they intended to kill me, they also warned me. It was like a game, with weird rules. We’re going to kill you, but with that in mind we’re going to help you out. We’re going to send you a message.

I must have gotten pretty good at hearing those warnings because I’m still alive. That ability to sense where incoming rounds would hit and a healthy dose of luck saved me.

Ken Rodgers. co-producer of BRAVO! Photo courtesy of Kevin Martini-Fuller

Right this moment I wish that something would have saved my memory. Was my experience there so fraught with fright, so laden with the horrors that man can deliver to man that I have to forget it?

It’s funny, yet much of what I do recall is some of the more mundane events at Khe Sanh, especially before the siege ever began, before it was even a possibility.

If I don’t recall anything about January 28 nor 29, 1968 when a team of Army personnel and some of their Bru cohorts (Bru were local montagnards who often fought with US forces) went out towards Hill 471 and got into a nasty dustup with the NVA, I do remember Hill 471 from an earlier encounter.

In late May of 1967 we went out on a company-sized operation towards the high ground around Hill 471 when the Khe Sanh TAOR still had vegetation that wasn’t blasted to smithereens. Hill 471 was covered with trees. We approached the summit and 3rd Platoon ran into some NVA and shot and killed one. Then we called in air strikes. I recall sitting on the edge of a bomb crater watching A-4 Skyhawks, F-4 Phantoms and F-8 Crusaders swoop down and drop bombs, strafe with cannons and machine guns, and shoot rockets. It was up close and made my heart hammer and the big basso whine of shrapnel winging through the sky sounded like the song of hell. Big chunks of bomb landed all around us and hissed when it hit in damp spots in the bottoms of craters.

That operation is where I met my first leech. Didn’t notice it until it was the size of my thumb. Maybe that’s because they were the size of pencil lead when they latched on and hard to see. I didn’t know what to think and all the old Vietnam salts laughed at me.

That’s where I saw my first bamboo viper, too. Corporal Fritsche and I chased it through—you guessed it—the bamboo, but it eased away like life leaving a wounded man. Besides Fritsche, I remember a lot more names from that time than during the siege: Ward, Blankenship, James, Poorman, Little John, Deedee, Pacheco, Carswell, Callahan, Fideli, Steinhardt, “Fearless” Bosowski, Enyart, Bowers and Lens.

We patrolled around Hill 471 and set up a perimeter for the evening. I recall sitting on top of a ridge most of the night on watch, unable to drift into sleep watching for the NVA to creep between the trunks of trees and slither out of the bamboo thickets to our front. But they didn’t come.

More than once I’ve wondered if I shouldn’t have a shrink hypnotize me and take me back to relive every second of my time at Khe Sanh. I wonder if the hypnotism shouldn’t be taped and transcribed. But as I think about it, I always decide not to do that. I think there may be a good reason why my memories of a lot of my time at Khe Sanh are subdued, hidden, masked.

The American writer John Irving said, “Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”

All my Vietnam events are filed away, I suppose, and available to show up if prodded by something…a dream, the way a tree looks in winter, its fallen leaves, the way its naked branches fling shadows on a bank of snow. Or the sound of a truck running down the highway, the rumble trapped against the sides of a retaining wall, the rap rap rap. Or a white bird soaring over a field of snowy corn stubble. The sound of a gun.

On the screening front, mark your calendars for a fundraising screening in Casa Grande, Arizona, on February 15, 2015, at the historic Paramount Theatre. Doors open at Noon, lunch served at 1:00 PM, screening of BRAVO! to follow at 2:00 PM. Ticket cost: $15.00 advance purchase or at the door. Proceeds will benefit the Mobile Veterans Center and Emergency Veterans Services in Pinal County.

On March 30, 2015, BRAVO! will be screened at the Egyptian Theater in Boise Idaho. Doors open at 6:00 PM. Program begins at 6:45 PM. Following the screening there will be a panel discussion moderated by Boise author extraordinaire, Alan Heathcock. The panel discussion will include veterans, some of whom are in the film. Proceeds will benefit the Idaho Veterans’ Network and Veterans’ Treatment Courts. Tickets are available online from the Egyptian Theater here.

Additional Idaho screenings to support the Veterans’ Courts and the Idaho Veterans’ Network will be held in Lewiston, Idaho, on March 18, 2015, time and location to be determined; Twin Falls, Idaho, on March 31, 2015, at the College of Southern Idaho’s Fine Arts Building, time yet to be determined; Caldwell, Idaho, on April 1, 2015, at College of Idaho’s Langroise Recital Hall, time to be determined; and in Pocatello, Idaho, at a time yet to be determined.

If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town next spring or summer, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way to stay up on our news and help raise more public awareness of this film.

Forty-seven years ago today the Siege of Khe Sanh began. Unless you were there or have experienced something similar, I am not sure you can understand how shocking, bizarre, frightening it all was. I had been warned and trained, but I was not ready for what happened to me that morning.

I had been in-country ten months and had pretty much convinced myself that I’d get out of Vietnam unscathed. Through the final weeks of December 1967 and the first three weeks of January 1968 we heard from both our company headquarters and through scuttlebutt that the North Vietnamese were going to attack. We were on red alert too much with nothing happening. It made me think of that old tale my mother told me about the “boy who cried wolf.”

I’m not sure that the other men in Bravo Company felt like I did. I don’t recall, but I had convinced myself it was all a bunch of BS. It was BS because I wished it to be BS.

About five o’clock on the morning of January 21, 1968, I was jolted awake by the yells,” Incoming!” I was groggy and managed to shake into my gear and stagger outside. The world was chaos. Flashes and yelling and explosions. The ground shook. I hit the deck and buried my head. Something hit by back. It burned. I yelled, “I’m hit. I’m hit.”

Bravo Company, 1/26 supply tent after the siege begins. Photo courtesy of Mac McNeeley.

Someone scraped off whatever was burning through my skin. It was Foster and he laughed. “You’re not hit. Those are clods.” To this day I remember how those clods burned my back and how I knew I was badly wounded. What that taught me was the power of the mind. How you can BS yourself into imaging real things from things that are not real.

I scrambled into my fighting hole. Everything I recall after that is nothing but flashes of memory, bursts, explosions, blood, me shaking. I recall getting my fire team into gas masks and deployed in anticipation of an attack. I recall being in one of our machine gun bunkers, watching out the aperture as the perimeter to our front was pulverized by both incoming rounds and rounds coming out of our lit-up ammo dump.

Someone yelled, “Here they come. Men in the wire.” I looked out there and saw nothing but geysers of mud and rolls of concertina wire and barbed wire mazes built to trip anyone who tried to get through the perimeter. I remember thinking that no one could get through that hell.

I recall Corporal Taylor (I think his first name was John, but we never called anyone by their first names. Well, not never, but rarely.), had a nasty gash on his shin bone from a piece of shrapnel.

I remember someone coming down the line, calling me up to the Platoon CP. I sneaked down there, loaded down with magazines and grenades, flak jacket, helmet, full canteens, M-16. I recall looking through the eyepieces of my gas mask. The world was a funny color. Could have been from dirty lenses or the world really could have been a funny color. The Marines of Second Platoon, Bravo Company, reminded me of prehistoric beetles with their masks and their gear. Warfare is a prehistoric business. A modern business, too.

I remember Lieutenant Dillon telling me that we had lost contact with one of the units on our flanks. He wanted me to locate them and if possible, determine their disposition. I remember inching around the angles of the trench, my M-16 on full automatic, in case I met unfriendlies skulking around in the red mud.

All I met was a trench full of spent rounds that had fallen out of the sky. Most of them looked like stuff from our own ammo dump. Remnants of rounds—105s and 155s and 81s—littered the bottom of the trench. Here and there, Marines lay in the trench. Some were wounded. Some I knew. I recall one whose thigh was shattered by a falling 155 round that had cooked off from the ammo dump. I don’t recall his name even though we’d been in Nam almost the same amount of time and I was acquainted with him. I offered morphine but he told me he’d already injected himself. I told him I’d send help.

I encountered another Marine I knew who had been hit in the groin by white phosphorus. He didn’t need morphine either, but as I hurried away to find help for him (and the man with the shattered thigh) I recall thinking about his gonads and what if they were poisoned (white phosphorus is poisonous) and they had to be cut off and…and…

It bugs me to this day that I can kind of see these wounded Marines in the trench but I can’t remember their names…first or last. Did I really know them? Did I really see that?

What happened after that, I have trouble recalling. Did I find the people I was sent to find? Who was in charge and did I tell them I had been sent by Lieutenant Dillon to re-establish contact? Did I find help for all those wounded men in the trench? Did I imagine this event?

All day long the ammo dump cooked off. As the hours went by, the number of times we heard the cook-off, then looked up to see a trail of smoke shooting up into the sky, then heard the screech or scream or roar as the round approached the ground seemed to slacken. We finally got to take our gas masks off as we assessed the mayhem. I felt like…well, dead.

Burned out tent at Khe Sanh. Photo courtesy of Mac McNeeley.

A lot of Marines, Army and other attached personnel died on that day at the Khe Sanh TAOR. Only one man from Bravo Company, as I recall. He was with Headquarters and Supply and was attached to Bravo Company as one of the radio operators. His name was Steven Hellwig. Today, forty-seven years on, I say, “Rest in piece, Lance Corporal Steven Hellwig.” If you are interested, you can find out more about Steven at the Virtual Wall.

Another thing I recall about January 21, 1968, was the realization that hot chow, showers, supply tents, and all the other semi-comforts we’d been enjoying at the combat base were gone. They were shredded and we were now in a world of war, real war, not red alerts that meant very little.

Right now I see a machine gunner. I don’t remember his name, either, but I see him crouching on the lip of the trench, his left arm in a sling, his jaw bandaged. Prior to January 21, he’d have been sent off to rehabilitate at the Battalion Aid Station or Charlie Med or down to the rear at Phu Bai. But not now. It’s real war.

So, not that I haven’t been guilty of BSing myself a time or two, but ever since that day, I’ve had a pretty good notion of what can happen to you. How things can end badly even though you wish your hardest that they do not.

Blog author Ken Rodgers at Khe Sanh, Courtesy of Michael E O’Hara

On the screening front, mark your calendars for a fundraising screening in Casa Grande, Arizona, on February 15, 2015, at the historic Paramount Theatre. Doors open at Noon, lunch served at 1:00 PM, screening of BRAVO! to follow at 2:00 PM. Ticket cost: $15.00 advance purchase or at the door. Proceeds will benefit the Mobile Veterans Center and Emergency Veterans Services in Pinal County.

On March 30, 2015, BRAVO! will be screened at the Egyptian Theater in Boise Idaho. Doors open at 6:00 PM. Program begins at 6:45 PM. Following the screening there will be a panel discussion moderated by Boise author extraordinaire, Alan Heathcock. The panel discussion will include veterans, some of whom are in the film. Proceeds will go to benefit the Idaho Veterans’ Network and Veterans’ Treatment Courts. Tickets are available online from the Egyptian Theater here.

Additional Idaho screenings to support the Veterans’ Courts and the Idaho Veterans’ Network will be held in Lewiston, Idaho, on March 18, 2015; Twin Falls, Idaho, on March 31, 2015; Caldwell, Idaho, on April 1, 2015; and in Pocatello, Idaho, at a time yet to be determined.

If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town next spring or summer, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way to stay up on our news and help raise more public awareness of this film.

In March and April of 2015, BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR will be screened in a number of Idaho locations as a fundraiser for the Idaho Veterans’ Network and for Veterans’ Treatment Courts. These screenings are scheduled for Boise, Caldwell, Lewiston, Pocatello and Twin Falls.

Before giving some details about the events, we first want to delve into the existence of Veterans’ Treatment Courts. What exactly is happening in this country that would support forming courts specifically for and exclusive to veterans?

First, the thing that should not have to be said, we will state: If we require our warriors to go off and participate in combat, then we have a responsibility to see that they also have every opportunity to integrate back into our society and lead successful, productive lives. Combat causes veterans to experience trauma that often makes that integration difficult. Veterans’ courts are one way in which we acknowledge the fact that combat related trauma is a cost that needs to be dealt with by our society.

Now for some data on veterans of the Middle East conflicts alone, notwithstanding the recognition that a large number of Vietnam Veterans as well as men and women who served in earlier wars also have combat related issues that continue to affect their lives:

-Roughly one in five combat veterans from the Middle East conflicts has symptoms of mental disorder or cognitive impairment including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and/or Traumatic Brain Injury.

-Roughly one in six veterans of the current conflicts has substance abuse issues.

Poster for screening of BRAVO! at the Egyptian Theater, March 30, 2015

-PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury can lead to mental disorder or cognitive impairment and substance abuse, which can lead to issues with the judicial system.

-There are approximately 2.5 million veterans of the current conflicts.

-A one in five ratio indicates there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 veterans of Middle East wars with mental disorders or cognitive impairment.

-A one in six ratio amounts to approximately 400,000 veterans with substance abuse problems.

Why veterans-only courts?

Veterans’ courts allow for the veteran to appear before judges and court officials who are familiar with the problems brought on by combat-related PTSD and Traumatic Brain Disorder.

The staffs at veterans’ courts link the men and women appearing in their venues with various veteran service groups such as the VA and state organizations that can help them get back on track. They also require the veterans to go to counseling and to undergo drug screening if necessary.

We are pleased to announce that proceeds from the upcoming Boise screening of BRAVO! at the Egyptian Theatre on March 30, 2015, will go to help fund the Ada County Veterans’ Treatment Court non-profit as well as the Idaho Veterans’ Network, both of which help veterans who are taken into the Veterans’ Treatment Court system. Your attendance at this event will provide funding to help defray the costs of transportation, mandatory drug testing, rewards for participation, and other necessities.

To further illuminate the good work being done here in Idaho, we offer the Idaho Veterans Network mission statement: The mission of the Idaho Veterans Network is to help distressed veterans and their families by facilitating peer-to-peer support and guiding them to resources available to them in order to create a veteran population that is capable, confident, and committed to their community.

So please join us for the Boise screening at the Egyptian Theatre on March 30, 2015. Doors open at 6:00 PM with program beginning at 6:45, film at 7:00, followed by a Q & A session from 9:00 to 9:30. Several of the men who are in the film will travel here to be on hand for the discussion, along with other local veterans and the producers, Ken and Betty Rodgers. Master of Ceremonies Alan Heathcock, Boise’s world-renowned author of VOLT, will make the introductions and facilitate the panel discussion.

Tickets may be purchased online as soon as they are available on the Egyptian Theatre’s website.

Come on out, bring a friend or relative, and support the efforts of our Ada County Veterans’ Courts and our Idaho Veterans Network.

As soon as details are available about the other upcoming Idaho screenings of BRAVO!, we will pass them along to you.

Poster for the screening of BRAVO! in Casa Grande, AZ on 1/15/2015

Also on the screening front, mark your calendars for a fundraising screening in Casa Grande, Arizona, on February 15, 2015, at the historic Paramount Theatre. Doors open at Noon, lunch served at 1:00 PM, screening of BRAVO! to follow at 2:00 PM. Ticket cost: $15.00 advance purchase or at the door. Proceeds will benefit the Mobile Veterans Center and Emergency Veterans Services in Pinal County.

If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town next spring or summer, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way to stay up on our news and help raise more public awareness of this film.

Betty and I have been involved in a lot of screenings of BRAVO! and one of the salient things I have noticed is how each event is unique. It could be location, audience, weather, technical equipment…whether in the cozy confines of a friend’s home or the superb facilities at George Lucas’ Skywalker Sound.

A week ago last Wednesday evening we screened the film in a different venue at the Ada County Sheriff’s Department in Boise in what has been called a “sneak preview” for folks interested in helping with the screening of BRAVO! at Boise’s Egyptian Theatre on March 30, 2015. The Egyptian is an institution in Boise and a beloved community treasure that screens films, hosts concerts and visiting authors among other events. This March 30 event is a benefit for the Ada County Veterans’ Treatment Court and the Idaho Veterans’ Network.

In excess of fifty folks showed up for the sneak preview of BRAVO! last Wednesday and to engage in a discussion with organizers Norma Jaeger, Christina Iverson and BRAVO! co-producer Betty Rodgers about how they can help promote the screening which will occur on Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day. We heard many worthwhile ideas and received big-hearted offers of support.

Inside the Ada County Sheriff’s Department prior to the screening of BRAVO!
© Betty Rodgers 2014

We were joined by Mike Shipman, our graphic designer and a stout supporter of BRAVO!. Boise’s chief of police, Mike Masterson, was there and Heather Paredes who, along with her sister, founded the Eagle, Idaho, Field of Honor. Rick Ardinger, executive director of the Idaho Humanities Council, and Mary DeWalt, director of the Ada Community Library, also came and offered their ideas. In addition to helping with the screening, the Idaho Humanities Council and the Ada Community Library plan to bring author Richard Currey to Idaho as part of Boise’s 2015 Read Me Treasure Valley program. Currey penned the novel Fatal Light about the Vietnam War.

Terry Shotkoski of the Cloverdale Cemetery also attended the sneak preview. Terry is partly responsible for the Living Wall coming to Boise last September. He and his organization are BIG supporters of veterans. We were also joined by folks from the sheriff’s department, the Idaho Retired Law Enforcement Association, two retired generals, and John and Heather Taylor (John is BRAVO! Marine Ken Korkow’s cousin). Folks from the Boise Rescue Mission and from the Vet Center came to see how they can help, along with other great friends of BRAVO!.

Besides the screening in Boise, BRAVO! will also be featured at related benefit events in Twin Falls, Caldwell, Pocatello and Lewiston, Idaho.

We are very pleased to announce that the notable Idaho author and fan of BRAVO!, Mr. Alan Heathcock, will preside as the event’s master of ceremonies. Also coming to Boise for the March 30 screening will be some of the BRAVO! team, as well as several other Idaho authors who have written books about the Vietnam War. Come meet them all!

Inside Boise’s Egyptian Theater at a technical check.
© Betty Rodgers 2014

We are excited about this big event and how we can help folks learn more about the Vietnam War, the personal stories of the people who served, and its long-term costs in human terms. We are also excited to be able to work with all these great Idaho folks and organizations to be able to benefit the Ada County Veteran’s Treatment Court and the Idaho Veterans’ Network.

Also on the screening front, mark your calendars for a fundraising screening in Casa Grande, Arizona, on February 15, 2015, at the historic Paramount Theatre. Doors open at Noon, lunch served at 1:00 PM, screening of BRAVO! to follow. We will give you more details about this screening as they become available.

If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town next spring or summer, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject/. It’s another way to stay up on our news and help raise more public awareness of this film.

In last week’s blog I wrote about the letters I sent home to my parents while I was in-country in 1967-68. In preparation for that article, I read each of the letters. I am glad I did because it clarified some events for me (I really did see elephants and coffee trees) and it cleared up some haziness in my memory about the timeline of my tour there.

I also noticed some recurring subjects one of which was “scuttlebutt.”

Scuttlebutt originally was a British nautical term that named a water cask kept on deck for sailors to get a drink of water. Over time, the scuttlebutt became a place for sailors to gather and share rumors or gossip. The term is quite old and was purloined sometime around the turn of the 20th Century to refer to gossip. In the Marines of the 1960s, the term scuttlebutt referred directly to rumors.

In my letters I refer to scuttlebutt in a number of instances and now, with the actual history of events available for comparison, what I thought was going to occur in any given period of time most often turned out to not happen.

Envelope sent from Vietnam by the blogger to his parents.
© Ken Rodgers 2014

A few examples of the scuttlebutt going around in 1967-68 with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines follows, as recorded in my letters written at the time. I had not been in the field south of Hill 55 very long when I wrote this on 4/27/1967:

Rumor has it that the first of July or August, we will rotate to Okinawa for a month of training and then we will be sent afloat as an SLF (Special Landing Force) where we will make landings at trouble spots in Vietnam. We will be based out of Olongapo, the Philippines.

Bravo Company was located just south of Hue on May 8, 1967 when I sent this:

The engineers are building a 20 mile road to a hill southeast of Phu Bai. We will act as security. The country is “virgin.” The only Marines in there have been reconnaissance Marines. When we get to the hill, we will secure it and set up there.

On June 22, 1967, nowhere near the “virgin” country (we never went on that road-building operation), I wrote this from Hill 881 South west of the Khe Sanh Combat Base:

Rumor also has it that we shall be rotating to Phu Bai and then Okinawa in the next couple of months. I also hope that that is one rumor that comes true.

On September 1, 1967 I wrote:

By the 15th the battalion is supposed to be in Phu Bai. From there who knows? Maybe to Okinawa.

I never made it to Okinawa until I rotated back to the States when my tour of duty was up. I never made it to Olongapo either.

The thing that gets my attention now is how the scuttlebutt usually had us going somewhere away from the war, to a place with women and food and beer. I am not sure if that’s the result of my own wishes—how I interpreted the rumors—or if it was a unit-wide desire. I suspect that my comments in the letters are a result of both my own optimism and the hopefulness of the unit in general.

I do know that one of the things that kept me going over there—that might have helped me stay alive—was my optimism, my hopefulness. The Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire said: “Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.”

During the siege, the world we inhabited was miserable, more than miserable, yet we laughed, we hoped, we dreamed of home.

I think all those references to being someplace other than where I happened to be, the misery of days of rain, the attacks by legions of leeches, the constant work and little sleep, the horror of the Siege of Khe Sanh, were nothing more than attempts to be optimistic.

I say “nothing more,” but as I think about it, that staying optimistic was a key thing in me staying alive. Since I had something to hope for, it made me work harder to stay alive.

My old buddy Joe Skinner who was a Marine Corps officer at the end of World War II once told me, “Hope is one step from despair.” When he told me that, I laughed hard. It’s true. When the jaws of despair are gnawing on you, whispering in your ear that all is folly, hope and optimism are the things that help keep you going, help keep you alive.

The 19th Century poet Emily Dickinson said it well:

# 254

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

On the screening front, mark your calendars for a fundraising screening in Casa Grande, Arizona on February 15, 2015 at the historic Paramount Theater. Doors open at noon, lunch served at 1:00 PM, screening of BRAVO! to follow. We will give you more details about this screening as they become available.

We are also pleased to announce that BRAVO! will be shown at Idaho’s historic Egyptian Theater in Boise on March 30, 2015. We will post updates to this event here as they become available.

If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town next spring or summer, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

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