By Ken Rodgers

In our previous blog, we posted a memory of a Marine killed in action at the Siege of Khe Sanh. It’s been almost fifty-eight years since the siege, and the men who manned the trenches there are still on my mind a lot of the time.

Here’s another story I wrote a few years ago about a Marine KIA whom I knew fairly well: David A. Aldrich.

I’ve been having an ongoing e-mail conversation over the last several years with a Marine named Dave Evans who was in Marine Corps Training in the States with David A. Aldrich. Both of these Daves arrived together in Danang, South Vietnam, in March of 1967, and one of them went to Hill 55 with the First Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment. That was Dave Aldrich. I arrived on Hill 55 a day later. So Aldrich (that’s what we called him…we didn’t normally call anyone by first names in Vietnam) and I got to know each other fairly well, even though we were technically assigned to different platoons after our initial orientation while in the main battalion position on Hill 55.

Aldrich, I believe, had an MOS of 0351 (the Virtual Wall states that he was an 0311) which meant he shot what we called “rockets,” but which might be more simply understood as bazookas. I was an 0311, an infantryman, a grunt. I was assigned to Second Platoon and he went to Weapons Platoon, Bravo Company.

Aldrich was a quiet guy with a big smile and a mellow sense of humor. He stomped through mud and jungle grass with 1st and 3rd Platoons on patrol, too, but it seems like he was with us, 2nd Platoon, most of the time through the spring and summer of 1967 as the 26th Marines moved north from Hill 55 to the Khe Sanh Combat Base. He was with us through the monsoon season and up on Hill 881 South in the fall of the year. He was there, sharing chow with us, and jokes, playing cards, listening to the newest music on Corporal Mitchell’s portable record player…Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Aretha and Otis Redding and The Jefferson Airplane.

Those days through the fall of ’67 were hard, wet and dreary and Aldrich was along all the time, shooting his rockets when necessary. Dealing with the wet rounds that failed to go off. That was tough for him, getting those dud rounds, those wet rounds, out of those tubes without them cooking off and blowing his arms and face off. I recall how cool he was about it. If he was sweating, he remained unflappable, only the barest hint of tension in the grit of his teeth. But even if he was scared (and of course he was) he certainly didn’t want it to show…we were Marines.

When the siege began, Aldrich came around my bunker a lot and stood watch with us and he and I talked about going home…home…like heaven. I remember one terrible day, February 25, 1968, our Third Platoon got ambushed and First Platoon went out to relieve them and they got ambushed, too. We, Second Platoon, were left to man the company’s lines. The NVA was pounding the trench line with sneaky 82-millimeter mortar, rockets and train-wreck 152 mm artillery, keeping us down, keeping us locked in the perimeter so we couldn’t go get our friends, our mates, who were dying out there within ear shot.

It was one of the worst days of my life. My whole body shook. I imagined the red fire and searing teeth of death and conflagration. The end was here and I didn’t want to face it. I wanted my life.

As this was going on, Aldrich came up and engaged me in conversation. He must have seen my shaking. I can only imagine how white my face must have been. How shrunken down into my utilities and flak jacket I must have been, as if that could have made any difference. But he didn’t act like he was seeing anything out of the ordinary. He soothed me with his words. He steadied me.

Aldrich and I survived a lot of mayhem and death during the siege. We both made it all the way to the end of our tours. Then came March 30, 1968, what has been called the Payback Patrol. Aldrich had one day to go…he was scheduled to leave the field on March 31. I was scheduled to go on April 1. The evening before the patrol, the word got passed to me that Aldrich was looking for me so I went to his bunker, stuck my head in, saw he was slouched on a cot. I went in and sat down. He abruptly handed me an envelope.

I said, “What’s that for?”

“Make sure my parents get this?”

“What is it?”

“My dog tags.”

I began to yell at him. I refused to accept the envelope.

He said, “If I go out tomorrow, I won’t come back alive.”

I yelled. I yelled. I yelled. “If you believe that now, that’s what will happen.”

He nodded.

I said, “You’ve got to believe they can’t get you. If you believe they can’t get you, they won’t.”

He shook his head. We went back and forth, him resigned, me enraged, angry, and screaming. He wasn’t buying what I was saying. I didn’t accept the envelope.

The next day was four or five hours of speeded-up, slowed-down hell. It was like Dante says in his poem, Inferno, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” I survived it and a lot of Marines didn’t. I remember walking down the red dirt road after we were ordered back into the perimeter. Men staggered along the lane. Some wore bandages on their heads, their arms and legs; some wore looks on their dirty faces that reminded me of dead people. Two men dragged a body down the middle of the road. I passed them and looked down. Even though his face was turned toward the red clay, I knew it was David A. Aldrich, Corporal, USMC.

I’ve been haunted by these images for over forty-five years. What could I have done to prevent Aldrich’s death? What could he have done? Did my failure to accept the envelope with the dog tags dishonor him? Maybe when I get done writing this, the images will stop coming.

Later that day, the word came down the trench line asking if anyone had seen Aldrich. He was missing in action, they said. I went up to the Platoon Command Post and told them I had seen his corpse. “You’re sure?” they asked me. “Yeah,” I said. The platoon sergeant went up with me to Battalion Headquarters and I signed affidavits of some sort saying I’d seen him dead. I signed the papers. He was dead. Killed in action.

For years I’ve had a sneaking fear that somehow I was wrong, and David Aldrich is locked away in some prison cell in Hanoi. Seeing his name on the wall soothes that fear. Somewhat.

Dave Evans asks that if anyone knew David Aldrich, please contact him at usmcdevans@yahoo.com.

_________

Thank you for reading, and for honoring all Vietnam War veterans by sharing our films and stories with friends and other veterans. 

BRAVO! Common Men, Uncommon Valor can be viewed on Amazon Prime. We also have DVDs available, which can be ordered on our website at https://bravotheproject.com.

You can find information about our companion film featuring eleven amazing spouses of combat veterans from various eras at https://imarriedthewar.com. I Married the War can be viewed on Amazon. DVDs are also available via the website.

By Bruce “T-Bone” Jones, Guest Author

Part One – Becoming a Marine

During the early years of the Vietnam War, the military draft brought the war to the American homefront.  The draft made a significant, personal impact on young American men, including me. Healthy, eligible young men ages 18-25 who didn’t have a deferment faced conscription into the Army. At 21 years old, I knew a draft letter was in my very near future. 

A month earlier, I had reported for a pre-induction physical at the local federal building and was found to be solid cannon fodder for the war. Almost any day I was going to receive a “Greetings from Uncle Sam” letter. I was faced with being drafted and serving in the Army, or volunteering for another branch of the military.

I chose the United States Marine Corps. It was definitely not a conscious choice based on logical evaluation. I wasn’t infatuated with the dress blues uniform; it was a choice of sheer impulse.  After all, the Marine Corps was tough! It had a brave war-fighting tradition and if I was going to participate in a war, I was going to be the “first to fight!” In retrospect, I simply wanted to find out what war was about and if I was tough enough to hack it. 

My boot camp training was just as I thought. It was rigorous and de-humanizing as hell.  The drill instructors tore you down and built you up in the image of a fine killing machine. My body was strong, and my mind was clear. You learned to obey a command without any hesitation, and it was expected to be performed with your very best intention.

Never in my life had I tried so hard to meet a set standard, let alone rigorous Marine Corps standards. It tested me physically and mentally like I had never been tested before. I was proud that I met the mark to become a Marine. At boot camp graduation, I was welcomed into the warrior society of the United States Marine Corps. OOORAAHH!

Based on my high aptitude test scores, I was scheduled to attend electronics school at C&E Battalion, MCRD San Diego after my thirty-day boot camp leave. With a MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) of Electronics Radio Repairman, I was supposed to receive training in electronics. In short, I had been assigned the “brass ring” of MOSs in the Corps. Even if I was sent to Vietnam, I would never go on any combat patrols or ever leave a secure area; I would be repairing radios “in the rear with the gear.” I had it made! 

The training consisted of 10 weeks of basic electronics class and 36 weeks of radio repair. You were required to pass a weekly test to move on through the course curriculum. If I had studied harder instead of drinking every night off-base or at the EM Club, I might have finished the training. At 21, I had become a drunken shit-bird! 

After 11 months of failing out of every electronics school C&E Battalion had to offer, the first sergeant called me into his office.

“Well, PFC Jones, you have managed to piss away one of the best training opportunities in the Marine Corps. What the hell do you want your Marine Corps to do for you, Jones? What career choice are you looking for?” 

Bluntly I replied, “Well I know I don’t want to repair radios in Vietnam sitting in an air-conditioned hardback hooch in Da Nang.”  

First Sergeant Davis looked at me with his face crimson red and yelled, “Well, Marine, I’ve got just the right job for you. You will remain in the ‘Eeelektronicks’ field that you tested so high in, but your MOS won’t be so fancy. I am shipping your sorry ass to Camp Pendleton for Ground Radio Operator School and then VIETNAM. Now, how do you like that?” 

I responded like the fool I was then, “Doubt if I have much choice, Top.” 

He looked at me with total disapproval and said, “No shit, Marine, and in addition, you get thirty days of mess duty before I send you on your way! And now, get the fuck out of my office!” 

The United States Marine Corps wanted an intelligent radio repairman. They got a dumb, radio-humping grunt!

Part Two – Arriving in Vietnam

After Ground Radio Training at Camp Pendleton, a thirty-day Christmas leave, and Staging Battalion, I arrived in Vietnam. I was assigned to an 81mm mortar section that was located near the Dai Loc Bridge a short distance from Hill 55 outside of Da Nang and was ordered to report to this mortar section as a replacement forward observer radio operator.

I was now officially assigned to Bravo Company 81s, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines Regiment, and yes I was an “FNG” with three days in-country!  A truck had just dropped me off in front of the Bravo Company mortar section after a short drive from Hill 55 to the bridge. 

The day I arrived, the Marines in the mortar crew were running gun drills on a mortar, trying to beat their individual set-up times. The competition consisted of a man standing upright over the mortar and on command, dropping down to his knees and spinning the mortar tube in the base plate and positioning the tripod in alignment with the aiming stakes. Then he had to use the horizontal and vertical sights to level and adjust the mortar for an accurate, rapid set-up. If the gun was verified to be “on bubble” and set up accurately on the correct azimuth, the time was recorded, and the competition would continue with the next man trying to beat the fastest set-up time. 

I later understood that if a man was consistently the fastest and the most accurate, he could assume the position of “gunner” on the gun crew. So, there I was, standing there watching men throw a mortar into position while screaming and cussing at each other.  It was not until they had tallied their set-up times that they even acknowledged me.

“I’m the new forward observer radio operator,” I said. They just looked at me with blank expressions and then one Marine said, “Gilbert, take him to see Staff Sergeant Luck.”

As we walked across the bare patch of ground that made up the Bravo section of 81mm Mortars, I couldn’t help but notice how casual everyone acted. No helmets, no shirts, and all their rifles propped up next to their flak jackets inside the gun pits. Maybe Vietnam wouldn’t be so bad after all.

I just HAD to ask THE question: “Get any action around here, Gilbert?” 

“I have been here less than two months and almost nothing,” he replied. “The grunts catch a few sniper rounds on patrol, but otherwise it’s quiet. The gooks leave us alone, and we leave them alone.” 

We approached a large bunker. Country Western music was playing inside and a drunken voice was singing along, slurring the lyrics to a Willie Nelson song.

“This here is the Fire Detection Control Center (FDC) bunker. Fire missions start and end here and…all the ‘lifers’ live here.” Gilbert stuck his head in the doorway and yelled, “Staff Sergeant Luck! Your new radioman is out here. He’s reporting in!” Then he turned around and without saying another word, walked off leaving me standing alone outside the FDC bunker. That was my introduction to the best friend I would ever serve with in Vietnam.

I was assigned the job of humping the PRC 25 radio for the Bravo Company 81s mortar forward observer. Sgt. Joe Castillo was a “Tex-Mex” from Corpus Cristi, Texas, and he was a veteran of ten months in Nam. A forward observer team is comprised of a forward observer (FO) and a radioman who provides mortar support to a Marine company in the field. The FO reads the topographical map and directs the mortars on the base where and what to fire at the enemy. The radioman relays all the FO’s directions and carries the radio in the bush.

Joe could read a map better than most of the company officers, and his skill was highly respected by the command staff of Bravo. He always knew where we were in the bush, which was a valuable skill required to prevent errant rounds from landing on our “friendlies.” I learned quickly to listen to all his advice about humping in the jungle and how to be a competent radioman.

Whenever and wherever units of Bravo Company went into the field, we went too. Early on, I struggled physically to hump all my gear and a radio that weighed 20 pounds plus a spare battery. Joe’s advice and support helped me to adapt to the rigors of humping the mountainous terrain around the Khe Sanh Combat Base. He would even carry the radio to give me a rest and help prevent my heat stroke!

Part Three – Our FO Team

In June, our two-man FO team grew to three with the addition of Gilbert Wall. He was assigned to replace Sgt. Joe Castillo who was going on leave to the US. Joe had extended his tour in Nam for six months and was going to be re-assigned to an MP unit in Da Nang. MP duty was SWEET! And SAFE!  Air-conditioned housing, dry cot with a real mattress, hot showers, and cold beer and steaks!  But before that sweet duty could begin, he had to train Gilbert as his FO replacement.

Joe indicated to me that he was satisfied with Gilbert as a potential replacement. He had been recommended by Staff Sgt. Morris because he’d shown an interest in the functions of the FDC. He had asked a lot of questions about directing mortar fire, more so than any other mortar man within the section. In addition, he was excellent at using a lensatic compass which was critical for directing outgoing rounds and adjustment during a fire mission. Gilbert’s OJT began by going on all Bravo Company patrols and observing Joe in the pre-patrol meetings with the Bravo command group.

My first months in Nam passed by quickly with the same monotonous patrols with only one disastrous contact with the NVA. It was on June 7^th, and it was bloody! It was NOT a proud day for Gilbert and me. Bravo Company was hit by 30 mortar rounds and then we were assaulted by an overwhelming force of 40 NVA. It was our first patrol without Sgt. Castillo, who by then was home stateside on leave. 

Gilbert tried to call in a fire mission, but I could not make contact with our mortars on top of 881! I tried to switch to our back-up frequency but still could not communicate with the guns. The incoming machine gun fire and grenades had us pinned down and all we could do was stay low while I fiddled with that damn PRC 25 radio! When the enemy was finally beat off, the only thing Gilbert and I did to support Bravo was to carry a dead Marine to the med-evacuation area.       

During his training, Gilbert and I became good friends. We were together 24/7. Gilbert was almost 21 and more mature than the 18-19 year-old men we served with in Nam.  During our off hours or on radio watch, we talked about our families, civilian jobs, and girls!

Gilbert was a Blackfoot Indian from Browning, Montana. He grew up in a large family like me, and like me he was raised poor, and that was where the comparison ended. I learned that he was a product of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) school system. At age eight, he was sent to a BIA boarding school in Flandreau, South Dakota, 1,140 miles from his home. He described the school as a harsh Dickensian existence, one that the students were expected to bear in rigid obedience and prescribed silence.

They cut off his long hair, forbade him to speak his tribal language, confiscated all his personal belongings that were “Indian,” and dictated their harsh rules of conduct. Gilbert was to spend the next twelve years at the school with only summer breaks at home in Montana. But these summer trips home ended when the students became teenagers.  In their teens, the students remained at the school year-round.

The local farmers would “hire” the older boys and girls as farm hands and domestics during the summer. The children were not paid for their work and were told their earnings were being saved and would be given to them upon graduation. Gilbert said he never did receive the money when he graduated!  He said the education was terrible and although he was good at math, he was not able to read or write well when he graduated. I realized right then that Gilbert had a much different life growing up than I did.  

While Gilbert was quiet, his actions and the way he carried himself spoke volumes about his character.  Between us, our friendship was strong; we knew we could count on each other. That bond would soon be tested under very dangerous conditions during our first combat with the NVA. 

During most of July, Gilbert’s training and our patrols continued with no sighting of the NVA. Every time we stopped to take a break on patrol, Sgt. Castillo would ask Gilbert to identify our current location on his map. When we set up camp for the night, they would huddle together to discuss and plan the nightly “on call” missions and select defensive targets to protect us in case of an enemy attack. It was rigorous “show and tell” training and Gilbert was learning fast! He grew more confident with each passing day. 

On July 20th, 1967, First Platoon was assigned to conduct a recon sweep away from the combat base to Route 9. Our orders were to run a patrol along this road to discover any potential ambush sites that could intercept and destroy our supply convoys coming north to our base. Vietnamese “Highway” Nine was no more than a narrow gravel road that ran alongside the Dai Trang River. Barely wide enough for two trucks to pass by together, it was the only overland road to the Khe Sanh Combat Base.

Day one of the sweep consisted of humping overland to Route 9, then setting up defensive positions on the high ground overlooking the road for the night. On the morning of July 21, we descended to the road, organized our positions for the march, and proceeded south down Route 9. The platoon formation consisted of one column on the left flank on the high ground above the road, and another column on the right a short distance below the road near the river. The command group and our FO team were in the middle of the road, followed by a 60mm mortar team.

It was not long before the pace slowed to near zero. The left flank on the high ground was faced with some very formidable terrain and had slowed the entire platoon down.  They were in a thick bamboo forest with a jungle canopy that almost completely blocked the sunlight, darkening their path forward. In addition, the ground sloped precipitously downhill on the column’s right side. The platoon commander had instructed that the left column remain slightly ahead of the remainder of the platoon, and if possible, stay in visual contact with the other Marines on the road.

Neither of these was the case. The order was given to the left column to proceed as planned, and after getting ahead of the rest of the platoon, the movement on the road would commence. It wasn’t 15 minutes later that the left column made enemy contact! They were almost in the dark, in a firefight with a dug-in NVA ambush, and it was going very badly for the Marines on the left flank. 

Almost simultaneously, the remainder of the platoon came under withering fire to the front and our right across the river. Joe immediately crouched down, looked back at me and Gilbert and said, “Standby, fire mission!” I immediately closed the two-foot gap between Joe and me while saying, “Whiskey Bravo, this is Whiskey Bravo 1, fire mission, over.”

By the time I keyed the handset on my radio and voiced those words, I was crouched directly behind Joe, waiting for his next words.  He had always instructed me to remain close to him during a fire mission. Over and over he would say, “T-Bone…when the shit hits the fan, you had better be crawling up my ass!  We don’t want to miscommunicate and fuck up a fire mission. We’re supposed to kill the gooks, not our own men!” 

Joe pulled his map out of his flak jacket and quickly yelled the target grid with the corresponding azimuth and then said, “Fire one round of Whiskey Papa (white phosphorous or WP), will adjust.” I immediately repeated his directions and then nervously looked behind me and there was Gilbert Wall listening intently.

The radio crackled in a few minutes; it seemed like a lifetime. I heard, “One round Whiskey Papa, out.” I began to repeat the response from the guns located at the previously destroyed bridge site along the river, and Joe interrupted me mid-sentence, “I heard.”

We all started to look for our WP spotter round to impact so Joe could begin his adjustments to his target. After waiting enough time for the spotter round to impact and not seeing its white cloud across or up the river, Joe yelled, “Moving up,” and started running up to the next bend in the road. Gilbert and I scrambled up and ran after Joe. We didn’t catch up to him until he had run around the bend in the road and was crouched down near a sheer cliff along the road looking for that spotter round. 

All the while we were conducting our fire mission, the “mad minute” had begun!  Responding with small arms fire from individual Marines, machine guns, M79 grenade launchers, and 60mm mortars all firing across and up the river. Rifle, machine gun fire, and explosions could be heard coming from the high ground with the NVA matching our firepower.

Hugging the ground while our eyes scanned for the tell-tale wisp of white smoke from our spotter round, the entire FO team came under intense NVA fire. Machine gun bursts landed above our heads showering us with rock fragments, and then it happened!  I looked to my left and Joe was trembling while blood spurted out between his partially opened flak jacket. I looked closer and there was a gunshot wound in his upper chest.  He started to slump to the ground and his face lost its color; he was dead! 

All of a sudden, I felt a hard slap and a strong sting on the right side of my neck.  Instinctively I reached up and felt a bloody patch on my neck and my finger discovered a bullet hole! I was stunned but didn’t go into shock. As I turned to my right, reacting to the gunshot wound, I observed Gilbert was lying in the road behind me.

I started to reach for him and then I saw a blue-green-yellow flash above my head and my field of vision shrunk and waves of concussion hit my body. In addition, I felt these little bumps and pin pricks all over my head, face and arms.  My vision started to disappear! I lost the sight of my left eye almost immediately and I could barely see out of my right eye. I later found out that an RPG had exploded near us and that caused all the shrapnel to hit us.

Squinting with my right eye, I rolled Gilbert over and blood squirted from his mouth.  I had learned in our battlefield first aid class that this was a sign of a bullet or shrapnel wound through one or both lungs. Guessing, I tipped him on his right side and luckily he was shot through that right lung so he could breathe with his remaining good lung. I also found out later that the bullet had entered through Gilbert’s left shoulder and the round had exited through his right lung and side. 

My adrenaline must have disappeared soon after because the last thing I heard Gilbert say as I passed out was, “T-Bone, lie down and play dead!” 

The firefight ended as soon as it had started. I regained consciousness while being lifted through the door of a med-evac chopper. Lying on the floor of the chopper, Gilbert made eye contact and I began to moan. Gilbert reached over with a comforting hand on my shoulder and said, “What the hell just happened to us?” I responded with tears in my eyes, “We lost Joe! And we found the NVA!” The chopper lifted off and I was so glad to be alive!  

We thank T-Bone for sharing his memories in this guest blog. He and his wife, Francine, have been devoted supporters of our documentary films. In two days, on July 23, please join us in wishing T-Bone a very happy and healthy 80th birthday!

_________

Thank you for reading, and for honoring all Vietnam War veterans by sharing Bruce’s story with friends and other veterans. 

BRAVO! can be viewed on Amazon Prime. We also have DVDs available, which can be ordered on our website at https://bravotheproject.com.

You can find information about our companion film featuring eleven amazing spouses of combat veterans, one of whom is Francine, at https://imarriedthewar.com. I Married the War can be viewed on Amazon. DVDs are also available via the website.

Yesterday was National Vietnam War Veterans Day and this morning, March 30, 2025, is the fifty-seventh year since Bravo Company, 1^st Battalion, 26^th Marines went out on an action, finally taking our fight into the trenches of the North Vietnamese Army.

I suspect all of us who took part in that action and are still living remember this day. Like big red flags and big bangs and big winds inside the memory.

One of my comrades who fought that morning calls it the “most significant day in my life” and although it may not be the most important, for me it’s pretty damned big.

For forty-one years I didn’t know this day had earned a name. I found out about it in 2008 when someone asked me if I’d been on the Payback Patrol.

At the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I figured it out.

Payback. Was it payback?

I don’t know, but it was hell and war and glory and death and fright and elation, all rolled into one.

We lined the trench in the dark morning and smoked our cigarettes and mumbled. The spirit of fear flew through and circled back. Voices whispered about what we would encounter. Our artillery batteries fired what seemed like thousands of rounds as we waited to depart. We heard jets dropping bombs and somewhere a chopper. All in support of our assault.

In the platoon briefing, it was my understanding that the patrol was routine, that we were departing the wire to find and return the bodies of our fallen comrades still out there from the ambush of February 25. Based on our patrol of March 21, in which we found no live enemy, I anticipated this action to be similar. Go outside the wire, climb the ridge, find the fallen, put them in body bags, bring them back.

I think I may have been a victim of my overwhelming desire not to go into the kind of combat we would find that morning.

The skipper and his command post came down the trench, the skipper patting shoulders and nodding and smiling. I couldn’t smile.

The word came down, “Move out.”

I dropped my Winston on the muddy deck of the trench.

We charged up the ridge, the world around rocking and rolling, the roars and swooshes and thumps and thunder like the last days of the universe.

Staff Sergeant Gus Alvarado and I brought up the rear, our platoon, Second Platoon, coming up behind the two other platoons that assaulted the ridge on line.

Suddenly we were both on the deck, the world whistling a wild tune, the ripples of pain like a pool of water when a stone is thrown.

Like scoping in and out with a set of binoculars, in and out, consciousness en garde, consciousness intermittent.

I shook my head and got up. Staff Sergeant Alvarado put out his hand and I pulled him to his feet. He’d been hit in the ankle by a mortar tail fin. I had shrapnel in my head but didn’t know it. If the shrapnel had been a little higher on the left side of my head, it would have penetrated the temple and then who knows how I might have reacted.

We inspected where the mortar hit. Close. Too close. But sometimes you are lucky. We went on up the hill.

At the top, the corpsman stopped us and looked at the side of my head. “Shrapnel,” he said.

I looked to our front. What every Marine dreams of when enlisting was going on. Smoke and fire, explosions, Marines in the enemy trench. Stabbing, shooting, ducking, dying.

At that moment I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t articulate what I witnessed and sometimes still can’t.

Gunny Morris came up and said, “Son, are you ok?”

I didn’t want the fuss of any of that and said, “Yes, Gunny.”

His hands were shaking. That frightened me. Him, a man, a veteran of long years, a real Marine, shaking.  

What was obvious to me, out there to our front, was an urgent, vicious, desperate battle where men faced one of the ultimate moments of truth.

How long I stood and watched, I don’t know, the memories like a fractured flicker, click and blank and bam and dark and fear all piled together like kids playing King of the Mountain.

Second Platoon soon moved out and into the melee.

Us, advancing through the enemy trenches, and they were extensive and intricate. Each bunker had a tunnel that led to another bunker so when assaulting them, one Marine needed to be in front of each of the bunkers.

Grenades, rifle fire, satchel charges blowing bunkers to smithereens, our flame-thrower Marines moving through, torching bunker openings, cooking anyone who remained inside.

Bodies littered the trenches. I stopped to look at one, his face the color of saffron. Young, so young.

The word came down from the platoon commander, Lieutenant Dillon, for Staff Sergeant Alvarado and me to move forward to the front of the action and call in some artillery.

We passed a Marine machine gun team where the gunner was pounding the head of another Marine. I knew that Jarhead on the ground and my experience with him was he couldn’t control his fear. As I pressed on, I suspected he’d failed in his duty to his fellow Marines.

We passed another gun team manned by men I knew well. One of them, a cocky Puerto Rican kid from New York City—I don’t remember his name, but I see his face as if he was standing here talking to me now—yelled, “Rodgers, what are you doing out here? You’re too short!”

He was right, I was a short timer, five or six days left in the field, but right then, none of that mattered. Men were dying, the NVA were counterattacking.

As the staff sergeant and I hurried through the trench I noticed the company command group down in a bomb crater which included what looked like an NVA prisoner. As I looked at them a second time, a barrage of mortars fell and dust and smoke erupted.

We ran on, I looked a third time and the smoke cleared. Marines lay dead and wounded on the deck, the NVA prisoner on his knees. The one Marine still standing shot the prisoner in the head with a .45 caliber pistol.

For years I forgot I’d seen this event.

In 2010, while we were in San Antonio, Texas, at the Khe Sanh Veterans Reunion filming BRAVO! COMMON MEN, UNCOMMON VALOR, I met with Skipper Ken Pipes early one morning out on a patio overlooking the San Antonio River. I asked the skipper about that event and my memory of the NVA prisoner’s execution.

He said, “No, that didn’t happen.”

A boat went down the river.

I took a sip of coffee.

The skipper looked me in the eye. “I’m not telling you who shot that prisoner.”

Anyway, when the staff sergeant and I arrived out in front of where all the action had occurred, we called in artillery rounds that landed close and shook the ground and threw dust and chunks of red clay into the air.

Then Bravo began to pull back. Second Platoon formed a line and backed away from the outer edge of our penetration as some of us gathered wounded and dead Marines while men in the front line fired into oncoming NVA soldiers counterattacking.

Smoke and explosions and the roar of war resounded in the air, the ground, and still rattles the inside of my head.

The platoon commander of Third Platoon lost his radio operator and I was assigned to work with him. We headed for the rear of the battle. We had been warned in the night-before’s briefing that Chinese Claymores were hung all around the ground over which we fought and that we should, if possible, stay in the enemy trench.

As we headed back towards the combat base, the lieutenant got out of the trench and started running. I saw Claymores hanging in the branches of naked limbs nearby.

I yelled, “Lieutenant, get back in the trench.” But he didn’t.

So I climbed out and ran after him.

As he hustled along, he tripped a booby trap. Like a rocket it shot out of the ground and hit him. Smoke and debris and fire shot around him like a cloud and some of it hit me in the face. That pissed me off.

He stood bent low and I wondered if he’d fall over dead. I felt something on my face, sizzling the skin.

I yelled and cussed him as I came up and lifted his head. His cheeks and chin were smoking, on fire, so to speak, from white phosphorus, which is pyrophoric or in Marine language, burns on contact with air.

I leaned and grabbed a handful of mud and smeared it on my face to smother the fire as I muttered expletives at him, at the NVA, at war. I grabbed more mud and tried to extinguish the fire on his face. He never fell, never talked, just stared, I guess in shock, until a corpsman arrived and took over his care.

So much of that four- or five- or six-hour fight remains obscured. Too horrible to recall? I wonder if the sequence of events even matters now after all this time. So many images tumble through the back side of my eyes. Who died when and where. What we did and what we saw. What we didn’t do but thought we did. What we did and don’t think we did, don’t remember, don’t want to remember.

One of the striking images I have that doesn’t alter over decades, is our withdrawal.

I walked down the road by myself, radio on my back pressing me down, my emotions like ghosts haunting me.

The faces of our men like skeleton heads, gaunt, and spare, faces like people wanting to burst into tears, but too, elation. For two-and-one-half months we’d been hammered and pounded and scared a thousand times, thousands of moments, our fright like flights of bats invading our bodies, but now, this day, too, we’d gotten even, so to speak. We’d shot some people, and fought our way all through their entrenchments, we’d succeeded, we were someone again, Marines.

I saw two Marines dragging a body down the middle of the road. As I came parallel to them, I looked down and noticed the writing on the back of the dead Marine’s flak jacket. I sagged.

The night before, that Marine, a corporal who I’d known and served with for almost thirteen months, came to see me and handed me an envelope with his dog tags and asked me to send them to his parents.

He was supposed to rotate out of the field on his way home a day or two after the battle.

I asked him why he was giving the dog tags to me to send home, he said, “I’m not going to make it home. I’m going to die tomorrow.”

Anger swelled in my head, and I gave the envelope back and yelled at him that you could not think that the enemy would kill you. You could not give in. “They will not kill you,” I hissed.

To this day, that exchange and what followed, his death, my thoughts on it, have eaten at me. Was I wrong, was I right, does it matter? Obviously, it matters because, well, here I am speaking about it after fifty-seven years.

After the smoke and fire and thunder settled, someone told me that another Marine who I’d served with for months and months and who was a short-timer, too, had cut off one of his toes with an entrenching tool to avoid going out on the patrol.

My rage boiled and I charged down through our bunkers and fighting holes with the intent of challenging him, calling him “Coward.”

As I approached, he sat outside his bunker on the edge of a cot, his foot wrapped in fresh, white bandages.

I yelled, “I’m short and I went out. A lot of us went…” But he shook his head and said, “Don’t be judging me.”

I stopped, turned and walked off. I’m still judging him. Judging me.

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Thank you for reading and for honoring all Vietnam War veterans by sharing this story with friends and other veterans. BRAVO! can be viewed on Amazon Prime. We also have DVDs available, which can be ordered on our website at https://bravotheproject.com.

You can find information about our companion film featuring eleven spouses of combat veterans at https://imarriedthewar.com.

By Ken Rodgers

After fifty-seven years, the month of March 1968 seems like a long, drawn-out nightmare. Another month of more heavy NVA incoming, and a month when the Marines of Bravo Company went outside the wire and got into the NVA trenches. Into their trenches. Twice.

The first incursion, a probe, I suppose, into the enemy lines occurred on March 21. Second Platoon went out at dawn and assaulted the enemy dug in along a tree line to the east of our sector. The most traumatic action came when some of our support from the Khe Sanh lines opened fire overhead with .50 caliber machine guns, and due to some mess-up, aimed directly into the ranks of the Marines on our right flank. Friendly fire. Some of our men were wounded and some were evacuated and then we climbed on up the ridge into the NVA’s trenches, which were empty except for a few booby traps and a dead enemy soldier.

The next night and into the following morning, the NVA buried us in barrage after barrage after barrage, so much of it, or so it seemed to me, aimed directly into Second Platoon’s area of responsibility, which was in the gray sector of our lines.

Lying in the bottom of a fighting hole in the trench, I imagined those NVA gunners, angry at us—Second Platoon—punishing us for having the audacity to break out and get in their trenches. It went on and on, ground like a jumping bean, pain from fear-induced clenched jaws and tensed muscles fatigued and pained after the long bombardment, mind so tired of death, survival, killing, hate and yes, right then, I hated.

The second time we went outside the wire was March 30 and I will revisit that event in a later blog post. That battle was death, hell and glory. What we all thought we wanted, I suspect, when we enlisted, but not what we thought or dreamed it to be when the crap hit the fan.

Days before our patrols of March, on March 6, an incoming flight loaded with Marines, Corpsmen and the photographer Robert Ellison crashed on a mountain outside the base with forty-nine men on board.

Ellison, whom I wrote about in the previous blog concerning February 25 and the Ghost Patrol, had departed Khe Sanh and taken his photos down to the coast to send back to the States. Images that would immortalize so much of the agony of the siege.

Also on board was a Marine, Corporal Ron Ryan, who had been with Bravo’s Second Platoon and the leader of our machine gun squad. He’d been on R and R and was returning to duty.

Some Marines in the platoon didn’t like Ryan, but when word came down about the never-to-return lives and lost plane, a lot of sad faces drooped around the trenchlines in remembrance and even honor of Ryan, his brash confidence, his imposing aura and size, his magnificent handlebar mustache.

The memories of that day are in my mind and return and return, and in flashes. In the trench with Third Squad, Second Platoon, me, now a radio operator assigned to the platoon sergeant, along with O’Hara, Horton, Carwile, Jake, and Richardson. Suddenly quiet, nothing but a slight breeze kissing green and mud-red sandbags. All of us looking at the ground, thinking death, thinking comrades, when Richardson said, “Lord don’t you know it’s a terrible thing. Better them than me.”

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Thank you for reading and sharing our story with friends and other veterans.

You can find information about our companion film featuring eleven spouses of combat veterans at https://imarriedthewar.com.

By Ken Rodgers

I suspect that everyone who sees combat has terrible times, terrible days, or years. For me, at the Siege of Khe Sanh, the month of February stands out. Not only did the heavy incoming arrive on an almost daily basis, but combat on the ground, and in the air, took on a furious character.

When we weren’t in the middle of it, we had ringside seats, and the evil stink of rumor crept among us, a whisper that added angst to every bite of the spare supply of C-rations we crammed into our mouths.

Some of my salient memories follow.

On the early morning of the fifth, the enemy assaulted Hill 861-A, manned by Echo Company, Second Battalion, 26^th Marines. The NVA came through the perimeter wire and were on the hill. A vicious fight ensued, and the enemy finally withdrew. While this was going on, NVA mortars and artillery pounded the combat base below, to silence our guns that would help defend 861-A.

On the night of February 7, the NVA assaulted the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei, not far from Khe Sanh Combat Base. Using tanks, they broke through the defenses and the camp fell after a nasty fight. During the middle of the night, we got word that enemy tanks were in the area. Tanks. I remember thinking I heard the squeak and crank of tank tracks out in the night. Mostly my imagination, I suspect. We were taking heavy incoming fire to create more chaos, so all the noise added to our anticipation. Dark, and death, and fear, and a horrendous racket.

In our area, our squad leaders told us to saddle up in anticipation of relieving Lang Vei, but we never left the combat base. I think there is still, after fifty-seven years, some residual anger from the men who survived the fight at Lang Vei, as well as some residual guilt among the Marines who didn’t come out to save them. I recall, about ten years ago, hearing an audio clip from the commanding officer of the Third Marine Division, explaining in graphic and direct terms why he refused to go out and save the camp and the men who didn’t get out.

Continuing salvos of incoming killed men on the surrounding hills and men in the trenches and men in their bunkers. A plane was lost south of Lang Vei while bombing enemy tanks.

Alpha Company, First Battalion, Ninth Marines, had a platoon stationed on a location known as Hill 64. On February 8, the NVA, led by a bugle call, assaulted Hill 64 and an hours-long firefight went on. With the enemy in their trenches, the Marines of Alpha fought. Eventually a relief column from the company managed to fight its way onto Hill 64 as the enemy was driven off. To those Marines who fought on the hill, the subsequent call to abandon must have been a bitter pill.

On February 10, an incoming C-130, callsign Basketball 813, approached Khe Sanh, but at the last moment veered off the runway approach and flew low around the south side of the base and came in from the west. It was obvious to us, standing there on the ground watching, that something was wrong, maybe mechanical, maybe a wounded bird from the NVA flak constantly flying into the air. The plane came in hard and fast and veered off the runway and wrecked close to our lines. It ignited and men came dropping from the windows of the cockpit as the plane burned.

On 23 February, 1968, the NVA sent at least 1,307 rounds of incoming into the base. Mortars, rockets, artillery. Some of them big guns—152mm howitzers—and you learned to recognize the sound of the round leaving the tube—thump—and then you knew it was already in the air and on its way. They sounded like freight trains. If you survived long enough, you knew the fear they threw at you along with the hot metal and shrapnel that tore flesh and cut off legs and arms, and you learned the details of the thump and if the thump spoke in a very particular vernacular, you knew that where you lay in the trench would soon erupt. Despite the hell and mayhem and death, you got up and moved.

We received lots of new guys during the month of February. When the 152s fired, I would yell, “Move, a round is on its way,” and many times the men gawked, mouths open, their fear refusing to let them crawl to a different place in the trench.

On 25 February, besides a debacle I will write about soon, NVA trenches were detected within 25 meters of our perimeter. If we didn’t feel surrounded before, we did then. Marines with stethoscopes listened to the sounds of the enemy digging their trenches. We imagined tunnels beneath us, mined with tons of explosives to erupt and kill us all.

On February 28, The NVA launched a massive assault on the ARVN troops sharing the line with us. The din of combat sailed over the ground into our ears. Our bombers and artillery units pounded the attackers and the ARVNs bravely fought them off more than once, their courage under fire in stark contrast to so many of the disparaging rumors we had heard concerning ARVN troops. In this case, they didn’t disappoint us.

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Thank you for reading and sharing our story with friends and other veterans.

You can find information about our companion film featuring eleven spouses of combat veterans at https://imarriedthewar.com.

Friends, our new film, I MARRIED THE WAR, will be shown at the LADY FILMMAKERS FILM FESTIVAL in Beverly Hills, California, on Saturday, September 25, 2021 at 5:15 PM Pacific Time. If you are in the Southern California area, please consider joining Betty Rodgers and me at this event. If you can’t make it, you can watch I MARRIED THE WAR virtually as part of the film festival.

I MARRIED THE WAR is the compelling story of wives of combat veterans told through the voices of eleven women who loved, married and lived with combat veterans—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines—from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan. This film covers a gamut of emotions from the sad, the somber, the reflective, the happy, the redemptive.

The film festival celebrates lady filmmakers and the men who collaborate with them.

Details on securing tickets for the live screening or the virtual performances can be found at https://filmfestivalflix.com/lady-filmmakers/purchase-tickets/.

Thank you for being our supporters and friends.

Last summer I was made aware of a talk radio show called ALL MARINE RADIO which is ramrodded by retired Marine Mike “Mac” McNamara.

Mike started ALL MARINE RADIO to highlight combat veterans’ mental health needs with a major focus on suicide prevention. He also envisioned the station as a place where current and former Marines could stay connected or re-connect with their military culture. The mission of ALL MARINE RADIO also includes presentation of current affairs and issues that affect the everyday lives of current and former military personnel.

The list of guests includes current and former Marines, Army personnel, female Marines, historians, business coaches, authors, chefs, Marine wives, police officers, to name just a few categories.

Mike McNamara in the studio at ALL MARINE RADIO. Photo courtesy of Mike McNamara.

To be more specific, some of the guests have been Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert Neller, author Sebastian Junger, author and Marine Karl Marlantes, Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, Retired Marine Corps General John Kelly (currently slated to become the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security), author Eric Hammel who has written extensively about Marines, Carrie Reilly who is a US Army widow who talks about dealing with suicide, and historian Albert Berger who most recently discussed Fidel Castro’s legacy.

And three times….me.

The first time I was on we talked about BRAVO! and Khe Sanh and Vietnam and post-deployment issues experienced and still being experienced by Vietnam veterans.

In my second appearance we talked about post-deployment and mental health issues of combat veterans in general and I think Mike was interested in seeing if I had anything to say that might help veterans of war, most specifically veterans of the Middle East conflicts.

The third time we talked about transitioning from being a Marine to becoming a filmmaker and we also touched on the notion of how it really helps to have something to involve yourself that is bigger than you–a cause, a purpose, a goal–when transitioning from service to civilian life or from work to retirement, or, I suppose, during any major life change.

Michael McNamara was born in California and his father was a major league baseball manager. He has extensive experience with radio media as a talk show host and as a station executive. The National Association of Broadcasters named Mike the “Small Market Personality of the Year” in 2007.

Mike McNamara in Afghanistan. Photo courtesy of Mike McNamara.

Mike was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps in 1983 and he left active duty as a Captain in 1994. He returned to active duty with the USMC and deployed to Ramadi, Iraq in 2004, to Fallujah, Iraq in 2006 and to Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2010. After that, Mike remained on active duty until he retired in 2015.

He has four children, including two sons who are now officers in the United States Marine Corps.

Mike does most of the interviewing on the program and his interests cast a wide net. In a recent interview with Albert Berger, PhD, Professor of History at the University of North Dakota, Mac asked Dr. Berger about his thoughts on the legacy of Fidel Castro, who, for much of the last 60 years, has been a thorn in the side of many politicians, military officials and citizens of the United States.
Dr. Berger and Mike’s in-depth look at Castro, the history of Cuban-American relations in the last half century and some thoughts on the future of Cuban-US relations were informative and fascinating.

One of the things I like about Mike’s interviews is how the discussion invariably leads me into thoughts and memories of my own. I was a sophomore in high school when the Cuban Missile Crisis came about. At the time I lived in southern Arizona and we’d had a lot of rain on that normally dried-out Sonoran Desert, and the country was in flood. Every arroyo, wash and low spot was flowing with water.

Mike McNamara with his two sons, John & Patrick at Patrick’s Commissioning in 2015 at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Photo courtesy of Mike McNamara.

I remember riding on the back of one of my friend’s Harley out to the Santa Rosa, a sometimes river, a sometimes wash and most times a dry sandy arroyo. But on this day, it was at least a mile wide and water ripped through what had been cotton fields fecund with cotton stalks ready to be picked. I remember the ominous feeling at the time that filled my body with strange electricity that I was to later experience in combat.

Electricity spurred by fear. Back then, it was the dual threat of death by flood and death by nuclear attack because the Russians were placing nuclear missiles in Cuba.

In another recent interview, Mike interviewed US Marine Karl Marlantes, author of MATTERHORN and WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR, and one of the more striking moments in the interview was Karl Marlantes talking about the first time he visited The Wall (Vietnam Veterans Memorial) in Washington, DC, and how it affected him and that led my mind back to my visits to The Wall.

I first visited The Wall in 1993 with a large group of folks associated with the Khe Sanh Veterans. We went at night and the heat pressed down on us like the threat of attack and I recall being amazed at how so many of the tough men I knew broke down as they read and felt the names etched in that artful memorial. It didn’t affect me that way. What that experience did for me was to allow my mind to begin the long process of discovering and dealing with my feelings about the war and what role combat played in the man I had become.

Mike McNamara’s children: Katherine, John, Colleen, Patrick. Photo courtesy of Mike McNamara.

Some years later, I went back to the memorial and while searching the directory for the names of some of my school mates who are remembered on the memorial, I couldn’t keep tears from sneaking down my cheeks. It was all I could do to keep from busting wide open with an emotion that felt like that flood I witnessed back on the Santa Rosa.

So, thanks to Mike McNamara for hosting these interviews that allow me to retrieve my memories and thoughts.

If you are interested in all things Marine, or in what the current political and cultural pulse of America’s veterans are, or you are interested in history, cooking, mental health, post-combat issues, politics, the military in general, check out Mike’s programs.

You can access ALL MARINE RADIO here: http://www.allmarineradio.com/.

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/.

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

By Liza Long

“Oh yes, you asked me about the rocket attack on Danang, and well, honey, just don’t worry about rocket attacks at all—they’re really inaccurate. Of course, we’d take it very personally if one hit us, but they are very inaccurate, and since I’ve been here, rockets haven’t hit at all.”

Captain Theodore T. Long Jr., USMC, in an audiotape mailed from Vietnam to my mother in Layton, Utah, February 1970.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, I’m obsessed with the show Madmen. This season, the clothes get ugly, the soundtrack gets funky, and it’s time to talk about hard truths that never seemed possible in those early 60s Camelot times of JFK and Jackie, pearls and Hyannis Port. The one scene from an early Madmen episode that still stands out for me is Don Draper and his (then) wife, Betty, picnicking beneath stately trees in early summer with their picture-perfect children. When they leave, they don’t bother to clean up the mess they have left—why would they?

What a mess. That’s what a group of veterans told me on a Monday in late April 2014, when I was invited to visit a group of Warrior Pointe members in the recreation room of a cinderblock Christian church in Nampa, Idaho. The men ranged in age from grizzled Vietnam veterans to young soldiers who had just returned from Afghanistan. Their leader and Warrior Pointe founder, Reed Pacheco, walked in with a cell phone to his ear. He was talking with a family member of a veteran who had threatened suicide and needed an intervention fast.

Pacheco, himself a veteran, founded Warrior Pointe because he wanted to create a space where former soldiers could come together to talk about the issues that continue to haunt them. “The VA just isn’t there for us,” he said, as heads around the table nodded emphatically. This group of 20 men have taken a new mission upon themselves: no soldier left behind.

“The first thing people ask when you get back is ‘Did you kill somebody? How many people did you kill?’” one Vietnam veteran told me. “They just don’t understand how inappropriate that question is. We did what we had to do. You can’t know what it means to sit, 40 years later, in front of a television set reliving the same 40 seconds, over and over and over. You can’t know. You don’t want to know.”

I learned more than a few things about courage in my hour with this veterans’ group. And I also learned more than a few things about how the United States has let its soldiers down. I often wondered why so many veterans’ groups were opposed to the Affordable Care Act of 2010. “It’s the same thing as the VA,” one Afghanistan veteran told me. “You wait and wait and wait for care. And when you finally get in to see someone, they just give you painkillers instead of recommending surgery or something you need to actually fix the problem.”

That delay of care has been in the news recently, with VA Secretary Eric Shinseki facing allegations that VA clinics delayed treatment to vets who desperately needed it, then covered it up. You can read more about this issue here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/05/13/shinseki-set-to-testify-over-alleged-secret-list-hiding-va-treatment-delays/. No one disputes that patients died while waiting for care.

The Warrior Pointe organization recognizes that all of its members, no matter where or when they served, suffer from some sort of PTSD—Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. The controversial DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) revised criteria for the disorder which is now described as “a history of exposure to a traumatic event that meets specific stipulations and symptoms from each of four symptom clusters: intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognitions and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity.” You can find out more about that here: http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/PTSD-overview/dsm5_criteria_ptsd.asp.

Pretty much everyone who went to war to defend our country could suffer from PTSD.

But the Warrior Pointe veterans feel empowered to help each other, where they feel the Veterans Administration has failed them. “We are all brothers,” says Tom Bosch, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq. “We understand each other. We can talk to each other. We can support each other.”

My father served in Vietnam. While the Don Drapers of the world were enjoying three-martini lunches and free love, my dad sent anxious audiotapes to reassure my mother, who heard nothing but bad news about the war at home. Dad didn’t have to serve. He was his father’s only surviving child. He set out to write his senior thesis in Political Science to defend the Vietnam War. As he researched the subject, he concluded there was no justification for America’s involvement in Indochina. Then he graduated from college and went to Vietnam anyway.

Theodore and Liza Long

My dad flew medical rescue missions. As far as I know, he never killed anyone. He came home to life as a husband and father and used the GI Bill to pursue his passion to study law. But I will never forget the morning we were running errands in Bakersfield, California. The road was blocked to allow a parade, a hero’s welcome for the warriors of Desert Storm.

When I looked at my dad, I was surprised to see tears streaming down his cheeks. “They spit on me when I got home,” he said quietly. “They called me a baby killer. All I ever did was love my country.”

And as a defender of our country, my dad most likely suffered from PTSD.

Liza Long is a writer, educator, mental health advocate, and mother of four children, one of whom has a mental illness. She lives in Boise, Idaho. You can read more of Liza Long’s thoughts here: http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/.