Vietnam Archives

Strap a 40 pound PRC-41
To the pack frame
Four smoke grenades
Don't forget the extra handset
Stand up
Grrrrr
You're not done
Need to eat, add ten pounds of C-s
Drink too, hook three quart canteens
A six pound load to the belt
A two pound M1911A1 .45
Ammo mags and medical pouch too
Stand up
Grrrr
You're not done
782 gear, e-tool, poncho and pack
To hold socks, skivvies and utilities
Pens and message pads
Some pogey bait too
15 more pounds on the frame
Stand up
Grrrrr
You're not done
Put on flak jacket
Top off with helmet and liner
Yet another 12 pounds
Strap on the pack board
Stand up
Walk
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Now you have an idea where "grunts" come from.

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. Here are my reflections, and suggestions on how to mark the occasion.

Silence

Veterans Day used to be called Remembrance Day, which harks back to the World War I armistice, which occurred on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

For years it has been marked by silence. Let's try to continue this tradition in an overly plugged-in world.

Put down the Blackberry, pull out the earbuds, turn off the iPad, embrace the hush, and reflect.

Poetry

If you live in the Washington area, drop in at the semi-annual gathering of The Memorial Day Writers' Project, organized by a bunch of my veteran friends, including fellow Marine Mike McDonell.

These are veterans who dare to declaim and you can find them in a tent behind the sidewalk facing Constitution Avenue near 21st Street in Washington. The offerings range from the profane to the profound, and I guarantee a laugh, and possibly a tear or too.

Read

Check out The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War, by Brandon Friedman, an Iraq 101st Airborne veteran and director of new media at the Veterans Affairs Department.

The reviews say Friedman nails combat, along with the absurdity that goes along with any endeavor managed by the Pentagon.

Visit

Walk the lines of tombstones at Arlington, become embraced by the walls of the Vietnam Memorial, and be one of the few people to visit the District of Columbia War Memorial, the closest thing in the Capital City to a World War One Memorial, in West Potomac Park, just off Independence Ave.

Wear

A flower poppy sold by VFW members to commemorate the poppies that Canadian poet John McRae used to evoke the fallen in his World War I poem, "In Flanders Fields":

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead.
Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved and now we lie,
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you, from failing hands, we throw,
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us, who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Honor

Compose your own honor roll and send it here for posting.

Here's mine:

• My comrades from 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines and 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, Vietnam, 1965/1966 including Herbierto Gonzalez, Mike Metzger, Bill Schwartz, J.T. King, Larry Leal, Tom Wilmot and Mile Gullingsruud.
• Abigail Friedman: I have known and loved Abigail, a State Department Foreign Service officer who finished an Afghanistan tour this June working with provincial reconstruction teams, and her husband Eric Passaglia, for more than two decades and salute them both for their service. Abigail now serves as director for Afghanistan at the National Security Council.


• Lewis B. Puller Jr., friend and fellow Marine who touched me with his grace.


• Marine Maj. Cornelius Ram, the best company commander any Marine could ever have.


• Leon Daniel, Marine Korean War veteran and UPI bureau chief in Saigon on the last day of the Vietnam War. A friend, mentor and source of inspiration.

I have picked up very strong signals that the Veterans Affairs Department has dropped plans to issue a second contract to develop a system to process claims for veterans suffering from diseases related to the Vietnam-era chemical Agent Orange.

IBM won the original claims processing system contract in July, and evidently did such a poor job that VA Secretary Eric Shinseki personally called IBM chairman Samuel Palmisano to express his dissatisfaction with the lack of progress.

The solicitation for the second contract, I'm told, was an added tool to get IBM's attention, vendors told me, more of a club than a real plan to go ahead with another deal. The VA quietly informed interested bidders it did not plan to issue a second contract over the past week.

So what's the status of the IBM system, which was supposed to go into operation earlier this month? I keep asking the VA that question, and so far have not received a reply.

If anyone out there in VA land has concrete info on the status of the IBM system please send me an e-mail.

Before the Senate hands over $13.4 billion to the Veterans Affairs Department to compensate Vietnam Veterans for exposure to Agent Orange, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., has a few questions for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, according to this syndicated column by Tom Philpott.

Webb, a Marine Vietnam veteran, told Philpott he does not want to deny deserving veterans compensation. But he wants Shinseki, an Army Vietnam veteran, to explain at a hearing planned for Sept. 23 his reasons for adding three diseases -- leukemias, Parkinson's disease and ischemic heart disease -- to a list that qualifies veterans for disability compensation.

The Agent Orange law, Webb told Philpott, makes a presumption that any of the 2.7 million troops who served in Vietnam had exposure to the toxic defoliant. Webb pointed out that that misses the realty of Vietnam service:

On any given day in Vietnam they say about 10 percent of the people were actually out in direct combat. Percentages are actually higher than that because of rotations. . . . But the majority of the people weren't in combat where defoliants were used. That's just the reality of it.

I was one of those 10 percent, serving in two grunt outfits -- 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, and 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment -- and I would like to make sure VA disability bucks go to the front-line troops who deserve it most.

On Monday, we will (hopefully) stop to pause and remember those we have sent into harms way, and here are my reflections:

Marines

I had the privilege to serve in the comm platoon of three Marine infantry units, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment; 2nd Battalion, Ninth Marines; and 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, 1963-1967, and consider this the key experience of my life.

Even though time has dimmed some memories of those years, I still remember some friends who in my mind's eye will always remain young, including Rex Dieterle, Miles Gullingsruud, Larry Leal, Joel Engebretsen, Tom Wilmot and our long suffering platoon sergeant, Herbierto Gonzalez.

My wife Deborah has met most of these folks, and agrees that Sgt. Gonzalez had ample reason for his long suffering. (A hint to reporters covering politicians claiming Vietnam service: ask to meet their platoon mates.)

I also had the pleasure to serve as the radio operator for Maj. Cornelius Ram -- the finest company commander a Marine could wish for -- who perished while trying to save the lives of fellow Marines on Jan. 10, 1971, in an operation in Vietnam.

Two other Marine friends deserve mention here:

Leon Daniel, a veteran of the Chosin Reservoir campaign in Korea. Leon then went on to a long career covering wars (and the civil rights movement) for UPI.

He served as the last UPI bureau chief in Vietnam, and instead of bugging out with other reporters when the North entered Saigon on April 30, 1975, Leon stayed on for close to a month and continued to report until the new management booted him out of the country.

Leon served as a guide, mentor and true pal during the decade he and I lived on the Hill.

Lewis B. Puller Jr., author of the Pulitzer Prize winning biography Fortunate Son, whom I met at the Home Box Office "Welcome Home Concert" on July 4, 1987, at the now defunct Cap Center. He extended the hand of friendship in the spirit of "Semper Fidelis" until his deah in 1994.

Lew, quite simply, touched me with grace.

Army

My Army Vietnam veteran buddy, Dennis Shaw, asked me to give "a good thought to the boys of Recon Platoon, Echo Company, 1st of the 20th Infantry Battalion, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, near Duc Pho, Quang Nai Province."

Done Dennis - and yes, we were boys.

Dennis continues his service today by working with soldiers from the current war suffering from traumatic brain injury at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

I also need to give a nod to my friend George Wright, an Army Grenada veteran who now works in the Army's public affairs shop in the Pentagon, and serves as a valuable sounding board for this sometimes cranky reporter.

Navy

Capt. Dave Wray, commander of the Joint Public Affairs Support Element in Suffolk, Va., whom I have known for more than 20 years and has done two ground tours in Iraq.

Dave, like George Wright, provides me with some good compass headings so I don't veer off track.

And, since the Pentagon is a midsized village, Dave, Lew Puller and I had lunch together at least once a month for more than five years.

State Department

Abigail Friedman

I have known - and loved - Abigail Friedman, a State Department Foreign Service officer working with provincial reconstruction teams out of Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan, and her husband Eric Passaglia, for more than two decades and salute them both for their service.

Abigail gets a well deserved "hooah" for her work in Afghanistan, and Eric gets another for the equally tough job of taking care of the kids, Martha, Abe and Sam.

Family

Finally - because service in my family is generational - a salute to my father, Walter Brewin, who served in the Army Air Corps in the Philippines and Okinawa in World War II and my father-in-law, William Suess, a tin-can sailor in both the Atlantic and Pacific in The Big One.

Your Honor Roll

Do you have anyone you want to honor? Send in names, dates and branch of service and I'll post them here.

A tangible hit of far off homes
The orange mail bag
Carries everything from books to poems

The crew chief tosses
It into the air
Eager hands
Quickly snare
The bag from
Over there

Open the bag
And a mixture of heady smells
Dispels the avgas

Kool-Aid and Chanel No. 5
Woolworths perfume too
Pungent but sweet
Waft from the bag

Spices too
A tinge of red chile
From Abiqu

A broken bottle
Of soy sauce
Adds its scent to the mix

But most of all
It's Kool Aid and perfume
That
Take me back there

Grape, Lemon Lime, Cherry, Orange
Raspberry and Strawberry
Fill the air

Powdered packets
That take the tang out of the water
And
Take me back there

Envelopes sent to
Any Marine
From sweet sirenes in Abilene

Romance from far
Away makes my day

Thank you Joanne, Jill and Sue
For your letters
Which carry more than words

I'll never forget you
Even though we never met
You took the time
To even send a rhyme

Decades have passed
But I still sniff my mail
And yes
Deep back

I can still sense the exotic mix
Of
Grape, Lemon Lime
Raspberry and Strawberry
Chanel No. 5
And Woolworths too

The Veterans Affairs Department completed a study in 1988 that determined up to 30 percent of Vietnam Veterans suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and in 2000 Congress directed VA to do a follow-up study and they want officials to interview the same people they talked to for the first study.

But the Government Accountability Office reported on Wednesday VA did not know how many of the 2,348 participants in the first study could be found so they can participate in the latest one.

PTSD researchers, the GAO noted, suggested the department locate these vets in the same way it did on first go-round: through military and Internal Revenue Service records. Others suggested that Internet searches also could help track down the vets.

What a concept. I'm an easily locatable Vietnam veteran, down to my phone number, street address and probably a bunch of other information I really don't want out there, all thanks to Al Gore, who invented the Internet.

Left to right: Elmo Zumwalt III, James "Jim" Zumwalt, and Elmo Zumwalt Jr. at a patrol boat base in Vietnam 1969. Credit: Zumwalt family photo.

Like many Vietnam veterans, Lt. Col. James "Jim" Zumwalt (ret.), my fellow Marine, says he has spent the past 40 years trying to expiate what he calls the raw wounds of that war and its aftermath.

For Jim, the years following the war turned out worse than the combat. His father, Elmo Zumwalt Jr., served as commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970 at the same time his brother, Elmo Zumwalt III, commanded riverine patrol craft PCF-35 operating near Da Nang and later the southern tip of Vietnam.

Crewman on those patrol boats experienced a high casualty rate because they operated on narrow waterways where the banks were lush with vegetation, giving the Viet Cong ample cover to ambush crews.

Zumwalt Jr., who became the youngest chief of Naval operations in 1970, decided to eliminate this natural cover by ordering the spraying of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange on the river banks patrolled by the boats of the "brown water Navy," including the one commanded by his namesake son.

That tactical decision unleashed a chemical time bomb on the Zumwalt family. Agent Orange contained carcinogens, and in 1983, Zumwalt III was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, a result of his exposure to Agent Orange, he later wrote.

Zumwalt III died in 1988, but not before he co-authored with his father the book My Father, My Son, a tale of generational military service that dates back to the American Revolution and courage in the face of adversity.

Today, Jim Zumwalt has weighed in with his own book, Bare Feet, Iron Will: Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam's Battlefields, a courageous story of our enemies in Vietnam. The book will have its formal launch at noon on April 26 at the Navy Memorial in Washington. (The Navy Memorial has a bas-relief that features PCF-35, the patrol boat commanded in Vietnam by Zumwalt III.)

I write courageous because it treats the enemy we faced in Vietnam with understanding and sympathy, a take Jim told me that he feared would arouse the wrath of some Vietnam veterans who have yet to come to terms with the war.

But, as Jim told me and as he relates in his book, by meeting his enemy, he started the process of healing his anger and grief, especially over the loss of his brother.

In 1994, Jim accompanied his father on a trip to Hanoi to provide Vietnamese veterans of the war with artificial limbs and wheelchairs. On that trip, Jim watched his 73-year-old father lift and then place a legless Vietnamese veteran in a wheelchair. At that moment, Jim realized that his father had "an immense compassion . . . for those who were less fortunate, whether friend or foe."

This compassion and humanitarianism, Jim says in his book, provided his father with "a basis for putting the tragedies of this war behind him."

During that 1994 trip, however, Jim still felt more anger than compassion towards the Vietnamese he first encountered -- until he met Maj. Gen. Nguyen Huy Phan. When the two met, Phan immediately expressed sympathy for the loss of Jim's brother, Elmo. Later in their conversation, Phan, Jim wrote, became reflective and his "eyes betrayed an internal anguish." As Phan's eyes misted, Jim wrote, "I sensed a personal tragedy loomed in his life as well. I felt an instant bond forming with him."

That bond deepened, Jim said, when he found out that Phan, too, had lost a brother in the war, and his anger started to dissipate as he came to "recognize the significance of a loved one's loss was not measured simply by which side of the battlefield on which he had stood."

Inspired by this encounter -- and with a nod to the compassion of his father -- Jim decided to tell in Bare Feet, Iron Will the tale of soldiers on the other side of the Vietnam War, interviewing some 200 former enemies.

In writing his book, Jim says in the introduction, he came upon the principal of universality, which to him means the recognition of "the commonality of suffering, so that, once the fighting ends, a common ground can be plowed in which the seeds of friendship are sown."

This is a powerful tale told by a real warrior -- Jim served in the Marines from the Vietnam War through the first Iraq War -- not a sunshine patriot. That fact can help heal the still raw wounds of the Vietnam War.

Jim Zumwalt will discuss and sign copies of his book at the Navy Memorial, 701 Pennsylvania Ave., NE, in Washington at noon on April 26. The event is free and open to the public.