My Husband, Last Day in Vietnam
Credit: Personal album. He is the figure standing on the right side of the picture. He had helicoptered back to Chu Lai on that last day in the country. He spent most of his combat service in the area around Chu Lai, south of Da Nang. He doesn't remember who was with him in the photo.
"...we heard, you know, shots fired. It was like a hot zone... the helicopter is hovering over this rice paddy, and it was just like five feet above the rice paddy. And he starts pushing us out..."
The man who was pushing was a lieutenant colonel who had helicoptered my husband to the hot zone. It was the last week of my husband's deployment to Vietnam. He landed in that rice paddy, with his gear, water up to his knees. Hearing about such episodes motivated me to write a book about my husband's combat experience.
This is not my first venture in book writing. A few of the books I've written are good. Most are not. The good ones began, as this one has, with a clear purpose.
My husband saw active combat in Vietnam fifty-five years ago. Early in our marriage I heard virtually nothing about his tour of duty. More recently, he has begun to share, although he still does not speak with emotion. Even the most jarring events are sometimes described with almost flat effect.
My husband's narratives are true history, history as it was lived by thousands of other soldiers. The story of Vietnam has been told by journalists, historians, and filmmakers. But, as any historian knows, it is first-person accounts that are most true, and therefore most valuable.
Those of us who lived through the Vietnam era, stateside, remember the news reports at home. We remember government bulletins. And then we remember photos, splashed across the newspaper front pages and evening news broadcasts. It was a disconnect between government bulletins and news reports that disillusioned much of my generation. We lost faith in government, a faith that had been part of our collective psychology through the 1950s.
Vietnam was the first war in which citizens at home were given front row seats to action on the battlefield. We saw a young girl with her clothing burned off by napalm, napalm that American forces had dropped. We saw a soldier executed at close range by a South Vietnamese official. We saw Buddhist monks immolate themselves.
This was war as we had never known it.
While it is instructive to read news bulletins from that time, and to pour through historians' accounts, there is no report as valuable as that of someone who lived through the thick of battle.
When my husband first joined his company at Chu Lai in 1968, he was accompanied by 36 other soldiers. These thirty-seven were replacing the same number that had been wiped out days before in a minefield disaster.
My husband explains, "...and we found out they had walked through a minefield the outfit that I went to. All these people had been blown up."
After a year had passed, only seven of the original thirty seven that had joined the company with my husband remained. Most of the absent had been injured or killed.
My husband describes what it was like, walking around, "You'd be out in the field, and people would be a couple of hundred yards in front of you. You'd hear an explosion. A guy stepped on a mine. A helicopter comes takes em away and you never see them again. You don't know ..."
As I prepare to write this book, several challenges confront me. There is the usual challenge of a blank page. Nothing will be on that page unless I write it. Then there is the truth. Being true to the record in this case is a moral obligation. Finally, there is this: the clock.
My husband and I have each lived for more than three quarters of a century. It is naive to think I have the luxury of time. Even if I live long enough to finish the book, will I be able? Will my husband continue to remember those events of so long ago, with clarity?
At some point, the final chapter of our lives closes, for all of us. I believe in the value of this book. I believe it has worth not only for my husband and me, and for our descendants. If done properly, it will also add, modestly, to the already voluminous record on the war in Vietnam.
Very good idea @agmoore !
Wars are always unfair. Those who lived through wars have lifelong consequences. My ancestors lived through the Spanish Civil War and the comments and stories are horrifying....Anyone they considered suspicious was killed, regardless of the side. After that they lived the poverty of a destroyed country. Most were hungry. Some emigrated to be able to help those who remained in Spain.
And...they never returned or visited only once...In that case, the topic of war always came up in the gatherings. Perhaps because of the silence they maintained for so many years. The terror was still alive. People were marked. Many did not overcome the trauma...In short, in the host countries they formed a new family and that helped them leave behind a lot of hatred and resentment.
Keep going and I wish you much success with your new book. I'm sure you will make it
Hello @katleya, I am very familiar with the Spanish Civil War. It was a war that tore a people apart, but also had consequences far beyond its borders. I think if the international community had not been involved in the war, it may not have lasted so long and not have been so bloody. Who can forget Picasso's Guernica?
Thank you for your meaningful comment. It is always a pleasure to hear from you. You speak with a voice that seems to carry the weight of history.
Peace and health to you.
La historia narrada por quien la vivió. Demasiado importante.
De acuerdo. La voz de mi esposo debe ser la mas fuerte en este libro. No la de yo. Gracias por su commentario.
I think it's wonderful that you are going to take the adventure of writing another book!
War books are very popular and even more so when they are told by survivors!
I wish you success and please finish it because I will read it! 👍
Hello my friend, @mballesteros. Thank you for those words. I think everyone has a story, and we all think our stories matter. In this case, I believe that's true. Of course, I have to manage it, so, we'll see.
I appreciate your encouragement. I will surely let you know when (if) it is finished⭐️ ♥️
No, I don't think it's naive to think you have the luxury of time. 70's are the new 60's, or haven't you heard? I recently watched a documentary called 'Older than Ireland,' the stories of thirty Irish centenarians. Inspiring. Besides, writing the book will likely spark hubby's memory as well as signalling to the overseer/universe/god that you've miles to go before you sleep and are far too busy to be shuffling off this mortal coil. It's a win-win. Get to it!
My husband is 100% Irish, so that's encouraging😄
70s are the new 60s. That's great news. It's really silly to say I don't have the luxury of time. Nobody does. No one knows when the mortal alarm clock is going to go off, so if we want to do something, do it today. That's all we can be sure of.
A win-win to be sure. Thanks for those encouraging words. Writing the blog gave me a boost. I got him to record another session today...that's the gold. His memories.
Take care my friend, @deirdyweirdy
It takes a lot of effort to write a book, but there are many tools nowadays that make the process so much easier. For research, Zotero is a fantastic way to manage references. Scrivener is a great tool for organizing all that research and writing the first drafts. I'm sure you already have your own process, but you might find these tools interesting, if you haven't come across them before. Good luck!
I'm such a dinosaur! I don't know about these tools. I've started to compile folders on my desktop with resources (research) and started adding footnotes (with a separate footnote file) as I go along. This is surely a primitive approach. I remember the first book I wrote, I had mostly paper files that I kept in a folder 😄.
I appreciate the references. Have just looked into them and will learn how to use these tools, perhaps. I remember the first time I wrote an 80 page research paper (for graduate school). After I did that, I realized that it's possible to write anything, of any size. All you need is to know where you are going and to assemble the parts so they all fit together.
Thanks for the suggestions. Perhaps you will drag me into the 21st century😇
If you're going to be handling a lot of references/citations then Zotero is the one to master. It will save you hours of works and you will wonder how in the world you even worked without it. It has several time saving functions that are just beautiful. Let me break down the barebones of this system.
The app. I am a Windows user but the app is available in multiple platforms for free. All your bibliographic items will live here when you save them manually or automatically through the browser extension.
The browser extension: Zotero Connector. I use the Brave browser, which is based on Chrome, so the extension works well with it. What does the extension do? Imagine that you're doing research and you come across a paper, video, blog post, etc. that you would like to use. All you need to do to save the metadata (title, author, source, access time, publishing details, and other information) is click the browser button. That's it. One button click, and it's all saved. The following is a screenshot of said magic button.
There is much more to this service, but I think the basics are enough to save you a lot of time. It takes some getting used to at the beginning but Youtube is your friend to learn the intricacies.
Did I mention it's free and open source?
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thank you for the guide, my friend. Much appreciated.
I think the time of the Vietnamese war was a desperate and difficult time for most people on both sides of the conflict. The indecison of the then American government made the war to last more than necessary, costing a lot of lives and property. It good to hear that your husband was part of it and that he survived. I will say turning his experiences into a book is a good idea and no doubt the book will be an interesting one. I wish you success on writing. I wish you and your partner everything good at this stage of your lives. Have a great day, @agmoore.
⭐️
My husband was not 'political' before he went to war. He did what he was told. He didn't want to go. War was certainly an education. After we were married, he always said, no son of his was ever going to fight.
Thank you for the encouragement. I hope I can do the material justice.
Good luck and Godspeed, @agmoore. You will finish. I somehow feel confident of that. You are motivated, your husband is finally ready to talk about his experience, you both feel that clock ticking, and most importantly, these personal experiences are stories that must be told.
p.s. Video and audio transcription aren't very expensive. One approach could be to interview him while recording, without writing. Just listen, prod, ask him what that was like, and see if you can spend your valuable energy pulling the stories out of him. Then you'd have more of an editing project than a writing project. Just an idea! Hugs to you.
Hello my friend,
I am doing that. My husband is not much of a talker, but I ask a few provocative questions and he starts remembering things. These events are not necessarily related, but they all come together eventually to make the story complete. So far, I'm using my phone. I just sit down and let him talk. He doesn't embellish, which is good. It's almost straight narrative.
It was always my intention to have this be his voice. I will only add background on contemporaneous events to give the narrative context. It will be his voice, I hope. So far I've transcribed a few pages.
Thanks so much for the advice. You and I are on the same page 😇
What a wonderful project for you to do together. Those memories are very powerful. He may be giving an understated and unemotional narrative, but I have a hunch it is a very emotional experience (and I hope a healing one) to talk through what he remembers from the war.
That photo. What an impression.
Reading what your husband says shocks me. War is a horror that I have experienced from afar; it's been almost fiction for me. I'm slowly approaching half a century of life, so when your young husband was in Vietnam and then when the war was finally over, I was still waiting to be born.
I think a book like the one you plan to write has a lot of humane value; one of the most transcendental books for my literary formation has been precisely one about the Vietnam War--or rather about the truth of war and what it's like to write about it: The Things They Carried, written by Tim O'Brien, a veteran like your husband. It's a book of short stories; I remember the first one I read was "How to Tell a True War Story" and I was hooked.
I hope that white page cooperates with both of you. Best of luck and I look forward to reading your book, which is sure to be among the good ones. Although I suspect there are no bad ones.
♥️
I find the picture startling, also. He is so young, and he looks numb to me in that photo. He was numb. By that time they had driven all resistance out of him. He just wanted to come home.
War. I also only have seen it from a distance. It never makes sense to me. I don't know why it's such an entrenched part of human existence. Century after century. Culture after culture. We go off blasting each other.
I haven't read The Things They Carried but it's on my reading list now.
I'm determined not to let the white page get the best of me. I've learned to start writing. Fill the page. If what I write is no good, I can erase it and start over. The blank page can be the greatest enemy, so I just fill it up😇. Thanks so much for your comment. Let's hope war remains a distant experience for both of us.
I can only imagine what this photo makes you feel.
Filling up the page is a good strategy, I think. Of course, it's a lot better when we wrote just came out right. Let's hope for the best, the best for your book and for a world without war--which is a dream but one worth dreaming.
I think that if you get to read The Things They Carried, it might be a good warm-up.
🌻🦋🌻
This is a very ambitious project you’re tackling here, but I know that you’re up to the task. Some stories seem to have a life of their own and demand to be told; I think this is one of those.
As to process, I see you’ve been offered some sound advice, but I’m going to add my two cents : to assist in self-editing, I use a text-to-speech app, which really helps catch those little errors that we fail to “see” when we attempt to edit or read our own writing. When you listen to another “voice” reading the piece, it’s really much easier to “hear” the mistakes.
I can’t wait to read the book when it’s done AND I’d appreciate links to all of your books so that I can have a good enjoyable read! 🥰🥰❤️🤗🥰😁😢🥰 Good luck! 🤞
Hello my friend @itsostylish. Thank you very much for your feedback.
I think your suggestion is excellent. It 'sounds' different when another voice reads our words. The voice in our heads sometimes is too familiar to catch errors. My son (very literate lad) has offered to edit for me also. That is my fail-safe. Nothing like having free help😀. He has encouraged me to write this for years. I think I'm on my may. My husband has begun to open up and that is key. All I need to do is let him tell his story. It's not my story. I didn't know him then. I sometimes wonder what he was like before he went to Vietnam. We probably wouldn't have gotten along. I think I needed the mature, seasoned man. Most men that age were just too vapid for me 😂
Yes, they were too vapid 4 me 2. I gravitated to older men. However, my first marriage was to a man my own age and he was NEVER my age. He had an old soul, a shiny mind and a beautiful heart. He died at 26.
!!!!
OMG. I am so sorry. That will make you grow up, if nothing else does😯
😭😭😭 Dm'ed you 💗
May I place my pre-order now, please? 🤗
Memories... we can pen them, share them, or take them to the grave. There is not much point in the latter. This is a wonderful idea to capture your husband's experience and perspective for perpetuity. Hopefully, many others will learn something from what he has to share, and I can't think of anyone better to ensure that his story is sensitively inked and preserved than you. Although the subject matter is challenging, it's really good that he is now able to voice his experience of the war. It should prove to be something of a catharsis for him. So interesting yet not surprising that he appears to be emotionally distant from that part of his life. I wonder if you both need to be prepared for the emotion to bubble up one day, perhaps when least expected. Wishing you all the very best with this important project. Much love !LUV !ALIVE
Hello dear @samsmith1971,
Thank you for your confidence and encouragement. I really do think if I do this right it will add something to our understanding of what it's like to be in the thick of battle. My husband has said fear was not his chief response to war. It was the way he lived. It was always being outside, and wet. It was the rats. It was the sheer quality of life. It's possible he is still not fully acknowledging the fear.
He does seem very willing to share. I'm glad that we're getting it down (here's hoping!) so that my children will see a side of him that helps them understand who he is.
Thank you for your support.
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I've always been fascinated by stories like this. I would like to read your book if it's done.
Thank you! If and when I finish, I will post notice of it here and try to remember to tag you :)
Writing books in this way is also a lot of hard work and you are doing this work and such books with wars people read them and they also increase their knowledge a lot, so we are the same. We pray that this book will become famous in the whole world.
Thank you!
Most welcome.
It can actually be quite demanding when one is preparing to write
Thank you for commenting.
I know how stressful and draining it may be to write a book. Also, I never knew you had written a book before and you are planning on writing another one. Kudos to you and I wish you goodluck
Now this is a book I'll make sure to empty my savings on.
I am one to believe that the clock is wondrous instrument, and like all instruments man hath found way to maneuver it.
Surely tomorrow isn't promised, death creeps like an old coot looking to loot.
Regardless of this fact, I do believe time does wait at times. I really do.
Time waits when the cause is real and true.
Believe it or not, I'm sure time will wait for you too!
Go on dear mentor @agmoore, retell the tale of the Vietnam war.
A tale so great, it'll blow bigger than a bomb drop.
A story so true, it'll make the time stop.
Y'know, at first I didn't intend to make this comment rhyme 😂
I only saw the trend and decided to end it as a rhyme from...
Hello my young friend, @seki1. I saw this comment days ago and was very moved by it. Can't believe I never responded. I just upvoted it, but then realized that window closed so I left a small tip.
Thank you very, very much. I love the rhyme, unintentional though it be. Every war is made up of individuals. The truth of the war is not written in history books, or told by generals. It is lived by those who fight it, and by those who are in its path. Some of the most affecting writing I have ever read are the first-person accounts of the soldiers who fought in the U.S. Civil War.
My husband's view today is retrospective. But he was a witness, and that 'testimony' has value.
Thank you for your confidence. I hope you are right and the clock waits for us. These last few days it has been ticking rather loudly. But I will remember your words, I do believe time does wait at times. I really do. Time waits when the cause is real and true. Believe it or not, I'm sure time will wait for you too!
I take heart from your optimism and encouragement.
⭐️ AG
!PIMP
You must be killin' it out here!
@seki1 just slapped you with 1.000 PIMP, @agmoore.
You earned 1.000 PIMP for the strong hand.
They're getting a workout and slapped 1/1 possible people today.
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