LZ KEY WEST 2002
I've decided that this will be the only writing I do about the reunion. I'm sure everyone else has their own thoughts. I've enjoyed writing it and am still living in a state of anxiety accompanied by a state of exhaustion. I've slept the last two nights with a sense of comfort I haven't felt in years. So read it, enjoy it, try and believe it and then get on with "Moving, Shooting and Communicating" with your lives.
God Bless All, Clay
OCTOBER 13TH, 2002
TODAY'S NEWS
LANDING ZONE KEY WEST
The Congress and the Senate approved the President's request to go to War. (That bothers me)
The TV shows today were covering the terrorist attacks in Bali which killed 200 people at a night club. (We better do something fast)
Another other lead story was "The Missile Crisis Remembered" covering the confrontation between us Russia and Cuba. (Who cares)
Then there was the "sniper attacks" in the Washington D.C. area that paralyzed that area. (Send in the Scouts)
I was invited to attend the scattering of Colonel Floyd "Jimmy" Thompson’s ashes in the Florida Straits. Jimmy was the longest held POW in the Vietnam War. We had been friends for over 10 years. A tragic story. Colonel Thompson was a "Green Beret" and the Special Forces Detachment here in Key West were taking his ashes out in their boat, those were Jimmy’s wishes. Only a few people were going out on that "last ride." He deserved more and I think the United States should be ashamed. (I was sad about this)
THE MORNING AFTER THE FLYING CIRCUS REUNION
Last night 30 men and 16 women had a reunion in Key West. The men were all part of a helicopter scout platoon in Vietnam almost 35 years ago. They were part of the 1st Air Cavalry Division (The Horse Soldiers). Now they were all over 50 years of age. Old men by any standard except theirs. The highest ranking officer ever to command that unit was there. He was a Major. This unit worked outside the umbrella where the rain fell constantly. They belonged to no one yet they belonged to all! They flew light observation helicopters. One pilot, one gunner. In a five year period they lost 31 of these fireflies to the enemy. I won’t mention how many men, one was to much but there were many more. This is not about those brave men who were lost, it’s about the brave men who survived and carried the guilt of still being around to attend a convention. Or maybe they don’t, for I have no idea what feelings or thoughts they have stored in those hidden crevasses of their minds. I have my own thoughts and those are the only ones I can write about. However I did notice one very peculiar thing. Every time two guys would start talking others would immediately join around. It was obvious that they were all trying to fit in somewhere. So it became many small gatherings and the conversations were ragged, detached and hurried. It was like they were trying to regurgitate at once all those words they kept buried inside their guts for decades. There also seemed a desire to confirm and validate there own existence during those times. A lot of "Do you remember when….." kinda questions but it didn’t work. Memory lapses were numerous and selective at best, even foggy at times. Photo albums didn’t seem to help for the only people recognizing who those guys were in the pictures were the guys themselves. After all most were in their late teens or early twenty’s and now at fifty something and never being together before created a very strange situation.
The unit had operated in a very unstructured and chaotic fashion. Our only mission was to find the enemy. Nothing else. Day after day flying into harms way became commonplace and the transformation from an "All American Boy" into a "Combat Hardened Soldier" who lost all logic and emotion took its toll. For they carried those scars to this day and they would never be removed no matter what they tried to do. They still seemed to be setting on the edges of their chairs waiting for the call, "Scouts Up, Infantry taking fire," to happen. There was a definite sense of longing for those bygone days. There was a toast saluting those who have gone on before us but nobody could hear, number one most of us were hearing impaired and secondly the music was loud so all we could do was raise on glasses on cue and drink to them. I saw an old friend at the bar and walked over to say hello, he asked me about the group I was with. I told him that we were all in Vietnam together and this was our first reunion. He asked me "What did you guys do?" I replied that we had a helicopter scout platoon with the 1st Air Cavalry Division and then I added, that little group setting over there probably accounted for more than 500 enemy kills. He looked at them for a long time, he turned back and looked at me and with a smile said, "Really!" I said "Yeah, really" patted him on the back and returned to the group.
They arrived in Key West in ones and two’s from all over the globe. One couple came from Australia, another guy came from St Croix and then there were places like Nebraska, Wyoming, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. Their backgrounds were very diversified and interesting. For example there was a Cowboy, a UPS Pilot, a Federal Indian Agent, an Antique Auto Collector/Restorer, a Vice-President with Paine-Webber, several business owners including an airplane charter service and a Director of Special Olympics. However, there was hardly any conversation at all about what anyone was doing in their boring civilian occupations. There were others but those above give a good cross reference of where most of us ended up. Educational backgrounds ran from high school GED to Masters Degrees. Some were career soldiers, most were not. Many were married at least twice only a very few were still married to their original wives. Quite a few were collecting on their service connected disabilities from the VA, some were seriously wounded and still carried the pain and scars. Others were unscratched. Some of them arrived a day early and some of them only flew in for the one night. My store seemed to be the jumping off place. The first guy to show up a day early, then the trickle became a flood and by Friday night they were all here with the exception of one guy coming in only for Saturday night.
Four days later they would be all gone, but they will have left with an awakening. This just wasn’t one of those reunions at a VHPA, AAAA, VVA. This was a renewal of those bonds that existed between a very small group of people thirty years ago. They became so interwoven it was like one of those Chinese finger games. The harder anyone tried to pull away the tighter the bonding got. Initial apprehension turned into "I’m back where I belong!" These are my brothers! A thousand handshakes, hundreds of hugs, smiles, laughter and tears were the order of the day. You can sense what was happening when most didn’t want to leave. It was like having a successful party, no one leaves and pretty soon breakfast is being served and the comments heard are, "My God, we stayed up all night." Only this reunion was several nights.. It began like a darkened theater and slowly the house lights started coming and when the stage lights covered the stage there we all were, smiling and waving and singing to the world, "We Are One."
GUILT: Lets get over it!
I have come to the conclusion and it’s only mine of course, that everybody is carrying some kind of guilt. It’s a real sensitive subject and I probably shouldn’t continue with this subject but then I’d only feel guilty later on so what the hell.
I believe that there are many different perceptions of guilt. There are those civilians that now express guilt for not being in the military at the time of the Vietnam War. I hear this expressed often, however if time could be reversed back to those days they still wouldn’t go. Then there are those who did serve but only in the States and never went overseas. But I’m sure they operated in a high level of anxiety fearing the next set of orders coming down picking those chosen for deployment to the war zone. The third group are those that actually went to war but never served in the front lines. They lived in the rear, enjoyed air conditioning, clean sheets and clubs. There closest call would be the sound of evening thunder during the monsoon season which they would convince themselves was the sound of enemy artillery. Even the wounded carry a degree of guilt, most say "I shouldn’t be here or it should have been me getting killed." Last were those combat veterans who by sheer luck came back without a scratch, they carry a sense of guilt because they weren’t wounded. I by virtue of meeting thousands of men who fit the above profiles finally have drawn some definitive conclusions.
We are who we are, what happened, happened. We not only can’t change anything but to a man if we were offered a chance to fulfill our morbid wishes we would turn it down. So the only solution I have to offer is simply, "Get over it" and if you can’t do it by yourself get some outside help.
I started therapy in 1991 and went once a week for 18 months. Am I better now? I’ll tell you one thing, I may not be completely back on track but I’m a lot further down that track than most. I not only owed it to myself, I owed it to my friends and family.
Honesty and Feelings. I believed every word and every story I heard. There was no reason to distort anything. Feelings were expressed to one another that have never been voiced before. The dilemmas, the pain, the anger, were open topics and articulated with soft voices to each other but not with embarrassment, rather a feeling of relief because we all experienced the same predicament and finally began to believe that we were not different than anyone else. We were all the same, a family of many finely reunited. And like any old family reunion the most common word used was "HUH" for I swear everyone was hearing impaired.
One of the funniest incidents happened with one of the gunners. We were in a small group of five or six guys talking about having PTSD problems when this gunner said he never had a problem at all. As we started to joke with him and asked him questions we determined that he did. So the more he talked about his life after Vietnam the higher we rated his disability. At first we thought we was probably 20%, then 40% and the more he talked the higher it went until we took a vote and gave him 100% PTSD disability. Of course we were laughing and joking all the time. Apparently we struck a nerve for he called his wife the next morning and told her that the guys here thought we was suffering from PTSD to which she replied, "You are, I always knew that and so do all your friends up here know it." "Why didn’t you say something" he asked her. She said, "I did a thousand times, but then I stopped, I finally realized that it was impossible to talk to anyone suffering from PTSD!"
A FOOTNOTE: I was very lucky that three of my four children and their spouses were able to attend the Saturday night dinner. After all those years they got a chance to meet the people I have often talked about. It was just a wonderful experience not only for them but for me. It seemed that those guys were the validation I needed for my family continue to try and understand me. As my children were leaving the restaurant we all went outside and spoke for a few minutes and I asked them what did they think. Almost in unison they said, "Dad you were right, they're just like you!" I’ll let you decide if that was a compliment or not.
SCOUTS UP
Clay (Pop-Top) Greager