As I started high school in 1963, I didn’t even know where Vietnam was. By 1965 that all changed as ground troops began to be deployed. We watched the daily body count on the news. By graduation in 1967, the boys of my class had real concerns about their futures. I never saw any anti war protests at that time, but they could have happened somewhere else.. We lived just 6 minutes from Fort Benjamin Harrison, so there was a strong military presence in our part of town. Just outside the gate were the usual sleazy strip malls full of tattoo parlors, fast loan places and other businesses to lure in the young servicemen.
During earlier wars, old wooden barracks were built and were still in use during the Vietnam era. A number of military schools were at Fort Harrison, which meant a fairly transient population as soldiers arrived and left the various schools, which included the Army Adjutant General School, Army Finance School, Interservice Postal School and DINFOS (Defense Information School).
Because so many of the schools were administrative, it was sometimes called ‘Uncle Ben’s Rest Home”.
While the young soldiers lived in the old wood barracks and other types of housing, the more ranking officers lived on base sometimes in the old 3-story red brick dwellings built many years before when Ft. Harrison was first started. The buildings were so old, that the 3rd floor was actually condemned as a fire hazard.
We knew we had to watch the time whenever we went to visit the fort. First thing in the morning and around dinner time in the evening traffic ground to a halt as the MPs who directed the traffic stopped everything for raising and lowering the flag while a solitary trumpet played. All military personnel piled out of their cars, saluted and stood at attention while the flag was raised and lowered.
By my senior year of high school, Fort Harrison was full; busy training the soldiers in their specialties. Many of them were just young men not much older than I was, often away from their homes for the first time.
We often met them when they found their way to church on Sunday morning. They seemed to relish the respite from the military life. I think Dad and Mom could see them struggle, so soon our family had a new routine. On Saturday we helped clean the house, though I think the brunt of that fell on Mom. She usually found a large roast or ham for Sunday dinner after church. She also prepared side dishes such as jello salad, tossed salad, potatoes, several vegetables and desserts such as pies or banana cake. We never knew who the dinner was for, but at church Mom would quietly gather up all the visitors and invite them to our house for Sunday dinner.
Our kitchen was long and narrow..a galley kitchen with a table at one end just big enough for our family, but the living room was quite large. The dining room table was on one end and could easily seat 12 to 14 people. We had other smaller tables we could set up as well if needed. Those young men soaked in the atmosphere of home and enjoyed those Sunday meals.
Usually after dinner, rather than heading back to the barracks, they hung around, visiting, playing games, and shooting baskets at the hoop out on the driveway.
For the most part we only saw them on Sunday as they were busy with their training the rest of the week. Late one Saturday night the doorbell rang. It was eight of our young soldier friends. They explained their plight. Apparently, the sergeant didn’t like people going to church. He figured anyone trying to attend church was just sloughing, so he’d come around about 5 AM on Sunday mornings and assign church goers to KP for that day. These fellows got wind of the plan and left on Saturday night. They asked if they could sleep on our floor that night so they wouldn’t be there at 5 AM for the sergeant to wake them up.
Many of them began to think of Mom as a sort of surrogate mom, coming to her for advice with their various concerns.
We had a lot of fun entertaining these boys. One day Mom made a variety of pies for dessert. She asked each person what kind of pie he wanted. One of them answered, “Round!” She served him an entire pie and made sure he ate the whole thing.
One Sunday a military bus showed up at church filled with 30 soldiers. They were from a Utah National Guard Unit there for two weeks of training. Of course, Mom invited them all home for dinner. I’m sure the neighbors wondered about the military bus parked on the street in front of our home.
Sometimes if a soldier was assigned to Fort Harrison for a longer time, he would bring his wife along and children if they had them. Of course, there wasn’t enough housing for everyone, so they had to find affordable apartments elsewhere. Mom also helped with that. Many of the young families stayed with us briefly until they could locate a place.
After getting to know so many of them, the hard part was when they left….usually to Vietnam. Some wrote letters and some we never heard from again. Some became lifelong friends.
One family served a couple of tours at Fort Harrison. During their last tour there they lived in one of the three-story brick houses as he was a Colonel by then. (Also they had 12 children!) My senior year of high school, he was our early morning seminary teacher. In our seminary there was no slouching about! Everything was in order. He thought the perfect remedy for sleepy students was for one student to play the piano (usually me) and all the other students to stand up and conduct the opening song together. By the end of the school year, every seminary student could lead the music.
In spite of the happy times, the war and uncertainty of the future always lurked in the back of our minds. All the boys had to register for the draft when they turned 18. Some served willingly, some served unwillingly. Some managed to join the national guard which was not being sent to war. Some moved to another country, such as Canada to avoid being drafted. Some found they could not be drafted if they were college students. Eventually they went to a lottery system of drafting people. They did it by birth date, so there were 366 possible draft slots. If September15th was the first number drawn, all those with that birth date were to go first. We watched on tv with trepidation as the numbers were drawn. Sometimes those numbers decided who lived or died…or who had their plans take a back seat to a stint in the military.
Popular music also reflected the war with songs like “Ballad of the Green Berets” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by Peter, Paul and Mary.
It was in 1967 or 1968 that I saw my first war protest. It was organized by a group called Students for a Democratic Society at Utah State University. There were maybe ten or twelve students marching in a circle on a small sunken plaza near the union building while chanting anti-war slogans. Mostly the
students stood around the edges of the plaza just watching them.
A friend whose husband was in Vietnam confided her worry to me when she hadn’t heard from her husband for over a month. Finally she received a letter, but was not happy about the contents. In place of a message, there was just a single long line down the length of the paper. At the end it said only, “Just thought I’d drop you a line.” She was not happy!
Skipping ahead a few years to 1972, I had graduated from USU and was embarking on a Masters program at BYU. As I was a foreign language major, I was required to take another language as well, so I chose Russian. Our beginning Russian class had lots of opportunities to practice conversation and get to know one another. After class one day, one of the other students asked me on a date. He was different from most of the students…more mature, not as carefree. He always wore a military field jacket. As I got to know him, I realized a couple of things. He was a Vietnam vet home from the war. He was from a farm family that was not particularly well-to-do, which is maybe why he wore that field jacket. I think he didn’t have another coat.
Even though he’d been home from the war for a year, the after effects were still with him. We really didn’t know that what he had was called PTSD. When the kids on the floor above him threw firecrackers out their window that blew up just outside his window, he yelled, “INCOMING!” and dived under the bed. I’m sure his roommate wondered what was going on.
While studying in the library one day, some jets flew low overhead. He got some funny looks as he crawled out from under the table.
Eventually we got married and he even got a new coat. One day I asked him, “Did you ever kill anyone?” His answer shocked me. “I hope so,” he said.
In 1973 we didn’t have a TV, but we listened sadly to the radio as they described the fall of Vietnam.
Though he talked about his time in the military over the years, he really only talked about inconsequential things.
It was 1998 when we realized that Vietnam was still present in our lives when it reared its ugly head in the form of an early heart attack as a result of exposure to Agent Orange. A few years later, his best friend from Vietnam succumbed to ALS, also caused by Agent Orange. The loss of his friend started to unlock the years of PTSD when he realized he couldn’t tamp down the memories any longer. The Vietnam War wound its way through our lives for over 50 years.
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