Vietnam War Memorial Post 639
Vietnam War Memorial Post 639Gary Harlan was one of the Founders of Vietnam War Memorial Post 639 and was the second Commander of the Post. We have put together Gary's compilations in two different categories. The first category is "The History of Post 639" put together by Gary in about 1993. The second category was his trip back to Vietnam in 1996 and the report he put together "Meeting Mr. Charles". First we need to address that according to Gary, Post 639 was born in a tavern in Springfield appropriately named "The Green Beret". The original organizing committee was made up of Gary Harlan, Ron Snyder, Ron Miller, Gary Turner, Jimmy Wood and Bud Darby.
I would like to thank Mike Chandler for getting me in touch with Ron Snyder who provided me with a lot of this information. I would also like to thank Burman Walker and Phil Richardson for their help with the History portion of this web site.
We will first list Gary's Introduction to the History of Post 639 document, then the entire report has been entered, then we will have the entire report that has been scanned, just click by page number you will be able to view the original text. Next we will have the "Meeting Mr. Charles" scanned and again, just click by number to read that report. The last piece of this portion is an article that Gary had published in the November, 1995 Penthouse Magazine. The Cover and article have been scanned and you guessed it, just click to read.
The
History of Vietnam War Memorial Post 639
Introduction
July
2, 1993 was a truly momentous occasion for Vietnam War Memorial Post 639.
For that was the day of the official dedication of our home.
Sitting on twenty-four secluded acres along a street appropriately named
Scenic, the property is more than any of the original organizers would; or even
could, have imagined.
But even more amazing than the place we call home is the contributions we
have made to the community in the past decade.
None of the original six organizers would be surprised at the
contributions we’ve made to individual veterans and veteran’s causes.
But who could have imagined that we would be a major sponsor of Project
Graduation? Or that we would donate
thousands of dollars sponsoring youth sports, including track and field, little
league baseball, American Legion baseball, soccer and the Special Olympics?
Or, that we’d organize a benefit concert in support of an Ozarks
environmental group?
This is the story of Vietnam War Memorial Post 639, of the American
Legion. It is a history built by
individuals sharing a common bond: they served their country in time of war.
Despite the name of our post, our membership is not restricted to Vietnam
Veterans. We have a number of World
War II vets, including my dad Dale Harlan, and Army Air Corps pilot.
Among our most active members is Walter Swope, a man who survived three
and ½ years in a Japanese POW camp. His
story appears in these pages.
It would be impossible to have the works Vietnam War in your name without
confronting controversy from time to time, and we have confronted our share of
it the last twelve years. But, from
a controversial beginning something very positive has emerged, and it is my goal
in these pages to trace the events that make up our history, giving credit to
those who mad it happen.
Speaking of our name, it should be mentioned that instead of naming the
post in honor of a serviceman who was killed in action, we named it Vietnam War
Memorial Post, in honor of the sum total of sacrifices made in that war, by all
sides.
I need to say right up front that with respect to writing the story of
the post, I am not the detached, objective chronicler of events.
The fact is, the last twelve years of my own personal history overlaps
with the post’s history so much that it’s almost too scary to think about. Nevertheless, it has been the vehicle with which I have com
to reconcile my combat experience as a Marine grunt in Vietnam with present-day
civilian life. It didn’t happen
overnight. In fact it took almost
exactly as long as it did for us to build our own home.
One major step along the way took place on Veteran’s Day, 1984, when
the Post approved a motion to pay my way to Washington to attend the unveiling
of the statues, “Three Fighting Men”, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Thanks to the Post I not only got my first opportunity to experience the
healing effect of “The Wall”, but got to reunite with two of the Marines I
served with in Vietnam.
I am one of the many whose personal history overlaps with the Post’s
history, and many others have made significant strides in their personal growth
as a result of being a member.
If asked for one reason why we organized Vietnam War Memorial Post 639,
it would be the same answer you would receive, if you asked why “The Wall”
was constructed: To heal wounds.
As of this writing, the post had seven Commanders in thirteen years.
The only one not with us today is Ronnie Mitchum, elected Commander in
1986. Ronnie did not complete his
year in office, as he died of natural causes while working on an oil rig in
Louisiana.
This is dedicated to the memory of Ronnie Mitchum.
Gary
Harlan
1993
BORN IN A TAVERN
Like every new organization, Post 639 began with an organizational
meeting. Our first organizational
meeting, like the Marine Corps’ first one, took place in a tavern.
It was the Green Beret Tavern located on College Street in Springfield.
The building has since been torn down, but in early 1981, six of us met
there, and signed the petition with which to apply for an American Legion
charter.
The organizing committee was made up of four Army Vietnam combat vets,
Ron Snyder, Ron Miller, Gary Turner and Jimmy Wood; and two Marine Vietnam
combatants, Bud Darby and myself.
A complete and thorough answer to the question of why we chose to form a
post would require six separate accounts. Nevertheless,
there was one motive shared by all, and it had to do with the public’s image
of the Vietnam veteran. To put it
bluntly, we were sick and tired of the caricature of us that had evolved over
the years: The Vietnam veteran as a
whacko.
You might recall seeing him on the TV copy shows back in the ‘70s.
He appeared regularly on all of them.
Let’s face it; he was a perfect tool for giving the story suspense.
We need only see him in the early scenes of the sow---unshaven,
disheveled, the crazed look in his eye. His
filthy, raggedy fatigue shirt let’s us know who the boys in homicide would be
up against this week: the crazed, probably heroin-addicted, Vietnam wacko.
But television shows aside, the negative stereotype of Vietnam veterans
was fostered and perpetuated by journalists—both print and television.
Even today, when someone goes berserk and kills a few people, the fact
that he is a Vietnam veteran will be the first thing that is revealed about him.
This would not be nearly so objectionable, if it were not for the fact it
is only in connection with a violent crime that reporters ask whether the
suspect is a Vietnam combat veteran. Why
doesn’t it ever occur to them to ask whether the middle-aged fireman who saved
an infant was a Vietnam vet?
A recent illustration of what I’m talking about can be found in
comparing two stories that appeared in the Springfield paper only weeks apart,
in 1992. One of them involved a man
who went on a killing spree, identified in the headline as a Vietnam vet.
The other story involved a City Utilities Worker who risked his life
during a bad storm. Interviewed
afterwards, he flatly denied that he deserved the title of hero, that he was
simply doing his job.
My intuition was that he was a Vietnam veteran, but there was no mention
of it in the article. They didn’t
think to ask him. So I made my own
inquiry, and I leaned that he was a Vietnam vet.
I asked whether he would be receptive to being honored at our next post
meeting, but with consistent modesty, he declined.
The Vietnam veteran’s movement, from the late seventies to the
mid-eighties, consisted of local organizing efforts like ours going on in
communities across the country. It was a national movement based on the concept of self-help,
which, which meant organizing ourselves for the purpose of addressing a range of
problems, including joblessness, adjustment problems of all kinds, agent orange,
substance abuse, and a suicide rate that had exceeded the 58,000 names on The
Wall.
It was an organizing effort that brought together those who were
functioning in society and those who existed outside the mainstream.
In 1982 the Federal Government established the VVLP, the Vietnam Veterans
Leadership Program, setting up chapters in a number of cities, including St.
Louis. The goal of this program was
to accomplish the very thing we had been doing in Springfield since 1980:
establishing a network of successful Vietnam vets who were willing to work with
some of their brothers needing one thing or another—job training, job
counseling, or maybe just encouragement and being there for him.
We chose the American Legion as our vehicle for change for one basic
reason: numbers. Had we made it an organization exclusively for Vietnam combat
vets, we would be turning our backs on a good many of those veterans willing to
be part of that network.
Consider the numbers: there were twenty-seven million draft-age males
during the Vietnam War. Nine
million wore the uniform during that time, including active duty and reserves.
Roughly two-and-a-half million served in Vietnam.
Of this number, one-million or so saw action.
Thought each of the six organizers served in the combat zone, our view
was based on the fact that the guy who got drafted was a guy who had reason to
fear that he would be sent to Vietnam. If
he ended up getting sent to Germany, or Alaska, or where have you—more power
to him. The fact remains that he
didn’t run away from service, and if he wants to join us now, all we could say
was, welcome aboard!!
The idea of bringing together both mainstream and out-of-the-mainstream
vets was not something any of us thought of.
It simply evolved from the individual efforts of two disabled Vietnam
combat vets, neither of whom knew each other, nor even what the other was doing.
One of them was Dona Alexander, and the other Ron Snyder.
Don’s efforts began first, and though he was not among the six who met
at the Green Beret that day, the history of Post 639 can be traced to his
contribution.
It was June 1979. I saw a
flyer at the downtown Y with the heading, VIET NAM VETERANS DISCUSSION GROUP.
The flyer said that the group would run for six weeks, and would be
limited to twelve participants. It
said that “The group is open to Viet Nam vets who might wish to talk about
where they are now and how Viet Nam has affected their lives.”
I had moved back to the Ozarks the previous year, with a Master’s
degree in philosophy, and the desire to be a free lance writer.
During my eight years studying and teaching philosophy, I never knew any
Vietnam vets. Having been exposed
to the media stereotype for years, I was curious to know how extensive the
readjustment problems of Vietnam vets really were.
What I ended up leaning had less to do with the problems of others, and
more to do with a lot of emotional baggage I hadn’t realized I had been
carrying for over a decade.
Don Alexander was the facilitator of the group.
Employed as a counselor at the Burrell Clinic, Don persuaded management
to sponsor the group. Serving as a
career Marine N.C.O. in Vietnam in 1066, Don’s military career ended with an
AK-47 round shattered his right pelvis. The
night he introduced himself he told us that he had chosen the field of
psychological counseling in order to learn to deal with the rage he felt, rage
fueled by a series of painful operations, long stays in VA hospital wards, VA
drugs, and finally the member of walking through O’Hare Airport, in uniform
and on crutches, and someone screaming at him, “Your deserved it!!”
Including Don, only four of us participated in the first group.
Three of us were jarheads, and the fourth a man who had served with the
82nd Airborne. The third
Marine was Bud Darby, the officer of the bunch.
Bud had served in Vietnam as a Marine tank commander, which is why
Don’s brother, Tom, who served with the 26th Marines at Khe Sanh,
called him TC. Tom never
participated in the group.
In the early days we joked about the two brothers, how Don made a career
of helping guys with post-traumatic stress disorder while Tom denied there even
was such a thing, but was living it out. But
the joking didn’t last long, and no one was laughing a couple of years ago
when we buried Tom. He died of
alcohol poisoning.
That’s the way it’s been. We’ve
had casualties along the way, involving substance abuse, and involving suicide,
but we’ve had success stories. Gary
Turner participated in Don’s second group, and later became our first Post
Commander. He served with the 82nd
Airborne in ‘68/69. We were there
for Gary when he drank, and we’re still there for him now, as he approaches
his tenth year of recovery. The
post has sponsored Gary’s efforts to organize a special AA group for Vietnam
vets, and we have made the building available for their meetings.
The same is true for John Bross, a post member and officer for ten years.
John served with the Americal Division in Vietnam.
He is also closing in on ten years of recovery.
There are plenty of examples of members who chose to turn things around
for themselves, and proceeded to do it.
Though most of the original organizers had participated in Don’s group,
the one exception was Ron Snyder who, while serving with the 11th
Cavalry in 1968 lost his right eye. He
was the one who suggested that we infiltrate the American Legion.
But that was a year after he first came on the scene.
In December of 1979, Ron read about a national organization called
Vietnam Veterans in Business, which was devoted to helping Vietnam vets who
already owned their own businesses, and one who wanted to start one.
He contacted the national office, and by January, 1980, he was heading up
a chapter in the Ozarks.
Shortly before reading about that organization, Ron had read another
Vietnam vet story. It was a six-page article I had written for Springfield!, a
local magazine. The first half of
the article dealt with my combat experience—specifically, Operation Utah, the
first major engagement between Marines and NVA.
The last half focused on Don Alexander’s support group.
My goal in writing the article was to encourage other Vietnam vets to
participate in the rap groups.
I don’t know for sure whether anyone ever participated in a group as a
result of reading that article. But
I do know that one guy read it, Ron Snyder.
I also know that he was the only reader I needed, because as a result of
his response to that article, we had a dedication for a building on July 2,
1993.
The Washington
Connection
As 1980 rolled around I had completed my second year working as a postal
clerk in Springfield. The pay was
great and it allowed me to write and learn photography.
I hoped to someday work my way out of the post office with my writing.
But I gave up that comfortable job in order to join the Vietnam Veterans
Crusade. The irony is, when I
finished that Springfield! Piece, I thought I had written my last words
on the subject of Vietnam, that I had, so to speak, “gotten it all out”, and
was writing fiction when I met Ron Snyder.
It was February 4, 1980, when I received a call from James Ingle, who I
hadn’t talked to since high school. I
had heard that James was a talented drummer, but I didn’t know that he also
served with the Marines in Vietnam. James
said he knew a guy named Ron Snyder who had read my article, and wanted to meet
me. So I met him later in the week.
He told me about Vietnam Veterans in Business, saying that he had
organized a workshop in January and had another one scheduled in a couple of
weeks. He asked if I would write
about it, and I agreed.
The workshop, held in a large meeting room at the Hilton, drew a lot of
veterans. What struck me was that a
great many of them not only were not businessmen, but did not entertain any
ideas about becoming businessmen. They
were there because it was a Vietnam veterans meeting, and they wanted to be with
fellow Vietnam vets. Jimmy Wood was
one of them. So was Pat Williams,
who drove through a snowstorm all the way from Ava to attend the first workshop.
It also brought us on line with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at its very
inception. That happened at the end of January, when Ron accepted an
invitation to a small business conference for veterans, sponsored by the White
House Veterans Coordinating Committee. While
she was there, he met Mike Watson, a Carter appointee working in the White
House. Mike had served a 13-month
Marine tour in Vietnam, carrying the M-60 machine gun.
In March Mike visited the Ozarks, for the purpose of discussing the
possibility of establishing a business relationship with Ron following his job
with the White House. Two months
later, an amazing thing happened. Mike
called, telling me that the Congress was in the process of designating the exact
site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, on the Mall, and that there was a
commemoration ceremony scheduled for Memorial Day at the proposed site.
He said that President Carter had assigned him the responsibility of
representing the White House, and wanted to know if I would come to Washington,
and write the speech for the occasion.
Thanks to the support of Ron Snyder, I went to Washington and helped Mike
with the speech. Jim Mayfield, a charter member of the post, and a
professional photographer, went with me, and documented the event.
Memorial
Day, 1980, Constitution Gardens
Jan
Scruggs: Our next speaker is Mr.
Mike Watson, Deputy Director of the White House Veterans Coordinating Committee.
His purpose here today is to present a personal message from the
President of the United States, Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Watson served in Vietnam as a Marine.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mike Watson.
Mike
Watson: Thanks you, Jan. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests; on behalf of the
President, I bring greetings.
We stand together today to honor a generation who served.
They served amidst much protest, but they served nonetheless.
Phil Caputo has said that “There are no monuments to the heroes of the
Vietnam War, for monuments are reminders, and they make it harder for the
country to sink in the amnesia for which it longs.”
For which it longs. This
longing has diminished the American Spirit.
There are increasing signs that America is disenchanted with its
forgetfulness. America is awakening
to the fact that its survival is contingent upon its remembering.
William Corson, a distinguished writer and warrior, has written: “I
love my country, but it is on no service to it, nor its people, to gloss over
the rough facts of its mistakes. In
dealing with something as provocative and demoralizing as failure, it is easy to
get thrown off the track by the transient, and miss the enduring and the
significant.”
Our purpose is to overcome the consequences of failure.
Marble monuments are still inappropriate to the Vietnam War. For Vietnam is not a symbol for emotional gratification, as
is the Iwo Jima monument.
We perceive the war as a defeat. We
were not defeated. We failed.
We must begin to examine ourselves.
We must be willing to accept the consequences of failure just as we would
success. It is this spirit that
makes America unique.
One hundred years from now, given what is presently written in the
history books, will the truth be know about Vietnam, and how a nation responded?
If not, is that how we wish to be remembered for posterity?
This memorial is the first step towards showing that victory does not
always go to the victor.
The White House is looking forward to the Congress resolving the site
dispute, and President is eager to sign the bill.
God bless all who served, and let us all reconcile.
No one present that day had any idea of what would be standing on that
piece of ground. The nationwide call for design proposals had just been
issued. Nevertheless, Jan Scruggs
and company provided a preview of The Wall at the close of the ceremony.
They invited anyone who wished to remember someone who died in the
Vietnam War to speak that person’s name in the microphone.
So many people lined up, mothers, fathers, wives, girlfriends, neighbors,
high school classmates, and of course, their brothers on the battlefield.
Emotionally speaking, it was the audio version of The Wall.
Despite our lobbying in Washington and Jefferson City, the federal
government did not install an outreach center in the Ozarks, and we got nowhere
with the state. However, our
efforts in 1980 accomplished a couple of things.
We had established contact with, and became part of, an extensive network
of Vietnam vets from coast to coast, for one thing.
For the other, we had in a short amount of time received a valuable, yet
fairly inexpensive education on how to work within the system.
Locally, our numbers grew steadily.
Many came from Don Alexander’s groups, which were also getting larger.
It was from my own participation in a group in the summer of 1980 that I
brought on board the man who would be our first Commander, Gary Turner.
We had been teammates in basketball at Parkview High.
“Harlan! You were in Nam?”
“What do you mean was I in Nam? You
were in Nam, Turner?”
In terms of our individual interests, it is highly unlikely, perhaps
impossible, that Gary Turner, Ron Snyder, and Gary Harlan would have ever found
themselves associating with one another, were it not for a commitment, a
commitment we shared with Vietnam veterans across the country.
It was a commitment based on the belief that we survivors of the Vietnam
War had a moral obligation to our fallen comrades as well as our fellow
survivors. Survival was the issue in Viet Nam, and survival was the
issue in 1980. It was still a case
of physical survival, but it was also a case of emotional survival and economic
survival.
That is why we chose “Together then, Together now” as our motto.
Today, as we approach 1994, most of our members are unacquainted with Ron
Snyder, because Ron now lives in Branson, operating his business, Hey Mon
Coffees. But in 1980 Ron Snyder put
the resources of his business where his mouth was, and was asking Vietnam
Veterans how they saw themselves in ten years.
How did they want to see themselves in ten years?
He was focused on the issue of economic survival, while Don Alexander
focused on the emotional survival.
Thinking that we might meet our goals by working within an established
organization, Ron and I joined a local American Legion post.
But by the end of the year, we knew that the only way to really get
something going was to start our own organization.
IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS CHAOS
In the middle of May 1981, at the Teamster’s Hall in Springfield, we
received our charter, thus becoming an American Legion Post.
District Commander Ed Edgar installed our first officers, Gary Turner was
elected Commander, I never told him this, but Gary should have received a medal
of some sort for his year of service as Post Commander.
Gary Turner had no way of knowing what he was in for.
For one thing, our meetings in the early days had absolutely no
resemblance to the orderly monthly gatherings that we know today.
We are talking about a group of guys who had never joined any
organization before, most of us loners, and none of us having the slightest
interest in learning Roberts Rules of Order.
Our meetings got chaotic at times. It
seemed to me, during the first few months, that the group was comprised of those
who were drunk and those who were half-drunk.
In light of this beginning, it makes me proud to observe our meetings
today. Even though we have our won
bar, the members conduct themselves in a manner fitting to deal with the
post’s business. During a recent
Congressional election, Representative Mel Hancock accepted our invitation to
address our meeting. Though Mel
found out that no one was shy about asking direct questions, and that we were as
politically diverse as any group he had ever encountered, he also found us to
orderly and respectful.
But a decade earlier it was still the pre-Wall days; pre-Vietnam
documentaries and movies days. The
“whacko” image still prevailed. We
were standing alone, and most of us were angry and depressed.
We had each lived a decade alone, knowing from the moment we got
discharged that it would be best not to let people know that you were a Vietnam
veteran. Nowadays it’s not
uncommon to hear about some middle-age guy trying to pass himself off as a
combat veteran of Vietnam, either to impress some female, or to impress other
men.
Yes, we were a wild bunch. However,
no one came to the meetings to party, and we didn’t.
It was not a social club, and no one wanted to make it one.
When you take a good look at who we were, and why each of us showed up
each month to argue about what we were going to do next, what you discover is a
group of individuals who Dr. John Wilson, author of The Forgotten Warrior
Project, characterized as “a group of survivors struggling to return to
the mainstream of society.” We
were there to honor the memory of our brothers who fell on the battlefield, and
for our brothers who were falling on the battlefield of everyday life.
THE PIG ROAST CONTROVERSY
In my 1979 magazine article, I spoke derisively about television.
I wrote that the experience of combat forced me to see the difference
between seeing things as they are, and “T V perception.”
Ironically, that article lead to my becoming a spokesman on T V.
Only three months after receiving our charter, the post was thrown into a
controversial situation. As
mentioned already, Ron Snyder and I had spent 1980 networking.
Among our contacts was a group of St. Louis Vietnam vets whose
organization was NACV, the National Association of Concerned Veterans.
In August 1981, we received a fateful call from the group.
They said that they had planned a national symposium and pig roast, to
last four days, scheduled around the upcoming Labor Day weekend.
They had an agreement with the owner of the Buena Vista Ranch, located
just outside of Springfield, to have the event held there.
But at the last minute, the owner had been persuaded that a wild, crazy
group would show up, and tear up his property.
Consequently, they were desperate for a new site, and appealed to us to
help them secure one.
So that’s how I got my start as a spokesman on the local T V news,
making an appeal for some land on which to have the event.
In less than twenty-four hours, we received an offer from J. T. Williams,
a World War II vet in Douglas County, who offered his one hundred sixty-acre
farm for the symposium and pig roast. However,
by the next day his neighbors had organized, hired a lawyer, and we were ordered
to appear for a hearing in Ava.
The day before the hearing we met with J.T.’s neighbors.
We tried to assure them that it was going to be a peaceful event.
One of the neighbors expressed the fear that motorcycle gangs would come
and destroy their property. The
discussion did not assure them. With
only three days before the event was scheduled, we went to court.
For a nominal fee of $200, Springfield attorney Loren Honecker
represented us. The neighbors
were represented by Don Bonacker. The
paper quoted Bonacker as saying that his petition to stop the event was based on
“fears that neighboring property would be damaged by beer drinking
participants.”
So with four days left before the scheduled event, in a packed courtroom,
filled with our opponents, the match of Honecker versus Bonacker commenced at
nine in the morning. It didn’t
end until one o’clock the next morning. This
excerpt from the Springfield paper should tell you something about the
thirteen-hour ordeal:
“Throughout the hearing, Honecker voiced objections to questions from
(Douglas County Prosecuting Attorney) House and Bonacker which he said did not
pertain to the hearing.” While
Honecker said such questions were ‘chasing wild geese’ and ‘bringing in
everything under the sun,’ some of the veterans were not as charitable.”
“ ‘G—D—Bull----,’ one veteran muttered while sitting in the
rear of the courtroom during the afternoon’s testimony.”
So with the event now three days away, I returned to the airwaves and
newspaper, issuing our second appeal. Again,
this from a newspaper article at the time:
“Whoever donates use of land for the event can expect adequate security
and cleanup, Harlan said. If
another site is found, proceeds from the pig roast and symposium on the effects
the Vietnam conflict had on veterans will be used to set up an outreach center
for an estimated 15, 330 Vietnam-era veterans living in an 18 county area in
Southwest Missouri, he said.”
Once again, a World War II vet responded, only this time the farm was
close to home, just east of Springfield. Bob
Young said that he would make his 117-acre farm available.
A headline in the paper, two days before the event, read “ Veterans Pig
Roast Gets Green Light”. In that
same edition, the newspaper spoke out in our behalf. Here is an excerpt from their editorial:
“It is most unfortunate that the hassle over the pig roast should have
developed. The Vietnam veterans have been undeservedly discriminated
against and they are understandably puzzled.
All other U. S. war veterans have been welcomed home as heroes.
But because of the internal strife that developed during the Vietnam War
– and because politics prevented them from winning the war – they come as
hapless victims of a strife not of their choosing.”
Many Vietnam veterans need help. Many
have problems stemming from the horrors of their duty.
The least the of us can do is to give them our fullest support, our
respect – and a little room to get together for a pig roast and symposium.
Let’s we welcome them to Springfield and Greene County with open arms
and warm hearts.”
However, the headline in the next day’s paper read “Complaints Dampen
Roast Hope.” With one day before the symposium was to commence, and two
days before the pig roast, this excerpt reflects the level of frustration we
felt:
“If the expected crowd of 2,500 people is denied the opportunity to
gather together for the three day event,” Harlan said, “it’s a pretty
straight forward Constitutional rights violation.”
The article continues:
“Greene County officials, including the sheriff, planning and zoning
and county court have been receiving calls in opposition to the event.
The highway patrol also received several comp0laints, said Lt. George
Cumberland. ‘We’ve had some
calls asking what we’re going to do about it,’ Cumberland said Wednesday
morning, before the meeting between the veterans and law enforcement officials
was scheduled. ‘As of now, we
don’t know what we’re going to do” Cumberland said.
“If there’s no violation of the law, my God, it’s still a free
country.” Thanks for reminding
them, sir.
The meeting between the veterans and the law took place, and after Gary
Turner and I agreed to sign a document stating that should any of the many
possible violations that were listed on the document occurred, that we would be
held liable.
An article also appeared in the paper that day with the headline,
“Actor joins vets at pig roast.” The
article read as follows:
“David Carradine, Country Joe McDonald, The Grass Roots and 40 roast
pigs will be part of the celebration this weekend at the Vietnam Veteran’s Pig
Roast, east of Springfield.
“But Gary Harlan, post adjutant of the Vietnam War Memorial Post 639,
is hoping for more than just a good time. ‘The
ultimate aim of this event is to unite Vietnam veterans to educate ourselves
about the problems facing Vietnam veterans today and to find solutions to those
problems,” Harlan said. “The
pig roast Saturday is sponsored by The National Association of Concerned
Veterans, based in St. Louis. The
movie, which stars and is directed by David Carradine, will be shown Friday,
5:30 PM, at the Northtown Mall Theater. The
movie is about a veteran who comes home.”
Country Joe McDonald and The Grass Roots will perform at the pig roast
that will last until midnight.”
“Vietnam veterans came from California and Maryland, from Wisconsin and
Georgia, to be part of this weekend. Saturday
was a day for drinking beer and listening to live music; a day for veterans to
begin to reach out and communicate with one another.
The serious work of making voices heard will begin today and continue
Monday with the symposium.”
“Despite a lot of public concern, there was no unruly behavior.
Security people with orange armbands roamed the site, but their most
serious concern seemed to be a young man who was passing out petitions for a
truck weight – limit bill in Missouri. He
was asked to leave.”
It was a thoroughly peaceful event, which I knew it would be when I
signed the prosecuting attorney’s document.
Naturally, the entire furor guaranteed a low turnout.
I have met many people since then who told me that all the fear generated
that week had scared them off. I’ve
also met a good many Vietnam vets who told me that the treatment we were getting
during the pig roast fiasco generated considerable anger in them. Just the same, since it was not our money that funded the
event, it was an inexpensive education, and what an education it was!
Not only did we establish a working relationship with law enforcement
agencies and city and county government, but we also picked up some new members,
some of whom would help us reach our goal of having an outreach center.
One of them was John Hagler, a Vietnam veteran who would eventually
facilitate our support groups, and who would train volunteers for the Vet’s
Hotline.
David Carradine also became a charter member of the post that weekend.
His movie, Americana, was never a big box office hit, probably
because it is a thoughtful movie that portrays a non-violent Vietnam combat
veteran. He settles in a town in
Kansas, attempts to live a peaceful life, but is met with suspicion and
hostility. After the week that we
had just been through, it could not have been a more appropriate plot.
THE VETS HOTLINE: A MEMORIAL TO LINDEN
Linden Stearns was a Vietnam veteran who served with the Marines in
Vietnam up near the DMZ. Although
he saw a lot of heavy combat, his responsibility was not to kill NVA soldiers.
His mission, as a Navy Corpsman, was to save the lives of wounded
Marines.
There are a good many of us ex-Marines in the Ozarks who have fond
memories and deep respect for the guys we called “doc”.
Two of them are Don Alexander and I.
Though we met Linden separately, in different circumstances, we each felt
a special bond with the man.
Linden met Don when he began attending the counseling group that Don was
still running at the Burrell Mental Health Center.
He was one of nearly a half-dozen veterans in the Wednesday night group,
in the fall of 1981. Several of
them, including Linden, made regular visits to the VA hospital in Columbia.
Linden had been diagnosed as suffering the symptoms of PTSD, Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Through Don’s group, Linden heard about the Vietnam vets post, and
learned that we met downtown, at Post 69’s building.
The night he joined the post the issue under discussion was fundraising.
All we got out of our Jeff City lobbying was a Proclamation from the
Missouri legislature, which I had the honor of writing.
So by that fall we were resigned to the fact that we would have to raise
the funds ourselves for establishing a Vets Center staffed with qualified
Vietnam veterans. The goal was to
have a storefront operation in which any Vietnam veteran in the Ozarks area
could walk in off the street and receive counseling and/or job assistance, free
of charge.
Linden came to the October meeting with a fundraising idea of his own.
He announced that he had persuaded his boss at Wal-Mart to donate a
shotgun to our cause, and suggested that we find other businesses willing to
donate goods or services, and then hold an auction.
We approved a motion to schedule a fundraising event for Veterans’ Day
weekend. To the grief of his
friends and family, Linden never saw his idea realized.
On Monday, October 12, 1981, Linden Stearns made his final visit to the
VA hospital in Columbia. As usual,
he traveled with a buddy of his from the group at Burrell.
Both men were being treated for PTSD.
Along with counseling, both were prescribed medication.
In Linden’s case, the medication was the instrument of his death.
Just before writing out Linden’s prescription, the doctor treating
Linden that day asked him a peculiar question, according to Linden’s friend,
who discussed it with him on their way home.
The doctor asked Linden, “Are you feeling suicidal these days?”
To which Linden, quite naturally, replied, “NO.”
The question was highly peculiar under the circumstances, considering
that Linden was being treated for a recognized emotional disorder whose symptoms
– depression, isolation, rage, survivor guilt, etc. – were causally
connected with the suicides of over 50,000 Vietnam veterans.
The doctor’s question turned out to be tragically ironic, for he had
asked Linden hat question to save Linden the time and hassle of making so many
trips to Columbia. He filled out a month’s supply of a drug, half of which,
taken at one time, would be fatal.
On the following Friday, October 16, 1981, Linden Stearns took an
overdose of the prescribed drugs, and died the same night.
The Wednesday following his funeral, certain members of the post along
with Linden’s widow, Karen, were invited to the Wednesday night group.
There was a heavy feeling of despair and grief in the room. It was evident that the other members of Linden’s group
were especially effected by the loss.
The feeling of helplessness that we shared was intensified by what turned
out to be attempts by Linden to reach out to a couple of members of the group.
But as Don Alexander pointed out, the signs were so subtle that only a
trained counselor or therapist would have recognized the significance of his
final calls and visits to friends, and even there would have been no guarantee
that they would be recognized as critical signs.
Our mutual sense of helplessness was further intensified by the fact that
Linden drove himself to the emergency room that night, in an apparent effort to
reverse the consequences of his action.
One of the post members who participated in that group was John Hagler.
Like Linden, John never dreamed of serving with Marines in the combat
zone. In fact, he was a Marine
lance corporal in the Marine Reserves, when, knowing that his unit was going to
be activated (the only one to be activated during the war), he joined the Air
Force. With his college degree, he
received a commission.
His first set of orders read: Postal duty, Clarke AFB, Philippines.
It sounded pretty good to John – a second lieutenant with a routine,
no-stress job in the tropics. But
as soon as he arrived, he received a new set of orders, this time for Vietnam.
He was assigned duty as a courier, and not only that, but in I Corps with
the Marines. In fact he worked with
a Marine Gunnery Sgt., who made it clear that he was in charge.
As they got acquainted, the Gunny told Hagler that there was nothing
lower than a lance corporal defecting to the Air Force.
Of Course John let the group know that it was also the Gunny who took
care of him the day he received his second combat wound.
Walking across a rice paddy, the Marine walking in front of Hagler
tripped a wire to a personnel mine. The
Marine was killed, and John was wounded seriously enough to get tout of Nam for
good. He told the group that the
Gunny did not want him moved, ordered the Corpsman to take cover, and stayed
with John in the exposed area until the medivac chopper came for him.
Like Don Alexander, Hagler got a degree in guidance and counseling for
personal reasons. At the time of
Linden’s death John was involved with Crisis Care, a suicide prevention
agency. He served as a training
assistant and telephone volunteer. He
and Linden had joined the post the same night.
As a result of Linden’s death, John suggested that we establish a
Veterans Hotline, modeled after the suicide crisis hotline.
One month after her husband’s death, Karen Stearns came to the North
Town Mall for the fundraising event generated by Linden’s participation.
We were pleased to inform Karen that plans were underway to set up a Vets
Hotline, a 24-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week telephone service for Vietnam veterans.
The first priority of the Hotline would be crisis intervention, a human
mechanism designed to respond to desperate situations like Linden’s.
Training for the first volunteer training class for the Veterans Hotline
took place on January 28, 1982, with fourteen volunteers.
They included Bob Allen, an Army combat engineer in Vietnam.
Marcia Allen, Bob’s wife, was also a volunteer.
The course required a minimum of fifty-four hours of training –
including lectures and role-playing. Other
professionals from the mental health community were brought in from time to time
to assist with the training.
By October 1982, one year after we lost Linden, four training groups had
been competed, and we had twenty-four active Hotline volunteers.
Though most of the volunteers never knew Linden, those of us originals
knew that Linden” death was the turning point in our two-year effort to
establish an out reach center. As
post commander Gary Turner observed about the impact of Linden’s death,
“Things got very serious at that point. We
knew that we were not playing some game. The
problems were real, and our solution was real.”
The viability of our solution was borne out by veterans who came to the
counseling groups, saying that when they called the Vets Hotline, they were
feeling extremely suicidal.
There were also veterans who admitted that they were on the same course
as Linden, and that they would have arrived, had they not walked into the Vets
Center, which you’ll read about next.
THE OZARKS VETS CENTER
Allow me to press the fast forward button for a moment, taking a look at
the post’s participation in Springfield’s annual Veteran’ Day parade.
It has been the same routine for years:
prior to the parade, we provide coffee and doughnuts for our guests,
veterans brought down from the Veterans Home at Mount Vernon.
Then it comes time to board the trolley on wheels that we rent for the
occasion, with some of the members waking in front of the trolley during the
parade, and some inside, with our guests from Mount Vernon.
After the parade, we serve our guests lunch, then we serve ourselves, and
then it comes time to say good-bye until next year.
It wasn’t quite like that during our first appearance in the parade,
back in November 1981. Bill
Montgomery a charter member of the post, whose family owned Montgomery GMC,
loaned us the use of a small truck. I
drove and Gary Turner sat in the passenger seat.
Sitting in the back were Jimmy Wood, my Doberman, Sadie, and a new
member, John Baca.
John had come to Springfield in order to attend one of our bible
colleges. When he read about our
fundraiser and membership drive in early November, inspired by Linden Stearns,
he decided to cancel his previous plan of attending the annual gathering of
Medal of Honor Recipients, which was taking place in Honolulu the same weekend
as our function.
Someone can tell you that he has the Silver Star, and you have no way of
knowing whether or not he’s telling the truth, but not so with the
Congressional Medal of Honor. When
John Baca came to our table at the North Town Mall, introducing himself as a
Medal of Honor recipient, it only took one of us a drive to the public library
to get the Medal of Honor directory from the Civil War through Vietnam, look up
his name, to confirm the truth of his claim.
That afternoon, John spoke to the assembled crowd on our behalf.
He earned the Medal of Honor in 1970 serving on a recoilless rifle team.
According to the official citation, Specialist Fourth Class Baca was on a
night ambush mission when his team came under intense enemy fire.
The citation contains the following account:
“Baca led his team through the hail of enemy fire to a firing position
within the patrols defensive perimeter. As
they prepared to engage the enemy, a fragmentation grenade was thrown in the
midst of the patrol. Fully aware of
the danger to his comrades, SP4 Baca unhesitatingly, and with complete disregard
for his own safety, covered the grade with his steel helmet and fell on it as
the grenade exploded, thereby absorbing the lethal fragments and concussion with
his body. His gallant action and
total disregard for his personal well-being directly saved 8 men from certain
injury or death.”
When Baca took the microphone that day, we did not hear a John Wayne
speech. We heard the gentle words
of a real hero. He shared with us the memory of the moment the grenade
exploded.
“Everything got real still, and very peaceful,” he said, and he added
that an image of his mother and sister flashed through his mind.
“After that,” he continued, “I felt this spiritual presence around
me.” I got the impression that he
had spent his life reflecting on the meaning of that moment.
Having worked as a VA counselor in his native California, John
appreciated our efforts to establish a Vets Center, and he was among the
original Hotline volunteers. He
also represented the post in Washington at the dedication of The Wall.
Our goal was met on March 15, 1982 when the doors of the Ozarks Vets
Center were opened. The late, C. Arch Bay donated the 1,500 square feet of office
space in what was an ideal location for our storefront operation.
The demand for the combat vets group was so great that two groups were
needed. In addition groups were set
up for couples, one for spouses and girlfriends, and a kids group.
John Hagler expanded the Hotline services to include a
crisis-intervention team that worked with law enforcement officers on several
occasions. One such incident
involved a Vietnam vet who, while holing himself up in a church in Springfield,
fired a couple of rounds with a handgun through the ceiling.
Two of the six members of the intervention team arrived, and persuaded
the man to surrender the weapon.
Shortly after the opening of the Center, we were successful in securing a
grant from the state with which to operate a job assistance program for Vietnam
vets. We held job fairs, where employers were matched with
potential employees. We maintained
the focus on small business assistance through establishing a working
relationship with the Small Business Development Center at Southwest Missouri
State University.
Having mentioned earlier the negative stereotype of the Vietnam Veteran
perpetuated by the media, it is only fair to point out that during the years we
operated the Vets Center, we received excellent coverage from all the local
media. For instance in the fall of
1982 KY3’s Joyce Reed produced a five part report on what we were doing.
It was a good report.
The individual who stuck out most prominently in the local media, in
terms of his support for our efforts as early as 1980 was Mr. Frank Farmer, who
is now retired from the Springfield Leader.
Frank was in charge of the editorial page, and though he did not
personally serve in the military, he always went out of his way to provide
support for our efforts. The week
that we received our American Legion charter in May of 1981, Frank wrote an
editorial with the heading, “Self-Help is the best kind.”
The first paragraph read:
“Vietnam War veterans of the Springfield area have grown tired of
waiting for someone to fight the battle and have formed their own post of the
American Legion.”
Ten months after that editorial, we had a full service outreach center,
the only one of its kind in the United States.
No, we were not among the over one hundred cities to have a
government-funded outreach center. We
had to go to a local bank and borrow the funds with several members co-signing
the note to start our Center. That’s
probably what made our effort unique. It
made it more creative, because we never had any delusions about being experts.
We knew that our self-help program was an open-ended experiment.
Working at the DAV Outreach Center in Denver, Dr. Jim Goodwyn, a
psychiatrist, and himself a combat Marine in Vietnam, observed that the veterans
who participated in the groups were “individuals who are very cautious and
conceal themselves, their thoughts, and their emotions from others, even
significant others.” It’s not surprising, given this profile, that the combat
vets groups were going strong everywhere. What
made our program special was that we also offered a Mixed Group, open to men and
women.
Though we did not have a certified therapist in charge, no one would have
denied the therapeutic effects of that group.
Wives frequently commented that after one session, they knew more about
the war, and its effects on their husbands, than they knew during the whole time
they had been married. That isn’t
at all surprising, considering that at the time it was estimated that 80% of
returning Vietnam veterans had never discussed their combat experience with
anyone.
We did not have to be psychologists to know that veterans who lived with
a sense of alienation, bitterness, and emotional isolation were not unlikely to
live out these symptoms, and we knew that those receiving the brunt of it were
those closest to them, their families. Even
if we had not known that to be the case, the calls for help that we received on
the Vets Hotline would be enough to educate us.
That was the motivation for our setting up a counseling program for the
whole family. In addition to the
mixed group, we had two kids groups operating – one for teens and the other
for pre-teens. John Hagler
facilitated those groups.
“Being an adolescent”, Hagler said at the time, “produces a lot of
turmoil in itself, due to the changes they are going through.
This makes them especially vulnerable to the delayed stress reaction
experienced by their fathers. And
so the turmoil that is there already becomes intensified.”
One teenager I remember, named Larry, knew nothing about his father’s
combat experience, despite the fact that the man was a highly decorated two-tour
combat vet. He told me that he came to the group to get a better idea of
where his father was coming from, so that they could get closer.
After a few sessions, however, the focus was less on the war, and more on
the problems faced by the participants. Larry
told me that he learned a lot about himself and others through the group.
The teen group promoted individual responsibility.
It was an environment in which they could openly discuss issues relevant
in their lives, such as substance abuse and sex role confusion.
It also encouraged them to be supportive of one another.
At one time a member of the teen group had been caught shoplifting.
In the midst of much personal anxiety over the incident, facing an
explosive-type father at home, this individual had a place to go where the
incident was discussed in a rational and responsible manner.
Our Vet Center experiment lasted over three years, it did not end
suddenly or completely. Every service that was offered was assimilated into existing
agencies. The groups were taken
over by Ozarks Psychological Associates, and they continue to the present day.
The job program is still going as well, now run by Job Council of the
Ozarks.
BINGO!
Psychologist Arthur Egendorf, whose study Legacies of Vietnam was the
most extensive research done on the subject, wrote that ten to fifteen percent
of the veterans who saw extreme combat in Vietnam fell into the chronic category
– psychotics, drug addicts, incurable alcoholics.
Another fifteen to twenty percent were in serious trouble but could be
salvaged.
That was the category Bob Allen fell into when he joined the effort in
1981 – he was salvaging his life. Though
he was a combat engineer, his own experience illustrates the overall
frustrations of the fighting man in Vietnam.
Close to Bob’s base camp, in the nearby village, there was an
orphanage. Soldiers at the base
camp made sure that the orphanage received surplus food – and they saw to it
that there was surplus food. The
practice stopped, following a heavy firefight one night, when the base camp was
nearly over-run. The enemy was not
successful, but his paid a visit to the orphanage on his way out.
When the Americans looked in on the orphanage the following morning, they
found all the children shot to death and the nuns that ran it, hung.
“They didn’t like them accepting food from us,” Bob recalled.
Bob was among the most committed members of the post during our self-help
era. He participated in the groups,
was a Hotline volunteer, and then put together a plan to finance the program.
Actually, it came about as a result of his wife’s insistence.
Marcia Allen, who was also a Hotline volunteer, was a bingo player, and
she didn’t stop reminding us that we needed to operate a bingo game until her
husband took the necessary steps to do just that.
The Goad-Ballinger Post 69, the American Legion post established by World
War I veterans, rented their hall to us for a Wednesday night bingo game.
Our weekly bingo game commenced in March 1983.
After a year, the Vets Center got its own bingo license.
Tony Grogan, a two tour combat Marine, was in charge of the operation. Under the leadership of Bob Allen, who was elected Commander
in 1984, the post made the transition to our next era, the goal of having our
own home.
We did not; however, get serious about the building fund right away.
It was not that we were spending the bingo proceeds on ourselves, either.
Far from it, we threw a total of one party the first three years of our
existence. But we were very
generous with our donations. We knew what it meant to have no money, so we tended to be
receptive to any worthy cause or person who turned to us for help.
The humane Society, the Glendale High Band, the Hillcrest High baseball
team, the Parkview High Track and Field squad, and a good many other
organizations and individual veterans in need were recipients of our donations.
We also established tow scholarship funds the first year of our bingo
operation.
Until just recently, Burl McCullough, who served with the Marine Air Wing
in Vietnam, was responsible for handling all the donations.
From the initial point in the process, which was receiving the request
for a donation, to presenting it to the executive committee, and finally to the
membership at a general meeting, Burl was consistently conscientious in carrying
out his job as Donations chairman. For
years he was responsible for putting together and distributing twenty-five
Christmas packages to the families of veterans in need.
We have done more than just sit back and approve motions for donations.
Our bingo workers have volunteered for a number of extra bingo games
benefiting different causes. During
the holidays in 1983 we made our first visit to the Mount Vernon Veterans Home.
We brought a portable bingo machine with cards for everyone.
We gave out cash prizes, and made sure that each veteran won a game. We also carried in cases of Budweiser, which raised a few
eyebrows amongst the staff, but was well received by the residents.
It was a couple of years later that we started our annual practice of
renting the trolley, taking them with us on the parade route, then having lunch
afterwards.
The nucleus of the bingo committee has been the same for ten years.
In addition to Bob Allen, Bud Darby has been there from the start.
Danny Melton, who served in the Army in Vietnam, and is presently serving
as our commander, has called bingo numbers for a decade.
John Bross, an Army combatant in Vietnam, has always been there, as well
as Tom Gammon, who served in the Marines. Jerry
Orr, who served in the Army in Vietnam, has worked bingo for eight years, as has
Mike Chandler, who served in the Army at the close of the war. Phil Richardson, a retired Marine who served in Vietnam,
rarely excuses himself from bingo. Rodney
Miller, a soldier in Vietnam, has been a regular, as has Scott Ousley, who
manned a 50-caliber machine gun on board a riverboat in Vietnam.
Larry Lazrus has joined the bingo committee the past year.
For the past eight years we have rented the bingo hall from Planned
Parenthood. However, that is about
to change, since our plans for the property include building a bingo hall of our
own.
JEAN AND WALTER
In addition to our annual get-together with the Mount Vernon veterans,
Jean and Walter Swope, at their own expense, made monthly visits to the Veterans
Home. They operated a bingo game,
but mostly just helped out, visited with the veterans, and kept the post
informed of what they needed.
Jean was perfectly suited for the assignment.
She had been a nurse during World War II.
She was serving as post adjutant at the Goad-Ballinger post when we met
Jean. It wasn’t long before she decided that she would rather
join in our effort than remain with her old post.
That meant that her husband Walter would have to transfer his membership
as well. Once he got to know us,
Walter felt the same way about it as Jean.
They have worked steadily at our weekly bingo game from the time they
came on board.
None of us was really acquainted with Walter before Jean decided to join
us. It didn’t take long to
discover what an honor it was to have a man like Walter Swope on our team.
As I mentioned earlier, the post was formed on the basis of a will to
survive. Walt could write a book on
that subject. He did, in fact, keep
a diary. A copy is on hand at the
post, and I highly recommend you read it. Staff
Sergeant Walter Swope wrote his first entry in the diary on November 28, 1941,
just over a week prior to the Pearl Harbor attack:
“About 8:45 PM Captain Steige called First Sergeant Wagner and myself
into his office. We seem to be almost in a state of war with Japan.
We are to move to our gun position early tomorrow morning.”
Though Walt’s outfit was informed of the bombing at Pearl Harbor on the
morning of December 8, he was aware of the possibility shortly after his arrival
on the Philippine Islands in 1940. Just
as Walter arrived, the Major General who commanded the unit was leaving.
Upon his departure he informed the men that the Japanese were building up
their army and navy, and he predicted that they would be at war with them within
two years. He even told them that
they didn’t have a chance against the invading Japanese.
Walt was stationed at Corregidor. In
the weeks that followed Pearl Harbor, his diary records numerous air raids close
to his location. But it was not
until the 19th of December that the bombs hit Corregidor.
Monday-December 29, 1941:
“Air raid 11:50 AM. Today
Coregidor got it’s first bombing, it lasted till about 3:00 PM.
About 160 planes bombed us. I
never heard such a horrible noise, it scared me silly.
Our battery got several hits. One
on my gun. Not much damage though.
Two bombs hit just outside the bomb proof on the road.
The first blew in the steel doors and windows; the second threw shrapnel
and fire in the room where I was. Boy!
I thought my moment had come. The
explosive in the bombs sure smell acred and it is mixed with burned green
timber. Our communications and water was cut. Battery Cheney got credit for 2 dive-bombers with our two 30
cal. Machine guns.”
The entry for April 9, 1942 reads: “Bataan
fell. We will be next now.”
He was right – the bombing and shelling of Corregidor commenced the
next day, April 10th, and lasted continually through May 6th,
the day that Corregidor fell. It
was the beginning of Walt’s three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war.
After months of being marched on foot, transported by train and then by
transport ship, Walter ended up in a concentration camp in northern Japan, where
the winters got very cold. Throughout
the ordeal, Walt suffered from malaria, beriberi, dysentery, yellow jaundice,
and influenza.
“Death is around us all the time.
It has been for a long time. No
one seems to care about anyone else. The
struggle to live is every man’s own responsibility.
A man can die next to you and lay there all night cold and stiff and you
think nothing about it. You have to
become callous to keep sane. I
doubt if we are sane after this anyway.”
The entry for November 10, 1943 reads:
“I am on quarters with beriberi yet, I (the swelling) went down but am
coming up again. I won’t get rid
of it till I get back on American food again.
I hope to God it’s not too far off.
My system is so starved I can hardly sleep thinking of good food. Almost every day there is 1 or 2 deaths mostly form beriberi
and malnutrition.”
When you read the diary, it is abundantly clear that the thought of good
old American chow kept Walter going.
December 15, 1943: “It is
getting close to Xmas. God how I
wish I could get out of this mess and get home to eat some of mom’s cooking.
I am hungry all the time, and can’t hardly sleep thinking of chow.”
Christmas didn’t bring any good cheer.
Saturday – December 25, 1943: “Today
is Christmas. We moved to a new
camp yesterday. It is very cold and
disagreeable. The camp is not
finished at all, most of the buildings have no windows or doors in them.
No stoves of course. We will
have a very bad day I am sure.”
No sooner had the new year rolled around when a new tragedy occurred.
Sunday – January 2, 1944: “A
new year is here and it sure started off with a bang at this camp.
Building no. 1 fell in and killed 8 men.
4 more died last night and this morning.”
The Christmas of 1944 offered a momentary improvement in conditions.
Monday – December 25, 1944: “Today
is the 3rd Christmas in prison and I believe the best.
We have good quarters with three stoves.
Christmas Eve we received 1 Red Cross box each.
I received a black jacket too. Everyone
seems to be in excellent spirits. Hope
the next one I am at home.
His wish would come true. Beginning
in early July, 1945 Walt’s diary contains numerous entries involving our
planes bombing the area surrounding the camp.
To illustrate how hot it was, here is the entry for August 12th:
“About 50 dive-bombers raided this town day before yesterday.
Four of them were shot down but they bombed 4 ships and an oil
refinery.”
The entry for August 19, 1945 contains the joyful news:
“This afternoon Commander Callahan announced that the war was
officially over and the administration of the camp was in our hands.”
The entry two days later demonstrates that Walter had not lost his sense
of humor: “Last night a pig we
had in camp was murdered by party or parties unknown.
We will probably eat it tonight. The
Japs didn’t want it killed, but they have lost control.”
Shortly after writing his last entry in the diary, which was October 2,
1945, Walter boarded a transport ship, and was home on Christmas day.
“It is hard to see someone your have know for a long time blown up by
gun fire or maybe crippled for life, but it is a lot worse to see them waste
away day by day and not be able to do a thing to help them.
You can see a look of death come into their face and then you know it is
all over except them dying. But a
person gets used to death and after a while it seems to be the easier way out of
the whole mess. I have too much
money coming. I might die, but not
till I spend all my back pay.”
Despite that horrible experience, followed by combat duty in the Korean
War, Walt Swope did maintain his sanity – and then some.
He is a thoroughly caring individual who has never stopped serving his
country.
“Corrigedor”
Constantly
pounded day and night
On this fortress men did fight.
Rather than destroy them all
Ruined Corrigedor must fall.
Every man in his own way
Gave his best fight that day.
In memory of those who died
Defending this country’s pride.
On war torn beaches bloody red
Rugged soldiers still lay dead.
----Unknown
Here are the scanned original images:
