Since 11-13-06
Vietnam echoes in Iraq
for one veteran
Since 11-13-06
From: Waspscpo@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2006 5:18 AM
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Subject: Vietnam echoes in Iraq for one veteran
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=114214&ran=156807
HYUNSOO LEO KIM / THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Vietnam echoes in Iraq for one veteran
By JOANNE KIMBERLIN,
The Virginian-Pilot
© November 11, 2006
"I prayed one prayer when we took off from San Francisco ... when I watched
the coast of California going under that plane, I said: 'God, please don't let
me be captured or mutilated... Please just let me be killed'... I thought, well,
this is it. Goodbye, America. I'll never see you again."
- Wes Harvey, recalling November 1967
NORFOLK - Wes Harvey walks on his treadmill. He lifts a hand to adjust his
oxygen tube. On the TV news, soldiers in sand-colored uniforms wage a dusty war
- a war that seems so different than his jungle one, and yet so eerily the same.
View
audio slide shows of Harvey's story, and interactive timelines of Vietnam and
Iraq
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=114191&ran=209320
(don't miss this and please be patient and wait for the download)
The young soldiers remind him of things he has tried to forget. Memories that
come in the night to beat against the inside of his skull. Nearly 40 years ago,
Harvey went to Vietnam. He survived the war, only to come home and fight a
lifelong battle with the effects of Agent Orange. He's no authority on things
military. Just a guy who's been there, and has paid for it nearly every day
since. Not that it's all bad. There are gentle times, when the pain opens its
fist and his wife lays her head on his shoulder and the sun sizzles orange and
pink into the Elizabeth River behind their home.
Other days are spent in bed racked with tremors, his chest heaving for breath.
Doctors have written him off more than once. It's a source of pride that he's
now 65.Harvey doesn't feel sorry for himself. He loves his country. He blames no
one. It was what it was. It is what it is. He does worry about the fresh-faced
soldiers. He knows that as much as times change, war never does. Unthinkable
things happen.
They leave scars that can last a lifetime. Harvey didn't question the right or
wrong of his war. He doesn't question the right or wrong of this one. He went
for the same reason the new soldiers go. Because nations have always asked that
of their men. And someone is expected to answer. No regrets. No apologies. Just
the reflections and recollections of, as he sometimes calls himself, a "dead man
walking."
Four decades and 4,000 miles separate Vietnam and Iraq. Yet the longer today's
war continues, the more it's compared to yesterday's. Some say that's unfair -
nothing more than an anti-war tactic intended to link Iraq with an infamously
ill-fated effort. They say Iraq is a battle for homeland security, while Vietnam
was a Cold War chess match - bloody, but remote. Others say shades of Vietnam
are unavoidable. It wasn't that long ago that we were there, embroiled in
someone else's civil war, trying to plant the seeds of democracy, being picked
off by the guerilla warfare of the Viet Cong.
There is one undisputed similarity, sinking support at home. In the late 1960s,
climbing body counts in Vietnam sparked a bitter - and sometimes violent -
social divide that ultimately pressured a U.S. withdrawal. As for Iraq, a CNN
poll conducted last month indicated that just 38 percent of Americans back the
war, compared with the 72 percent who were on board just after the fighting
began.
The poll also asked how many feel Iraq "has turned into a situation like the
United States faced in the Vietnam War." More than half - 52 percent - said they
did. Harvey sees the ties. In his mirror, there is a silver-haired, thick-set
man who walks with a shuffle. In his past, there was a square-jawed, strapping
soldier in a crisp uniform. He settles into his favorite armchair.
The couple's poodle jumps into his lap. Harvey strokes the soft ears
absent-mindedly and allows his thoughts to roam back. Back to his war. To a time
when he was a wide-eyed kid thrust into an alien culture. A place where the
enemy was willing to accept astounding losses for its cause. A place where it
was hard to sort friend from foe.His voice is deep - punctuated by gulps for
air, graveled by the hard road behind him.
"We were going down the street in Saigon... I saw this kid... sneaking up on
the side... low-down, crouched... running toward the jeep... we were right
downtown. There were people going across the intersection and everything. I
turned around and looked at this kid... I grabbed my pistol and pulled it out...
he turned around and ran... He had his hand behind his back but when he ran he
pulled it out and I could see what looked like a grenade... he was going to dump
that in our jeep and kill us both... he was going to get us. A lot of our troops
died like that."
Harvey's background did not prepare him for war. He grew up in Dover, N.J.,
the son of a preacher in a family with eight kids. He wanted to be a minister
himself. He got married, worked his way through college. The draft notice came
almost as soon as he graduated. As a young Army officer, he volunteered for
Vietnam. He said he felt spiritually led. His wife was angry. His commander
tried to talk him out of it. Half of his family was against the war.
Some of his brothers stopped speaking to him. Harvey landed in 'Nam as a
26-year-old first lieutenant - a maintenance officer with the First Infantry
Division, the "Big Red One" of World War II fame. He was shuttled north toward
Cambodia. On layovers, he was hustled into a bunker. "They liked to mortar the
new guys," Harvey said of the enemy. "They knew when our planes came in." He
wound up at Quan Loi, an Army outpost dug into the red dirt about 60 miles north
of Saigon.
A former French rubber plantation, Quan Loi was a place where nothing added up.
Vibrant birds darted through a deep jade canopy. Bullets whizzed by out of
nowhere. Within two months of his arrival, the Tet Offensive began - the North's
year long, full-bore assault into the South. When battles raged near Quan Loi,
Harvey's crew followed the infantry into the thick of things, where they plucked
out damaged tanks and patched them up so they could get back into the action.
Tet didn't turn out to be all the communist regime had hoped for, but it was
ferocious enough to sap public will back home and leave its mark on those who
stood in its way. "The camp wasn't much. At least not our part. Just a bunch
of trenches. We had to build our own hooches and bunkers.... At night, the North
Vietnamese would come down by the thousands and try to overrun the base camp....
We were so close to Cambodia and they knew we weren't allowed to cross the
border to chase them... so we'd work all day, then go down to the perimeter and
fight those guys off all night.
Or lie in the bunkers while they threw mortar at us. In no time, you were just
exhausted.... But they didn't quit. No matter how many we killed. They just kept
running into our guns, screaming and blowing this horn they had. It had this
certain sound. I can still hear it. "Our biggest fear was running out of
ammunition.... I made every bullet count. Aim at the chest, pull the trigger,
make sure he falls. Aim at the chest, pull the trigger...
"More than 58,000 American troops died in Vietnam during the eight years of
major combat. Enemy deaths are estimated at 1.7 million. The toll among
Vietnamese civilians: anywhere from 2 million to 4 million. Iraq has been less
lethal - with 2,838 U.S. military personnel killed since the war began 3-1/2
years ago. Death tolls for Iraqis vary wildly, with anywhere from 40,000 to
600,000 civilians said to have perished as a result of the war. As for American
troops, advances in medicine have saved untold lives.
During Vietnam, one in four wounds proved fatal. In Iraq, it's one in 10. Better
equipment also plays a role. Body armor, hardened Humvees, robotic bomb defusers
and remote-controlled weapons all help reduce the number of casualties and the
severity of wounds. Another factor: fewer boots on the ground. At the peak of
the Vietnam War, 500,000-plus U.S. uniforms were in the country. Troop levels in
Iraq and Afghanistan have hovered around 150,000. Behind the smaller number,
however, is a practice Harvey finds troubling.
Nearly one-third of those sent to Iraq and Afghanistan have been sent more than
once. Harvey can't fathom asking anyone to report to the same war twice. "You're
lucky to survive it once," he said. "I would've never made it again." Hanging on
a wall in his small den, a shadow box holds the tailfins of two mortar shells.
Harvey says they're souvenirs from a couple of very close calls. Fortified by an
unusual mix of faith and fatalism, Harvey can laugh about such things - about
finding himself face down on the ground after an explosion, certain he was dead
and crawling toward the proverbial "light."
It turned out to be his flashlight lying next to him. Other memories rasp in his
throat. The ones about the other guys. His eyes lock on to his listener's for
support. "He stepped into a booby trap... a hole in the ground... they used
punji stakes... needle-sharp bamboo sticks... dipped in water buffalo dung...
they'd set up this trap and cover it with leaves... we heard the crash and the
screaming... this guy was face down on these punji stakes... you can't help a
guy like that, you know what I'm saying?
He would have, at the best, two hours to live if we could get him out, but we
had no way to reach down in there - every time he would move, the stakes would
go deeper into his body - I kept hoping one would pierce his heart... and the
guy could die... this major came up... I walked away... I heard two shots right
in succession and the screaming stopped... there was total silence... and for a
moment, I thought, the war's over."
Such a death tends to bring more death. Haditha comes to mind, where
Marines are accused of killing two dozen Iraqi civilians after a roadside
bombing killed one of their own in a city known as an insurgent stronghold. It
is one of a string of incidents in Iraq in which Americans in uniform have been
charged with murder. In response, a group of Vietnam veterans from Massachusetts
has started a legal defense fund for U.S. service members accused of war crimes.
The Vietnam vets - with eight Purple Hearts among them - say they're not
debating the guilt or innocence of the accused. They simply worry that service
members will be unfairly convicted for the kind of violence they know can erupt
in a split-second in a war zone. Harvey understands the madness all too well.
"It wasn't unusual for us to come across the bodies of five or six men who were
American soldiers and they were mutilated terribly... and you got war rage... it
came from way down here... and it went all the way up through your brain.
And the hatred and the rage that you felt toward the enemy... President Bush has
said that if you harbor the enemy, then you are the enemy - he never made those
comments gender- or age-specific... and that's the way we felt... those people
who were obviously the wives and children of Viet Cong out in those rice paddies
were fair game.... You can't be in your right mind and fight a war. Something
has to drive you. It's either fear, or it's rage."
Rules of engagement are meant to restrain such powerful emotions. But they
can be frustrating to honor, particularly when the enemy doesn't. Terrorists are
prime violators. They target civilians, hide among the innocents, torture and
behead captives. That's why some grunts on the ground were left shaking their
heads when the military turned down a chance in July to take out hundreds of bad
guys at once.
The decision came to light after a TV news journalist posted a military spy
photo online in September. The grainy black and white photo showed an estimated
190 Taliban fighters gathered in Afghanistan for the burial of fellow insurgents
killed in coalition operations. After the photo appeared, U.S. military leaders
acknowledged that they were aware of the gathering, had the group in the sights
of an unmanned Predator drone, but decided not to take the shot.
The rules of battlefield engagement forbid attacks inside cemeteries. In
Harvey's opinion, war isn't the place for that kind of moral high ground: "War
has only one rule: Kill or be killed. "Agree or not, in the midst of Iraq's
unpre-cedented media coverage, such decisions play out in public like never
before. In Harvey's war - for better or worse - there was less scrutiny, despite
the fact that Vietnam was the first war to unfold across TV screens. "We saw
reporters," Harvey said, "but not many.
Mostly they'd show up at our camp when the USO people came." Even so, plenty of
small print was in place to govern the fighting, all complicated by a maze of
politics that often hog-tied U.S. military capability. Of particular frustration
at Quan Loi: the prohibition against entering Cambodia, the enemy's refuge. Now
and then, Harvey says, the rules were quietly ignored. In September 1968, a
helicopter went down near Quan Loi, killing all on board, including the
commander of Harvey's division, Maj. Gen. Keith Ware.
The soldiers retaliated: "We targeted some North Vietnamese officers and
captured them. We 'motivated' them. They talked. A huge pig roast involving
hundreds of NVA (North Vietnamese Army) officers and thousands of troops was
planned just over the border in Cambodia to celebrate the killing of Gen.
Ware... a plan was hatched... they never heard the B-52s coming... the pig roast
ended before dessert."
Quan Loi had the misfortune of being in one of the lushest areas of South
Vietnam. Leafy rubber trees and thick tropical forests provided plentiful cover
for the enemy. As a result, the area took more than its share of the 20 million
gallons of defoliant the United States sprayed in Vietnam. The most heavily used
chemical was stored inside 55-gallon drums marked with an orange stripe: Agent
Orange. Later studies would connect the dioxin contained in Agent Orange to a
variety of cancers, birth defects and other health problems.
Tens of thousands of vets say they were exposed to the chemical and suffered
serious ill-effects. Still, it would take until 1993 for Congress to authorize
Agent Orange benefits. The verdict is still out on Gulf War Syndrome, a baffling
array of symptoms veterans of the Iraq wars say they're experiencing. The way
Harvey views it: "Just because a soldier doesn't come home with a Purple Heart
doesn't mean he wasn't injured.
If he did what his country asked him to do, and he's suffering because of it, he
should be taken care of. "Harvey says the men of Quan Loi suspected Agent Orange
was trouble. As planes and choppers sprayed circles around the camp, those who
could would duck inside and button down their tents. As a young officer,
however, Harvey was expected to set an example. His boss made that clear: "He
said, 'I want you walking through the company area to show these guys that it's
safe.' "
"No matter where you were... somewhere you were going to be downwind. It
would come right across the base camp... I would get soaked to the skin. We had
two pairs of fatigues - one that was in the laundry and one we wore and we wore
it everyday until the laundry came back... we had a shower once a week, if we
were lucky... there was no where to wash or spray off... the sun would dry it up
on me and I'd get up the next day and put the same pair of fatigues on and go
back out and do my job... and I just knew - I knew - this was a really bad
thing."
Harvey left Vietnam in November 1968 with two Bronze Stars for "meritorious
service" and an emptiness in his soul. One plane ride and he was back in The
World, with the smell of the jungle still in his nose. No one met him at the
airport. His wife had moved on. Plenty else had changed, too. His country seemed
upside down. Peaceniks were calling guys like him "baby killers."
There were civil rights riots in the streets. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,
Bobby Kennedy - both assassinated. So much had happened in the year he'd been
gone. He just wanted to forget. Fade away. He made his way back to his college
town, Rochester, N.Y., where he shed his uniform and got his old job back at
Kodak. The sickness entered his life around 1970. It began in his lungs,
one of what would eventually be eight cases of pneumonia. Then it moved to his
head.
The long dark clouds of depression. It stalked his sleep with nightmares.
Ravaged his days with nausea and vomiting. And so began an endless round of
tubes, treatments and hospital s. Eventually, Harvey's list of ailments would
include various skin cancers, gastrointestinal troubles, near-constant pain in
his muscles, joints and nerves. In the mid-1970s, he discovered he was sterile -
news that did little to help his second marriage.
They divorced. A few years later, Harvey married again. It didn't go well. By
1990, Harvey says, he'd spiraled into despair. He was agitated, unable to
concentrate, plagued with suicidal thoughts. That kind of mental torture follows
many home from war. The numbers range widely, but studies indicate that at least
20,000 Vietnam vets returned, only to take their own lives. Surveys of Iraq vets
reveal a similar torment. Among those returning from war this year: Nearly 1,700
reported thoughts of hurting themselves, or feelings that they would be better
off dead.
Harvey was desperate. His third marriage fell apart. He underwent electric shock
treatments. Somehow, they eased the worst of his demons. By now, he was 50.
Kodak had kept him on all those years, but mostly out of sympathy. Now, the
company offered him early retirement. He took it. Sandy, his fourth wife,
entered the picture in 1992. Three years later, the couple climbed into an RV,
headed south, stopped in Hampton Roads and fell for the area.
They sank everything into a condo in Norfolk with a breathtaking view of the
Elizabeth River. Eight years ago, Harvey began his fight for Agent Orange
benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. He also submitted a claim to
the Agent Orange settlement fund, a $180 million pool set up after a group of
Vietnam vets and their families sued the companies that made the chemical. The
VA turned Harvey down. The settlement fund sent him $1,578.67. He and Sandy
laughed when they opened the envelope. "I almost sent it back," he said. In
2000, doctors found a large tumor in Harvey's upper left lung.
They ruled it inoperable and told him he had two to six months to live. That was
enough for the VA, which finally rated his condition as "service-related" and
began sending a monthly disability check. Thirty-seven doses of radiation and
eight chemo sessions later, the tumor is gone and Harvey is still here. And once
again, young men put on uniforms and walk into the daily hell of war.
Harvey knows there are no easy answers, but he wonders if his country remembers
the lessons of its past, and the high cost of the learning. "This war now,
it's going to be a hard one. I can't really see Iraq ever being this pearl of
democracy in the middle of all those people who hate us. Our troops, they're
exhausted. And the partisan politics in our own country? They're stupid and
they're killing us. But if we're going to accomplish anything over there, we've
got to send more troops. No one wants to hear the 'D' word - but if we have to
go back to the draft, then that's what we have to do. I mean, our enemies are
building huge armies, and we're cutting back on ours?
"If we give up now, the whole thing collapses, just like it did in Vietnam. The
North overran the South and then they rounded up and killed everyone who helped
us. So what have you done then? What was any of it for?"
Harvey sees one thing America seems to have learned well from Vietnam.
Troops come home to a hero's welcome now, despite anyone's take on the war. Many
receive counseling sessions and decompression time before they hit the front
door. He doesn't draw much distinction between today's volunteer force and
yesterday's largely drafted one. "A lot of guys like me volunteered for
Vietnam," he said. "It didn't make things any easier." Harvey remembers heroism
among them all, "the everyday kind, in a hundred small ways."
He remembers the war-weary South Vietnamese, "who just wanted to be left alone
to grow their rice." Harvey figures his own end will come before the Iraq war's.
When his time draws near, he says, if the pain is too much: "I'll take myself
out. I'm not afraid to die." No regrets. No apologies. "I've had enough. I'm
tired."
Sources used in this story include: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; U.S.
Department of Defense; The Virginian-Pilot research; The Associated Press; New
England Journal of Medicine; Seattle-Post Intelligencer; The Federal
Practitioner; CNN.com; The New York Times; USA Today.
Reach Joanne Kimberlin at (757) 446-2338 or joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com.
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Contributed,
YNCS Don Harribine, USN(ret)