Posted on 05/24/2007 2:53:11 PM PDT by Zakeet
Nearly four decades after going no longer than 12 days between fire fights for a year, a former scout and tank commander was afraid to touch the wall.
He had lost 15 comrades just from his platoon, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to see their names inscribed among the more than 58,000 fallen on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A replica of that memorial, the Dignity Memorial Vietnam Wall Experience, was set up at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery over the weekend.
Surrounded by the strength of his fellow veterans, he finally made it up to the shiny black surface of the wall.
“There was a little bit of fear. That’s a long walk for me,” said the veteran, who only identified himself by his motorcycle name, Triple A. “I stuck my hand up there, and it was shaking, shaking, shaking. But I made it. When I hadn’t been able to do that for 40 years, that was a big deal.”
Triple A, a Copperas Cove resident, volunteered to become a Soldier and was sent to Germany, where he got married. He began to think about how to support his new bride, and even though re-enlisting meant going to Vietnam, that’s what he did.
In 1968, Triple A was sent to Vietnam with the 25th Infantry Division. He was a scout until his platoon sergeant was killed. He then took over his tank and participated in five offensives. For the year he was in Vietnam, he hardly went without someone shooting at him. He never had even a two-week break between engagements for the entire year.
He received two shrapnel wounds and wonders just how much metal is still inside him.
“Every now and then, you’ll get something like a pimple, and you squeeze it, and a sliver will come out,” Triple A, 62, said.
But those were the easy wounds.
He always was proud of his service, but he didn’t understand why much of the rest of the nation was not. He physically was home from Vietnam, but mentally, he was not.
“Most of my life was ruined because of (post traumatic stress disorder) and being hung up on drugs and alcohol,” Triple A said.
He managed to hide his problems through the remainder of his 22 years in the Army. He had more than a dozen Article 15s, nonjudicial punishments for minor discipline issues, but nobody thought he had an underlying problem.
When Triple A left the Army, he found he didn’t like civilian employers telling him what to do, and he had trouble keeping a job. He continued to try to help himself feel better by using drugs and alcohol. But all that did was convince himself he no longer wanted to live.
When he finally decided to get help, Triple A went to a Veterans Administration hospital in 1984.
“I was not very happy with the outcome,” he said without elaborating.
The cycle of drug and alcohol use, suicide attempts and problems keeping a job continued. He was divorced three times.
“Never their fault,” he said. “It was always my fault.”
Then, 32 years after he got home from Vietnam, Triple A was completely ready to accept help. A friend suggested he try the VA hospital again. This time, the hospital, now falling under an organization known as the Department of Veterans Affairs, listened to him. Doctors gave him medication and referred him to therapy programs.
He still takes a handful of medicine twice a day and attends therapy groups. But what has strengthened him most is returning to his place in the Vietnam War veterans’ band of brothers.
“It’s a brotherhood with these other vets,” he said. “It helps fill the hole. It gives me a purpose in my life.”
That’s where Triple A gets his name. The president of his Vietnam veterans motorcycle group noticed he would go any place, any time, anywhere for a fellow veteran. He accompanies the Patriot Guard to veterans’ funerals “to take control if necessary.”
“Nobody will piss on our graves,” he promised.
And his brothers were there to help him in return May 19 when Triple A saw the wall for the first time. He knows where to find the panels housing the names of the fallen he knew, but that was too much for his first visit. They weren’t exactly close friends, but a sobering reason was the motivation for that.
“You didn’t really have time to make close friends,” he said. “They might be here one day, and the next day, they might be gone. So, you didn’t, you know what I mean, you didn’t get caught up.”
John Sais did have a close friend on the wall. He knew him before they both went to the war.
Sais recalled his friend Bruce D. Patterson as someone who had a lot of goals. He always protected Sais from bullies in high school and tried to talk Sais into being tough and joining the Marine Corps with him.
All Sais knows is his friend, a lance corporal, was killed when his patrol was ambushed. Sais was just out of high school when it happened, and the memory of his close friend, whom he said was like a brother, stayed with him through his 24 years in the Army.
As a first sergeant during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Sais “always worried about losing Soldiers,” he said.
“This is the reality,” he said, pointing to Patterson’s name on the wall.
Sais wiped tears away as he looked at the white piece of paper in his hand. He had outlined the fallen Marine’s name because, for some reason, he hadn’t thought about tracing his name when he went to the real wall in Washington.
Triple A planned to depart earlier this week for the annual Memorial Day Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. There, he plans to find the names of the 15 Soldiers he knew.
While talking about what he endured helps to ease the pain, “some of my story can never be told,” he said as he stared at the ground for the first time in a half-hour conversation. We just wouldn’t understand.
But, those 15 do.
An emotional Vietnam War veteran places a flag between panels of the Dignity
Memorial Vietnam Wall Experience, a replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Declining to give his name, the veteran simply ran his fingers across the wall
and said, "They're all heroes."
This is the second of three articles honoring veterans in today's Fort Hood Sentinel.
It was written by my newspaper reporter daughter.
There is a traveling wall up in Macomb County Michigan this weekend as well. I stopped by on my bicycle today and thanked one of the vets who volunteered to be there and especially for his service to our nation.
I told him that I really hate when they put the wall up at the park cause it chokes me up whenever I see it.
He asked if I had anyone on it? my answer was No. I know a few guys who were there but I was just a kid during the war.
Good article by your daughter too.
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