Sons and Daughters of Vietnam Casualties Return to Vietnam

A Tropic Lightning Daughter’s Journey

In March a group of 80 people from 24 states journeyed to Vietnam. The goal? To return to the battlefields where their fathers died. We are members of Sons and Daughters In Touch.

Our group included several Vietnam veterans, a couple of priests, a few widows and a handful of nurses who had served in Evac hospitals near the battlefields around Da Nang, Bien Hoa and Quang Tri.

And me. A journalist whose own father, SSgt. David Spears, was killed in action July 24, 1966, serving in the 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division in the Ia Drang Valley. My father left behind a widow, 29, and three kids, ages, 12, 9 and 6.

Cammie Geoghegan Olson, of Virginia, was only five-months old when her father was killed in the Battle of the Ia Drang, on Nov. 15, 1965.

Olson’s father, Lt. John Lance “Jack” Geoghegan, 24, was depicted in the movie We Were Soldiers.

Cammie was blessed with a devoted step-father who honored the memory of her dad. But she has been haunted by the absence of her natural father throughout her life.

“It’s that not knowing. Not knowing anything. Not knowing what his voice sounds like. Not knowing how he walked. It's hard,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion.

Time does not heal all wounds. As Sons and Daughters have gone on to have children and careers of our own, and as other wars rumble on during our lifetimes, we are continually reminded of all that our fathers have missed over the years. And of all the many ways we continue to miss them.

Grief brought us all here, to the crowded streets of Saigon (not even the locals call it Ho Chi Minh City), to the foreboding tunnels of Cu Chi, to the shallow waters of the Mekong, the white sands of China Beach, the Citadel at Hue, and to Hanoi. For two weeks, we rubbed shoulders with a people whose language we could not speak and whose customs we did not know.

Our grief bound us together the way only death can. The way it had bound our fathers to one another. And the same way it continues to bind our countries together.

For most of us, this was our first trip to Vietnam.

Our first few days in country were spent at the Rex Hotel in Saigon. Bamboo chairs are scattered about. Crystal chandeliers sparkle from the ceiling. An hour-long massage costs 75,000 dong, the equivalent of $5. And one of the chores of the hotel staff is to change the carpet in the elevators daily. In the morning, the rugs read: “Good morning, Rex Hotel.” And later in the day the rugs read: “Good afternoon, Rex Hotel.”

We donned sunscreen and straw hats as boatmen paddled us in sampans through the tributaries of the Mekong. At a stop along the Mekong, we feasted on a lunch of elephant fish (carp) and rice whiskey, and wrapped ourselves with a 50-pound python. We shimmied into the dank and dark Cu Chi underground and marveled at the bravery of the men designated as tunnel rats. And we screamed with hilarity as luge-like sleds propelled us down Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain.

On Saturday, March 8th, we split up to visit the places where our fathers served and where they died.

My group boarded a turbo-prop plane and headed into Pleiku, in the Central Highlands. There we traveled over dusty red roads for hours, before coming to a stop at the edge of the remote village of Plei Me. The Cambodia’s border was within sight. As was one the more violent regions of the war - the Ia Drang Valley. Dense foliage continues to drape the area where a total of 305 American soldiers died in combat between October 23 and November 26, 1965.

I placed my flowers alongside those of Cammie Geoghegan Olson, at the edge of a manioc field that overlooked the Ia Drang Valley. Like the kudzu vines common throughout America’s Southeast, dense overgrowth covers the valley as far as the eye can see. Because of problems between the Montagnards and Vietnamese, visitors are not allowed into the Ia Drang. Historically, the minority people have tried to separate themselves from each other and from the communist regime of Vietnam.

I’d held my tribute earlier that day in a red dirt gully near the base of Dragon Mountain. A snappy wind blew across the fields of brittle grasses, just outside the town of Pleiku. The town had less than 15, 000 people when the 3rd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division was assigned there in December of 1965. Seventy-thousand people make their home there now.

Shortly before he died, my father sent a picture to his mother in Church Hill, Tenn. In the photo, Daddy and his Army buddies posed with a couple of dozen Montagnard children. The kids’ clothes are raggedy. Each child stands barefoot in a muddy gully. Behind them is a sturdy howitzer and the slope of Dragon Mountain.

Our local guides, Viet and Hai, felt they had found the gully where Dad had posed some 37 years before. I thought so, too. My friends helped me gather rocks. The guides helped round up half-a-dozen local children from the nearby village. Two of the girls ran home to don their best dresses. I handed copies of my father's picture to the kids behind me. Then, I opened a plastic jar and poured the contents out over the rock monument my teammates and I had built.

“Inside this jar is dirt from Ft. Benning, Ga., the place where my father trained troops for years. And sand from the North Shores of Hawaii, where he loved to fish,” I said. Then, scraping it with a rock, I scooped up the soil of Vietnam and mixed it into the jar.

“When Native Americans were a nomadic tribe, they would build rock monuments before leaving camp. These monuments were a way for them to mark their journey - to see how far they had traveled and in which direction,” I explained.

I looked up at my friends who had formed a half-circle in front of me. I saw the tears streaming down the faces of my sisters, Cammie Geoghegan Olson, and Kelly Coleman Rihn. It troubled me immensely that neither Kelly nor Cammie had any memories of their fathers. Like Cammie, Kelly was only a baby when her father, Spec. Joel Coleman, died. He was 21.

I was lucky. I was nearly 10 when my father died. I remember the way he walked and the way he talked. I even remember the way he laughed. Something he did often.

Now the tears were streaming down my own face.

“As military children we were a nomadic tribe. And for those of us who lost fathers here, Vietnam is our rock monument. My prayer is that when we look back we will realize how far we've come in our love and appreciation for the Vietnamese people,” I said.

Over the years, I have made several trips to my father’s gravesite at Andrew Johnson National Cemetery in Tennessee. And a trip to the Vietnam Memorial Wall in D.C. I’ve walked the streets he roamed as a boy. And sat in the pews of the church where he was baptized. But never have I felt my father’s presence more strongly than I did there in dusty red dirt gully at the base of Dragon Mountain, in a land full of people whose language I couldn’t speak and whose customs I didn’t know. I felt like I had come home. And Daddy was right there, waiting for me with a great big hug.

This sense of coming home was a common emotion shared by Sons and Daughters, veterans, widows and the even nurses who had tenderly cared for the wounded and dying.

Marsha Four served with the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during 1969-1970 at Camp Evans in Quang Tri. Speaking to the Sons and Daughters of the soldiers who did not survive the war, Marsha Four said: “Thirty-four years ago, you became a part of my life. Most of you came to me silently, all of you came faceless. I have carried you in my heart for so many years, now I can see your faces. It’s been an honor to join you on your Vietnam journey. This trip has truly been a gift.”

Candy Sweet Thomas said she’s spent the past 34 years trying to find a reason for her father’s death. Like many others, the Tennessee gal was only a baby when her father, Sgt. Larry Sweet was killed on Sept. 14, 1969.

“I was a broken child from a broken family who has spent my whole life wondering why. I may never know the answer to that question, not on earth anyway. But I did find a piece of myself in Vietnam. And I am so proud to be a part of all of this - the love, the friendship, the sorrow and the healing,” Candy said.

On March 18, as we hunkered down for the long plane flight back to L.A., my friend Cammie pushed her blonde locks away from her forehead and said: “For the first time in my 37 years of life, I believe I will think of the country first, not the war, when I hear the word ‘Vietnam.’ It isn't a scary place for me anymore.”

Me neither, Cammie, me neither.

(Karen Spears Zacharias writes from her home along the Umatilla River in Pendleton, Oregon. She is working on a book about the aftermath of her father’s death. She can be reached via e-mail at zach@ucinet.com.)