43 Years Later, Vietnam War Covert Operations Vets Receive Medals for Heroism

From AllGov.com: 43 Years Later, Vietnam War Covert Operations Vets Receive Medals for Heroism

Almost five decades after their feats, a group of American commandoes finally have been honored by the U.S. government for their bravery during the Vietnam War.

Fifteen men from the U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG), a highly-classified, multi-service special forces unit that conducted covert operations throughout Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, received a total of 33 medals from the Department of Defense for actions performed between June 1968 and March 1969.

MACV-SOG, a forerunner to today’s Special Operations Command, carried out reconnaissance missions, captured enemy prisoners, rescued downed pilots and conducted rescue operations to retrieve allied prisoners during the war.

But the classified unit was not publicly recognized until August 22, 2000, when it received the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest award a unit can receive.

Eleven years after that, the individuals were acknowledged for their service and meritorious actions, receiving Silver Stars, Distinguished Flying Crosses, Bronze Stars, Army Commendation Medals and more.

The medals will be handed out this week at the annual Special Operations Association convention in Las Vegas.

A taste of everything

From Boston.com: A taste of everything

Standing before an entryway to Vietnam’s infamous Cu Chi tunnels on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, retired US Army Colonel William Roscher leaned over and peered into the cramped opening leading to a dimly-lit earthen network.

During the Vietnam War, Viet Cong guerrillas used the 124-mile underground complex as a safe haven and base of operations for attacks on US troops. From 1968 to 1969, Roscher commanded an intelligence-gathering unit assigned to a division stationed at Cu Chi. Life in the tunnels went on literally beneath their encampment despite the efforts of “tunnel rats’’ to ferret out the enemy.

Roscher, a Phoenix resident, took the opportunity to return to Vietnam in January when he and his wife, JoAnn, sailed aboard the Ocean Princess on a 16-day cruise through the heart of Southeast Asia. The 4,173 statute-mile odyssey began in Singapore and included stops at ports of call in Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Okinawa, Japan, before ending in Shanghai.

Revisiting Vietnam for the first time in more than 40 years gave Roscher an eerie sense of déjà vu. “Seeing the tunnels was quite amazing,’’ he said. “During wartime, none of us realized how extensive they were.’’

Times have changed. Now eager to draw US and other foreign visitors to the country, the Vietnamese government has transformed the Cu Chi complex into a war memorial and tourist attraction.

As the Ocean Princess followed the ancient maritime trade route through the South China Sea, its 684 passengers from 38 countries often found themselves entering distinctly foreign waters. Daily Facebook updates showing Buddhist monks chanting inside ornate temples, laborers working rice paddies, and shopkeepers hawking snake wine reflected the kaleidoscope of cultures, religions, and commerce in this exotic part of Asia.

“A lot of people haven’t been to this part of the world, so they have a great deal of curiosity about the history, living conditions, climate, people, and places,’’ said Susan Rawlings, Ocean Princess cruise director. “This cruise provides a good overview of Asia. You get a taste of everything.’’

That first taste came in sunny Singapore, where the sultry morning air was tinged with the spicy sweetness of curry. Highly regarded for its wide boulevards, clean-swept streets, and orderly traffic, this island nation off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula has evolved into a melting-pot metropolis. Ultramodern high-rises cast long shadows over cloistered alleyways and ethnic enclaves in Chinatown and Little India. Familiar Western-style cuisine blends with the succulent tastes of Indian, Malayan, and Chinese dishes prepared at ubiquitous food courts and street-side eateries. Symphonies and theatrical performances draw audiences to the Esplanade-Theatres on the Bay, and Clarke Quay’s nonstop night life attracts pub crawlers to bars and restaurants along the Singapore River.

The new Marina Bay Sands, a $5.5 billion waterfront casino resort that opened last year, has eclipsed even the venerable Raffles Hotel, long famous for its gin-laced Singapore Slings, to become the “Lion City’s’’ newest architectural icon. Described by locals as “the building with the boat on top,’’ the complex’s three 55-story towers are crowned by a ship-shaped Sands SkyPark, where guests can sip a Tiger beer or soak in an infinity pool while they admire the skyline view.

The Ocean Princess sailed from Singapore’s HarbourFront complex past Sentosa Island, home to Universal Studio’s first theme park in Southeast Asia, and through the Singapore Strait bound for the Gulf of Thailand.

Two days later, the ship anchored off the Thai fishing village of Na Thon on Ko Samui island, a popular beach hangout for backpackers and vacationers. At the Namuang Safari Park, a convoy of lumbering elephants awaited us, their trunks raised in greeting and their eyes searching hungrily for bananas we had brought along. During our afternoon island tour, Ko Samui revealed signs of encroaching tourist development, including the opening of 17 five-star hotels and a handful of McDonald’s and KFC restaurants. However, the islanders have preserved their silken-sand beaches and fascinating religious attractions, including the golden Big Buddha seated atop a dragon-festoon temple staircase on Fan Island and the mummified remains of a famous monk at Wat Kunaram.

The next day, a brilliant orange sun rose above dockside cranes as the Ocean Princess shoehorned its way into Laem Chabang port, gateway to Bangkok. The 2 1/2-hour bus trip inland took us from rice paddies and fish farms into the chaos of the city. Our tour guide shepherded us through the manicured grounds surrounding the golden spire-crowned Grand Palace, former home of the Thai kings, and the jewel-like colonnade and ordination hall of the Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha. “It was sensational, just stunning,’’ said Robert Hale, of Suffolk, England. “An amazing collection of showy wealth.’’

In a nod to Bangkok’s moniker, “Venice of the East,’’ we boarded a slender longboat at noon for a wind-whipped ride down the mud-brown Chao Praya River and through the narrow stilt-house-lined klongs, or canals, in the Thonburi District. The highlight of Bangkok for Canadian passenger Carolle Walls of Vancouver, British Columbia, was an afternoon stop at the Gems Galore showroom. “I bought a pair of sapphire and diamond earrings,’’ she said. “It made my day.’’

At Phu My, our first stop in Vietnam, our guide Thanh struggled to stay upright as our bus lurched over the broken, washboard pavement on the provincial highway leading from the harbor to Ho Chi Minh City. Masked riders on Chinese-made motor scooters swarmed past dilapidated metal-roof houses, small roadside fruit stands, and flooded fields dotted with water buffalo. Despite Vietnam’s turbulent past, the nation’s predominantly youthful population has adopted an upbeat attitude. “We are a new generation that is trying to develop our country,’’ Thanh said.

Downtown Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, displays vestiges of its pre-communist past. Architectural treasures, such as the neo-Romanesque Notre Dame Cathedral and the French Colonial post office, are well preserved. But mid-rise apartments near the teeming Ben Thanh central market reveal crumbling walls and cornices.

Vietnam offers some good bargains. The Minh Phuong Lacquer factory dazzled us with its vast selection and reasonable prices for fine lacquerware. A stroll along fashionable Dong Khoi Street near the Rex Hotel, site of the US military’s weekly updates during the war, surprised us with its Fifth Avenue flair and stylish department-store window displays.

During our subsequent port stop at Chan May, we toured the historical highlights of Vietnam’s old imperial capital of Hue and motored down the placid Perfume River in a brightly painted dragon boat. Inside the moss-blackened walls of the ancient citadel, we were approached by enterprising trishaw drivers who, for two US dollars, fast-pedaled us in a jostling chariot-style race back to the Cho Dong Ba market.

Hong Kong, where we spent two days, burst upon our senses like the laser lights that illuminate skyscrapers and strafe the night sky during the “Symphony of Lights’’ show on Victoria Harbor. Since 1997, when the British relinquished control to the Chinese, the island has amazed the world with its explosive growth and affluence.

“Hong Kong has to be one of the most exciting places on earth,’’ said Glenn Amer, a Princess Cruises featured entertainer. “I love the crowded sidewalks and tiny, winding streets. It always reminds me of the movie ‘The World of Susie Wong.’ ’’

We toured the island on the double-decker Big Bus and took the Victoria Peak tram up to the 1,400-foot-high sky terrace for a dizzying harbor view. Along Hollywood Road, we bargained for antiques and then walked to the Mid-Levels Escalator, the world’s longest moving-staircase system, for a quick ride up through SoHo, a district of trendy bars, restaurants, and shops. The next day, we threaded our way through Kowloon’s underground shopping labyrinth and rode the immaculate MRT subway to Prince Edward Road to saunter through the lotus- and orchid-infused flower market and Yuen Po Street bird garden, where birds flit inside ornate bamboo cages.

The Ocean Princess’s final two ports of call before reaching Shanghai introduced us to distinctly different islands. On Taiwan, we viewed the changing of the military guard at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall and snapped photos of the Taipei 101 Tower, one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, before exploring the thriving night market in the port of Keelung. On Okinawa, during a gentle rain, shy geisha hid beneath pink umbrellas at the restored Shurijo Castle, and Japanese schoolchildren posed for pictures along shop-lined Kokusai Street in Naha, the Okinawa prefecture’s capital.

“I enjoyed all the ports,’’ said Susan Freschi of Klamath Falls, Ore., as she and her husband, Jerry, concluded their first visit to Asia. “Each and every one was a unique experience.’’

NJ-born pilot downed in Vietnam War buried in Pa.

From Chron.com: NJ-born pilot downed in Vietnam War buried in Pa.

EASTON, Pa. (AP) — An Air Force pilot from New Jersey who was shot down during the Vietnam War more than four decades ago has been laid to rest in eastern Pennsylvania.

The remains of Maj. Bruce Lawrence of Phillipsburg, N.J., were buried Saturday at the grave of his parents in Raubsville Cemetery in Northampton County's Williams Township.

"We bring a hero home and honor his service and sacrifice," Air Force chaplain Capt. Douglas Hess told about 200 people at the service, The (Allentown) Morning Call reported.

The procession to the cemetery led by a dozen motorcycles and more than 20 police and emergency vehicles was greeted by people lining the roads waving American flags. Flags and signs were displayed outside local homes and businesses, and the route included the Raubsville home of Lawrence's cousin Mark Weidner, who had a large "Welcome home Uncle Bruce" sign in the front yard.

Weidner, who said he remembers sending care packages to Lawrence in Vietnam, said the family was comforted by the outpouring of support.

"To me, this is really great that the Vietnam veterans are getting acknowledged for what they did," he said.

Williams and his co-pilot were shot down on July 5, 1968, and hostile fire prevented a search for the wreckage, military authorities said. His remains were identified by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command Center and arrived in Philadelphia last week from Hawaii.

Georgia: Local citizens supported the Vietnam troops

From the Times Herald: Local citizens supported the Vietnam troops

Editor's note: This article continues The Newnan Times-Herald's series on the Vietnam War and Cowetans who served, leading to a visit in October 2011 by the half-size replica of the Vietnam Memorial wall which will be on display at the Coweta County Fairgrounds.

Anyone who lived in America during the Vietnam War felt the huge impact the struggle had on the nation.

From the way the news media covered the fighting, it too often seemed like the only people back home supporting the troops were their comrades in uniform. Almost daily, the country was swamped with pictures of huge antiwar protests. Film of every so-called American atrocity in Vietnam was aired nightly on the three American TV networks, always without context or a word of explanation from those involved.

Photos of San Francisco "flower children" dropping daisies into military rifles at antiwar protests became a cliché for the crowd that chanted "Make Love, Not War." A small minority of Vietnam veterans even organized to protest the war.

Meanwhile, Hollywood celebrities found a way to turn tragedy, suffering and sacrifice into box office gold. Among veterans then and now, none was more despised than Jane Fonda, who went to North Vietnam, posed on a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun and made radio broadcasts in which she called American military and political officials "war criminals."

But away from America's major media centers, many communities backed the troops that went to fight and die in Vietnam. None was more supportive than Coweta County.

All during the war, troops living in or passing through Coweta were accorded the dignity and respect their effort and sacrifice had earned. And the Coweta community didn't just pay lip service to supporting the troops. Cowetans took action to show their respect for those fighting half a world away.

In March 1968, citizens of Newnan and Coweta County officially "adopted" the 132nd Helicopter Company and the 16th Transportation Corps, then forming at Fort Benning for deployment to Vietnam.

Local officials traveled to Fort Benning to meet unit commanders and troops. A few weeks later, more than 3,500 locals hosted a barbecue and celebrated the adoption with ceremonies at the Newnan National Guard Armory and the Newnan-Coweta Airport.

The unit flew some of its helicopters from Fort Benning to Newnan to show Cowetans the equipment they would be flying in Vietnam.

Once deployed in Vietnam, members of the unit sent back a picture showing a sign in the unit's company area pointing to Newnan, Ga. When the helicopter unit adopted an entire orphanage at An Tan, Vietnam, Cowetans adopted the facility, too, and showered the orphanage with cash and gifts for the children.

Former Coweta Schools Superintendent Bobby Welch was involved in the local adoption ceremonies. At the time, he said Newnan was "A very patriotic place."

That never changed.

As part of the 2011 Veterans Muster occasion, a ceremony will be held Oct. 23 to recognize the 132nd Helicopter Unit and 16th Transportation Detachment. Some surviving members of the unit are expected to attend.

The Vietnam War produced 246 Medal of Honor recipients. Two of them shared the same hometown: Newnan, Ga. This rare distinction was even noticed by President Lyndon Johnson on Jan. 16, 1969, during the Medal of Honor ceremony that included Air Force Col. Joe M. Jackson and Marine Corps Major Stephen Pless.

Not long after being presented with the nation's highest military honor, Maj. Pless and Col. Jackson were honored by Coweta citizens and given the keys to the city of Newnan, as well as numerous other gifts.

The Newnan National Guard Armory was subsequently renamed the Jackson-Pless Armory in honor of both men and dedicated in the late 1970s.

In 1988, Cowetans killed in Vietnam were honored with a plaque on the Coweta County Courthouse. The event was attended by political and military dignitaries from Coweta and across the state, including Georgia Secretary of State Max Cleland, who became a triple amputee while serving in Vietnam.

A similar memorial honoring Cowetans killed in Vietnam was erected at the Veterans Memorial Plaza in at Newnan's City Park at the corner of Jackson Street and Temple Avenue, when the plaza was dedicated in 2009.

Throughout the Vietnam War, The Newnan Times-Herald carried stories from the battle front and often included pictures sent back home from soldiers serving abroad. One of them depicted Lt. John R. Lockard of Newnan shaving in the field in 1970 while serving near Song Be, Vietnam.

Lockard remembers the picture that his mother, Hazel Lockard, who still calls Newnan home, saved for him. He also remembers the local attitude, then and now.

"Newnan is very special," Lockard said. "It had always been a very patriotic place. In many ways it reminds me of small New England towns that still revere the military tradition going back to the American Revolution.

"Newnan is among the special pockets of patriotism across the country. In all our country's wars, the Southeast has never deserted the troops, and that was always true of Newnan."

Lockard served in the Army for 23 years before retiring as Lt. Col. in 1991 and settling in Columbia, S.C. After leaving the Army he led the ROTC program at the University of South Carolina for three years.

John Lockard's father, Claire Lockard, is another Coweta military success story. He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to set foot on Utah Beach during the Normandy Invasion of June 6, 1944. After World War II Claire Lockard had a long career with the military and the CIA. Claire Lockard was elected Coweta's Veteran of the Year for 2006.

When the Vietnam Memorial Moving Wall comes to Coweta County Oct. 20-23, the Wall, and visitors who come to pay their respects to Vietnam's fallen, will feel right at home.

Marines support annual POW/MIA event

From Marines.mil: Marines support annual POW/MIA event
By Pamela Jackson, Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany

MARINE CORPS LOGISTICS BASE ALBANY, Ga. — Col. Terry V. Williams, commanding officer, Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, served as the guest speaker for the 8th annual “The Ride Home” Prisoner of War/Missing in Action candlelight ceremony hosted by Rolling Thunder, Inc., in Americus, Ga., Friday.

The POW/MIA Recognition events were held throughout the weekend on the campuses of Georgia Southwestern University and South Georgia Technical College, both in Americus. Williams, the Albany Marine Band and the MCLB Albany color guard also participated in Saturday’s events.

As the POW/MIA flag flies beneath Old Glory, the words, “You are not forgotten,” inscribed on it ring true for those gathered at the weekend event, which included hundreds of former POWs, their families and the family members of those still missing in action.

Williams said many individuals who have spoken at ceremonies like the past weekend’s have tried to put into words the importance of the unique deeds and sacrifices of America’s POWs and MIAs.

“We can only pray that all of America will meet the challenge with the same courage, commitment and spirit of determination as those who are being honored today,” he said.

Williams said Americans are blessed to live in a nation of democracy and freedom and what they must do today, through ceremonies such as this, is to put into action what they feel as a nation.

“It is to each of you whom we owe a special debt of respect and gratitude; to you who were captured and yet maintained your faith in our nation and our ability to bring you home,” the commanding officer said. “You did so while imprisoned and many times victimized, brutalized and tortured. To the families of those still missing from past American wars, you have wounds that are slow to heal.”

Williams said we will never understand the full depth of commitment and sacrifice America’s POWs and MIAs and their families have given to this country.

“We owe it to you all to publicly thank you for the unique hardships and sacrifices you have endured,” he said. “Many of us in uniform understand what it means to sacrifice, and even more for those of us who have served in combat. As a grateful nation, we can never repay the profound debt to our heroes, but we can honor and remember them. “America does honor and remember!”

Jim Moyer, chairman and event coordinator, The Ride Home, Inc., said having the young men and women here from the Marine base to support the event made it even more special.

“It was an honor to once again to have the Marine Corps leadership here with the band and color guard,” he said. “Colonel Williams gave an excellent speech that got everyone’s attention and really brought home the true spirit of our event. The Albany Marine Band was simply awesome and the color guard added that special touch to the ceremony. We are so blessed to have the Marines present at our event each year and look forward to seeing them again next year.”

An Armed Forces Press Service article dated Sept. 15 noted that as Americans paused to observe POW/MIA Recognition Day, teams of military and civilian experts will be excavating sites in Europe and the South Pacific looking for remains to help identify service members still missing from past wars.

Teams from Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, based at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, will be on the job, working to provide the fullest possible accounting of America’s missing, and living up to their command’s motto, “Until they are home.”

The Joint POW/MIA Command’s mission is to provide the fullest possible accounting for about 84,000 U.S. service members from the nation’s wars. The vast majority of these - 74,184 - are from World War II, but the lost also include 1,680 from Vietnam, 7,979 from Korea and 127 from the Cold War.

Nearly 200 former POWs and families of those missing in action attended the weekend events, which was one of the largest turnouts, according to Moyer.

The Web site, www.theridehome.com, gives details about the mission and purpose of Rolling Thunder, Inc., a nonprofit organization with more than 85 chapters across the United States.

Man donates Vietnam War books to N. Idaho college

From Chron.com: Man donates Vietnam War books to N. Idaho college
LEWISTON, Idaho (AP) — When he was a young man attending an Oregon community college in the 1970s, David Rudy found himself in an uncomfortable position.

His uncle Donald Rudy was a veteran of the Vietnam War, and had regaled him and his cousins with tales of his experiences in the Air Force in Indochina. But not all of what Rudy's professor was teaching jibed with Uncle Donald's war stories.

Rudy had never studied Vietnam, so he felt like he didn't have the ammunition to challenge what he saw as a liberal take on the war.

That's when he decided to arm himself with knowledge.

"I really dug into it at that point in time, and started reading," said Rudy, 52. "I'm a Boy Scout and I was raised in a military environment with my dad, and doggonit, you just don't go at anything unprepared."

That quest to learn everything he could about the war's history led to an obsession with collecting the finest, rare first-edition and out-of-print books on the war. Recently, Rudy decided to give the best of his collection to the Lewis-Clark State College Library.

"They certainly help broaden our collection and the resources we have available to students," library Director Sue Niewenhous said of Rudy's donation.

Rudy was born in Clarkston and raised in Lewiston. He graduated from high school in Oregon, but returned to the valley for frequent summer visits to his aunt and uncle's home. His father Arlie Rudy, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War, lives in Lewiston too.

"So Lewiston will always be my home," said Rudy, who now lives in Post Falls and works as a marketing director for a Coeur d'Alene travel agency.

Both his father and uncle attended LCSC, so the college seemed like the perfect place for Rudy and his wife Deborah to donate the collection. The 57 Vietnam War books were given in his uncle's name, and the six Korean War books were given in his father's name.

Rudy estimated the conservative value of the entire collection is between $3,000 and $4,000.

And even though he was fascinated by each title, Rudy said he has his favorites. Two of them — "Last Reflections on a War" and "Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu" - were written by French journalist Bernard Fall, who covered his country's early conflicts in Vietnam by traveling with the French army.

"He was really the grandfather of the embedded journalist," Rudy said.

Fall's desire to be close to the action eventually cost him his life, however, when he stepped on a land mine in 1967.

Another favorite is Patrick Harrington's examination of intelligence gathering by small units, "Silence Was a Weapon." But Rudy called Joe Galloway's "We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young" the seminal work on the Vietnam War.

"It really explains the inception of the use of the airmobile tactic, which was helicopters," he said. "Vietnam was the first helicopter war."

Rudy said he hopes his collection helps spur an interest in the past for students at Lewis-Clark State College, even if it is from an amateur point of view.

"You don't have to get your bachelor's and your master's and your PhD in history," he said. "You can just be a marketing director for a company, and love history."

Vietnam made them best friends, better nurses

From Sept 9:
From Chicago Tribune: Vietnam made them best friends, better nurses

Over the years, when best friends Patricia Susor Maravola, of Gurnee, and Ellen Lally, of Springfield, had their Friday night telephone chats, their conversations inevitably would include reminiscences about their time as Army nurses during the Vietnam War.

They'd talk about how both were in their early 20s and a few months out of nursing school in 1969 when they arrived at the Army's Third Field Hospital in Saigon, and how thoroughly unprepared they were for the long, grueling hours and the emotional toll of caring for soldiers and some civilians in the intensive care unit.


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They'd talk about how the experience of war made them better nurses, and also made indelible imprints on their lives.

"We developed friendships and bonds," said Lally, 63, who was a nurse for 39 years until she retired in 2007. "I never forgot any of these people. I had such an admiration for them and it set the tone for my nursing career."

Earlier this year, Lally suggested to Maravola that they plan a first-ever reunion. And so, on Friday, about 90 former staff members of Third Field Hospital, called the "Walter Reed of the Orient," and a few ex-patients will come from around the country to Chicago for a two-day celebration of their time there.

Most of the hospital's personnel — including doctors, nurses, lab and X-ray technicians, chaplains, transportation staff — did yearlong tours of duty, and many of the roughly 2,000 workers never met face to face.

But the stories they heard of each other's tours were the stuff of legend: There was the doctor who removed a live explosive from a soldier; the surgical team that performed an operation in a bunker; the nurse and medic who cared for a Vietnamese infant who was the sole survivor after the Viet Cong leveled her village.

"We learned that she had been found in her dead mother's arms," said Lally, who cared for the baby with an ICU medic who became her husband. "She was rushed to surgery and later adopted by someone who worked in the hospital." She now lives in California with her husband and three children.

Retired Col. Sterling Mutz, 82, an orthopedic surgeon who lives in California, helped set up the military hospital in a former school. Third Field Hospital was open from 1965 to 1972 and at its height had about 500 beds. He said it was the largest Army medical unit in Vietnam and one of the few that wasn't run out of a tent.

"We brought in a 100-bed field unit left over from (the Korean War) and wooden canvas cots and portable operating lights and gasoline sterilizers," Mutz said. "And it still was nowhere near adequate for a surgeon in 1965. But somehow they saved many lives and limbs. Much more came later."

Maravola, 64, now a civilian nurse at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, said that when she was there the gymnasium was the postsurgical ward. Soldiers brought to the hospital were missing limbs, peppered with shrapnel, or had gaping head or abdominal wounds.

"When I got there, I'd never even treated a person with a gunshot before, but now there were many people with four or five," she said.

Jaclyn Rautbort Tropp, of Skokie, arrived in Saigon in December 1969, about a year out of nursing school. She said in the 1960s, nurses were taught to be subservient to doctors. But in Vietnam, doctors and nurses didn't have time to quibble over their roles.

"Everyone pitched in and I really learned a lot," said Tropp, 64, who was the head nurse in a dialysis unit and also volunteered in an orphanage. "I was suturing and the doctors let us put the shunts in for dialysis. I was doing so much that I felt stifled when I came back to the States and was supposed to be (subservient) again."

Edward Russell, 66, who worked as a chaplain's assistant, said the Vietnam War led to advances in the fields of medical evacuations and trauma surgery.

"Helicopter evacuations were done to a small extent in the Korean War," said Russell, who lives in Pennsylvania. "But by the Vietnam conflict, medevac (units were) so much more effective in extracting casualties from the battlefield and getting them to a hospital during what's called the golden hour, when doctors have a better chance at saving a life."

Not all the memories are hard. They recall off-duty dancing in the hot, sticky night air to music by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Beatles and the Supremes.

"Our down time was our party time and we partied hard," Maravola said. "We had huge speakers and huge reel-to-reel tape decks and for just a few minutes we'd let our hair down, throw our heads back and just have fun and forget what we'd just seen in the (intensive care unit)."

All told, about 66,000 patients were admitted to Third Field Hospital, Mutz said.

The sheer numbers of patients saved and lost could be overwhelming, according to Lally.

"If you go through an experience like that, you have to have some emotional trauma," she said. "We had such an intense, emotional year together."

Another tale of two economies

From the Philippines Star: Another tale of two economies

by Ray Butcher Gamboa

Many of our readers found last week’s column where we juxtaposed the economies of two super powers namely America and China quite revealing and informative. Many thanks to our readers who faithfully follow this column and sent their interesting comments.

As I said, that was from a kibitzer (me) from a developing country, awed by the supremacy of these two big economic powers. For this week, let’s take a look at the economies of two developing nations, both sharing interesting histories, one determined to overcome decades of oppressive rule and the devastations of a protracted war, the other wonderfully rich in natural resources and minerals but seriously set back and weighed down by massive corruption.

Vietnam, composed mainly of feudal dynasties, has always been an agricultural country. It was colonized by France in the mid-19th century who divided the country into a manufacturing region in the North and an agricultural one in the South. But political forces divided this otherwise placid country, the North turning communist while the South remained capitalist. This was in 1954. It was also during this time that the Second Indochina War took place, and Vietnam’s fragile economy took a turn for the worse due to massive exodus between 1954 to 1975. The protracted Vietnam War where the Vietnamese regime fought valiantly against the mighty US forces further devastated the country.

The Philippines suffered through a long repressive Spanish rule, liberated by the Americans who merely took over from the old colonizers, until it was finally granted full independence. The years after World War II saw us recovering faster than most Asian countries, and for some time, the Philippines was one of the richest countries in Asia, topped only by Japan, and beating other countries like Thailand. Now, the Philippines is one of the poorest in Southeast Asia, left by a mile by neighbors Thailand and Korea, and competing for the last place in the rung in the ASEAN region.

What happened in the ensuing years?

Immediately after the Vietnam War, the government launched into a series of 5-year plans up to 1985, integrating the North and South and decentralizing planning. Still, it was beset by small-scale production and material shortfalls, among other serious obstacles for advancement. All this time, Vietnam’s foreign trade was heavily tied up with the Soviet Union’s until the trade agreements were finally dissolved. Thus was Vietnam able to forge ahead with fresh trading partners and embark anew on more liberal regional and international economic capitalization.

For the Philippines, 1984-1985 saw a severe recession fueled by political instability. With the next regime, President Fidel Ramos’s economic reforms produced palpable results in terms of sustained economic growth and foreign investments until 1997 when all of Asia crumbled during the Asian crisis. The Philippines was largely spared, but economic growth slowed down perceptibly, recovering only in 1999 when the country registered a 3.4 percent growth. President Joseph Estrada’s term, despite efforts to continue the economic reforms his regime inherited from the previous administration, was marked by low economic activity amidst growing reports of corruption which ultimately led to his ouster and ushered in a new administration under Pres. Gloria M. Arroyo.

This regime posted remarkable economic gains, growing by 6.1 percent in 2004; by 2005, the Philippine peso appreciated by six percent, then the fastest in the Asian region for that year. Still, despite the oil crisis and two devastating typhoons, our economy grew by five percent+.

To give you an idea of how the peso fared against the US dollar: in 1980, the exchange rate was P7.51:$1; in 1985 – P18.60:$1; 1990-P24..32:$1; 1995 – P25.52:$1; 2000 – P44.19:$1; 2005- P55.05-$1; 2006- P49.28:$1; 2011- P42.50 - $1.

In contrast, Vietnam reeled from the Asian crisis, the GDP growth falling dismally to six percent in 1998 and five percent in 1999. The decade, though saw a resurgence in the country’s exports which grew to as much as 30 percent, accounting for almost 40 percent of the country’s GDP. The next decade saw them expanding their foreign trade even faster, becoming a member of the World Trade Organization in 2007. Upon acceptance at the WTO, their textile quotas were rendered moot, so the textile industry of Vietnam flourished.

The Philippines, though, enjoyed better times as a major global player in textile and garments especially in 2003 when the industry employed as much as 600,000 workers and was a top supplier of apparel in the global market. Today, this is an ailing industry that barely employs 150,000 workers, many factories having folded up. The industry waits in bated breath for the passing of the Save Act in US Congress (and Senate) where it was refilled in June 2011, having failed in the bill’s initial try. It must be remembered that the United States stopped issuing quotas on garments in 2005. The Save Act seeks to grant duty-free treatment to selected apparel products made from US-made fabrics but wholly assembled in the Philippines. The bill also seeks lower tariffs for products made from US yarn, and duty-free status for “cut and sew” clothes that are not produced in the United States. With the re-filing, certain provisions of the new version of the Save Act have been altered to woo the American vote.

For Vietnam, the country’s industrial GDP grew at an average annual rate of 10.3 percent. Several manufacturing sectors also showed rapid growth, among them food processing, tobacco, textiles, chemicals and electrical goods. The cities of Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi were bustling as most of the economic activities were centralized here. Crude oil (they have limited refining capacity) accounts for the bulk of Vietnam’s exports, representing over 20 percent of the country’s export earnings. As for tourism, there is a steady increase in visitors’ influx, mainly from the United States and neighboring Asian countries.

Vietnam continues to be a recipient of aid from the World Bank, Japan and the Asian Development Bank. Pledges of official development assistance from 1993 to 2004 reached a high of US$29 billion, about half of which have actually been released to Vietnam. In 2008, these pledges reached US$31.6 billion.

The Philippines also has its fair share of big foreign investors like Intel (which makes Pentuim 4 processor) which has been in the country for 28 years, Texas Instruments in Baguio (20 years now) which produces DSP chips and all the chips used in Nokia cell phones as well as 80% of chips used in Ericsson cell phones in the world, Toshiba in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, which now focuses in the production of hard disk drives, and Lexmark which operates a printing plant in Mactan, in Cebu. We continue to be the richest in mineral resources (gold, nickel, copper and chromite), but since 1999, our mineral production has slowed considerably until 2004 when the Supreme Court upheld the law allowing foreign ownership of Philippine mining companies. Our geothermal energy output a few years ago ran second to the United States, and our Malampaya oil fields already generates electricity in three gas-powered plants.

Both countries are still called developing countries, but Vietnam has rebounded from an inflation rate of 106 per cent in 1988 to 20.3% in 2008. Corruption continues to permeate the government in both countries, but the extent of corruption in ours is perceptively more, and this is compounded by high costs of utilities, lack of transparent regulations and a dismal failure to enforce investor rights which scare off the investors.

Vietnam has had bigger leaps than us.

Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino.

Wisconsin: Vietnam War Memorabilia Donated

From Newswatch 12: Vietnam War Memorabilia Donated
CRANDON - Invaluable Vietnam War memorabilia shows up from an unknown donor in Crandon.

"It's just overwhelming to see something like this." Remarked Ron Eveland.

All of this, left with a simple note reading, "Please accept these donations from a Three Lakes Vietnam War Veteran, Thankyou."

Ron Eveland, President of the Northwoods Veterans Center, and Nga Walker, widow of a Vietnam Vet, have been involved in helping the community remember it's veterans for the past 18 years. "Crandon, we're getting known as being the veteran's center for northern Wisconsin," says Eveland.

Eveland says the donation means so much to those like Walker who grew up in Vietnam and to those who have lost a loved one in the war, like the center's treasurer. "What makes this so important to us, her son Danny, was killed in Vietnam."

The donation made is of priceless materials spanning four tables. It also includes 51 books, pictures, small models, and a vietnamese sword.

Eveland expresses his emotion for the donation and says, "Every time I look at one of them items, it means something special to me. I was overwhelmed. In fact, it brought tears to my eyes because a person was so generous to everybody, and wanted us to know really what Vietnam was all about."

Ron Eveland says they will also be holding a 9/11 memorial on Sunday at 6:30pm at the center.

Rotary speakers target Vietnam's lingering Agent Orange

From Yakima Herald (Washington State): Rotary speakers target Vietnam's lingering Agent Orange

agentorangehistory.org
YAKIMA, Wash. -- It's been 50 years since the U.S. military sprayed Agent Orange over Vietnam, but its effects are still felt today, said Charles Bailey, who is leading an effort to clean up the chemical's legacy.

Bailey, 66, and Son Michael Pham -- who left Vietnam as a refugee the day the war ended -- spoke to the Rotary Club of Yakima on Thursday at the Yakima Convention Center about the lingering impacts of the chemical in hopes of garnering cleanup support.

During the Vietnam War, U.S. planes sprayed roughly 12 million gallons of Agent Orange over the war-torn country as herbicidal chemical warfare to kill vegetation used for cover and wipe out the agricultural food supply.

It's time to try and undo the damage the chemical continues to cause, said Bailey.

Bailey told the crowd how the chemical that causes birth defects, cancer and other illnesses is still prevalent in soils and waterways in Vietnam, where 28 Agent Orange "hot spots" have been identified.

"This is a humanitarian cause, we can do something about it," Bailey told a crowd of more than 100.

Pham, a 57-year-old Rotary International member who lives in Seattle, said International Rotary has been supporting the cleanup effort.

"I would like to invite your club to partner with us," he said. "We're not looking for a lot -- I think mostly we're looking for engagement."

Pham is also the founder and director of Kids Without Borders, an international, nongovernmental organization based in Bellevue that helps disabled children in Vietnam.

In 2007, Bailey -- a former grant writer working to support humanitarian efforts in Africa and Asia -- helped establish the Ford Foundation's Agent Orange cleanup initiative in Vietnam. He became interested after visiting Vietnam in 1997.

"I looked around and saw all these scarred hillsides and said, 'What had been done?' " he recalled.

Since that time, the United States has spent about $40 million to help those living with disabilities caused by Agent Orange. Another $36 million has come from foundations and other sources.

Rotary International has already raised $20,000 for piping clean water into a village at one of the hot spots, he said.

Fishing has been barred in certain waterways and concrete pads have been poured over soil in contaminated areas, such as the former Da Nang Air Base.

He showed a national news report about the continued birth defects featuring a woman born without legs from her knees down. Her mother was exposed to the chemical during the Vietnam War.

"Agent Orange affected all it touched," Bailey said

Remains of Vietnam War soldier repatriated: US

From the Daily Times: Remains of Vietnam War soldier repatriated: US

HANOI: Remains believed to be of an American special forces soldier listed as missing during the Vietnam War have been repatriated after a fellow serviceman helped locate the body, a US official said Thursday.

After a ceremony Wednesday in the central city of Danang, the remains, along with others from a separate incident, were flown to Hawaii for further identification, said Ron Ward of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC). They were recovered during a recent mission to find Americans missing in action from the war which ended almost four decades ago. Ward said the special forces soldier and his colleague were the only two Americans left defending a strategic high point in 1971 above Khe Sanh, near the then-Demilitarized Zone.

One received a Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on the hill — he was captured and later released by North Vietnamese troops who overran the site — while the other was listed as missing, Ward said. The decorated soldier returned to help JPAC, which worked alongside Vietnamese colleagues, locate where the other soldier was last seen in Quang Tri province, Ward said.

JPAC does not release any names until the identification of remains has been confirmed.

In a second case, investigators located possible remains from at least one American missing after a helicopter crash in Quang Nam province in 1968, Ward said. The US and Vietnam began cooperating on investigations into missing American servicemen in 1985, helping pave the way for a normalisation of diplomatic relations 10 years later.

With witnesses ageing and acidic soil eating into the buried remains, investigators are racing to find the bodies of those still classed as missing.

Marlon Stockstill, local Vietnam war hero dies at 65

From Picayune Item: Marlon Stockstill, local Vietnam war hero dies at 65
http://picayuneitem.com/local/x1642546916/Marlon-Stockstill-local-Vietnam-war-hero-dies-at-65

Vietnam veteran spreads awareness of POW/MIAs

From: Vietnam veteran spreads awareness of POW/MIAs
CEDAR CITY - Retired Navy Capt. Ron Lewis wears a sterling silver bracelet with the names of three friends who served with him on-board aircraft carrier USS Ranger during the Vietnam War. The names represent three of seven who were missing in action from the USS Ranger. They are the ones who have not been found.

"I will not give up until they, and all the missing, are found," Lewis said during a POW/MIA recognition program sponsored by Southern Utah University ROTC.
Lewis gives his presentation all across the country hoping to help Americans remember "the cost of freedom."

"I will go anywhere anytime to help people remember," Lewis said. "I want to show people that there is that link between them and the missing."

That link was in the forefront of Andrew Franklin's mind during the presentation. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Franklin said that every Vietnam veteran has friends missing in action.

"Everyone in the United States knows a Vietnam vet," Franklin said. "Every vet knows someone who is MIA or a POW. Everyone in the states has that connection."

Franklin said that he was glad to watch the presentation because it helped show that the United States government is working hard to find his missing in action friends.
"It's hard," Franklin said with tears in his eyes. "You have to move forward with your life when you know we left people behind. People forget or just don't think. I'm glad that the government is still working hard."

According to Lewis, 32 MIA solders have been returned in the past 24 months.
"No country on earth is working as hard to bring home the missing as the United States," Lewis said. "It is we who send these brave Americans into harms way. We promised them that we would bring them home. We Ðall of us- are sentinels of that promise."

"I never thought about it. I knew about it but I didn't think about it," said Jennifer Collins, a freshman at SUU studying communications. "I'm glad I went to the presentation."

Lewis's presentation documented the story of four out of the 73,792 members of the armed forces from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, the Gulf War and Iraq. As POW/MIA recognition day is Sept. 16, Lewis made a plea that people hang the POW/MIA flag beneath the American flag to "remember the promise to bring the missing home."

"Take a moment to look at how the smaller POW/MIA flag is linked to the bottom of the American flag," Lewis said. "Let it be a reminder of our promise. We must not Ðwe must not- forget the lost."

SUU's ROTC will hold a special POW/MIA flag rising at the flagpole in front of the Sorensen Physical Education building at 6 a.m. on Sept. 16.

Storied War General Still Inspiring Vietnamese At 100

From the Voice of America: Storied War General Still Inspiring Vietnamese At 100
Photos of Vietnam’s most famous living war hero, General Vo Nguyen Giap, show him as a frail white-haired figure engulfed in a white military uniform. As the general celebrates his 100th birthday, a public outpouring of support indicate that while his frame may have diminished over the years, his reputation has not.

Rising from humble beginnings as a school teacher, General Vo Nguyen Giap joined the resistance against French colonial rule, becoming a close friend of Vietnam’s first president, Ho Chi Minh. His crowning moment came in 1954 when he helped defeat the French at the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu.

The epic supply line the Ho Chi Minh trail, a system of about 2,000 paths through jungle and mountains, is credited as being one of Giap’s initiatives, as was the final offensive against South Vietnam in 1975.

Colonel Nguyen Huyen has been Giap’s assistant since 1976. He says the general continues to be the centre of attention, with well-wishers flocking to his hospital bed, where he has been for nearly two years.

The colonel says dozens of people, including the country’s top leaders, have brought the general flowers and presents to wish him well.

One American veteran who fought in the Vietnam War and now lives in the country, Chuck Searcy from Veterans for Peace, describes the general as a remarkable man whom many veterans of the war regard as a patriot who served his country with humility and heroism.

Giap left the country’s ruling politburo in 1982. Some say it was over an internal rivalry. Others claim he wanted to make room for a younger generation. But even after leaving front line politics, he continued to make his views heard.

In 2009 he sent an open letter to the government, calling for an end to Chinese-run bauxite mines in the Central Highlands because of damage to the environment and local ethnic minorities.

Historian Duong Trung Quoc says despite his age, all of the general’s opinions are still highly valued by the government, not just those on bauxite mining.

He says the general also raised his voice on other issues like the building of the National Assembly on Thang Long Citadel, a historic relic, and a call to protect Ba Dinh square.

Many of the people who attended 11 weeks of anti-China protests in the center of Hanoi carried posters of the general with the words “We are not afraid.”

Nguyen Quang Thach, 36, was a regular participant. He is one of eight people detained by police overnight on Sunday after defying a ban on public protests issued a few days before.

“He is the most famous and the most talented general in our history. He has won many battles against France, America and China,” said Thach.

Thach says protesters used the general’s image to show the Chinese his spirit was in the hearts of the Vietnamese people.

“I want our army to have his spirit in their hearts. I want to send a message that in Vietnam we have Mr Giap’s spirit in our army and we are not afraid of any enemy,” Yhach added.

Historian Quoc, says this respect extends to members of the government.

He says the Vietnamese government still fully respects him as he is an old revolutionary leader.

But how much influence he has over politics, Quoc says, depends on the development of a political system that is undergoing changes at the moment.

Saluting Coweta's Vietnam Vets: 3,500 Marines came ashore at Danang in March 1965

From Times-Herald.com: Saluting Coweta's Vietnam Vets: 3,500 Marines came ashore at Danang in March 1965
Editor's note: Today The Times-Herald continues our series on the Vietnam War and Cowetans who served overseas, leading up to the visit to Coweta County in October by a replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

During World War I, American media began saying the U.S. Marines were the "First to fight."

The phrase stuck and was true again on March 8, 1965, when 3,500 Marines came ashore at Danang as the first U.S. ground combat troops to arrive in Vietnam.

During eight years of war in Vietnam, Marines like Coweta's Larry Clarke never quit fighting.

Clarke was born and raised in Decatur, Ga. As soon as he graduated from Avondale High School in June 1966, he joined the Marines. Clarke knew where he was headed.

"The Vietnam War was on TV every night," Clarke said. "You could see it was pretty bad over there, but I felt like I wanted to join up."

After basic and advanced infantry training Clarke boarded a ship for a 30-day cruise to Vietnam.

In November 1966, he arrived at Dong Ha, where he joined G Company of the Second Battalion of the 3rd Marine Division.

Clarke was surprised by his first glimpse of Vietnam.

"It was beautiful," he said. "There were mountains and rubber plantations with great old French colonial houses and it was really a gorgeous place."

Clarke's job wasn't quite so glamorous.

When they weren't on ambush patrol, Clarke's unit ran search and destroy missions against Vietnamese villages. They always gave civilians a chance to clear out.

"We'd drop leaflets in the area before we got there so they'd know we were coming, then we'd go through a village and search for things the enemy had stored, like weapons or ammo or food or medical supplies," Clarke said. "We found lots of it and then we'd generally tear things up. That's what we did."

Clarke still remembers the first time he was shot at. His fire team was walking toward a village on a hill when an enemy sniper opened fire.

"It was numbing at first," Clarke said. "There was shooting everywhere and it takes a while to figure it out. Then we got it together and fought back and finally called in artillery and they tore the place up. It wasn't really close at all, but for my first time, it was close enough."

Things soon got worse. Clarke's unit was on patrol almost every day, heading to wherever the fighting broke out. On one mission they were told to find some enemy soldiers dug in on a hill who had ambushed and killed several Marines.

On the way up the hill, Clarke's group came across the bodies of their fallen comrades. About 20 yards farther up the hill Clarke saw a North Vietnamese soldier in a hole with his hat still on. The enemy soldier was motionless and almost covered with dirt. Between his legs Clarke saw the detonator of the satchel charge explosive that had killed the Marines down the trail.

"That was my first look at the enemy face-to-face," Clarke said. "He was dead and that was good."

Everywhere Clarke's unit went, they found enemy soldiers dug in and ready to fight.

"We went after them the old-fashioned way," Clarke said. "We charged."

Clarke carried an M-79 grenade launcher and a .45 pistol. The Marines had just been issued new M-16 rifles but didn't like them because the bolts jammed. Most Marines preferred to stick with their M-14 carbines.

Clarke used an M-16 during one firefight and it jammed. He was forced to throw it down and fight with a .45 pistol he took from a dead Marine.

"When your weapon jams in close quarters combat you're out of luck," he said.

Clarke's unit typically spent 30 days in the field before boarding the U.S.S. Tripoli, which dropped them off somewhere else to do it again. The fighting never stopped.

"Something bad happened almost every day over there," he said. "I saw all I ever want to see of it."

Clarke was discharged in December 1969 and returned to the Atlanta area to begin a 34-year career with Western Electric and AT&T. He moved to Coweta in 1998 and retired in 2005.

Clarke remained close to some of his fellow Marines after they returned from Vietnam, but it was a Marine that didn't come back that had the biggest impact on Clarke's postwar life.

During Memorial Day festivities in 1995 Clarke's thoughts went back to Bill Durham, who was killed on patrol in Thua Thien not long after visiting with Clarke. Clarke had never spoken to Durham's parents and wondered if they knew the circumstances of their son's death.

Clarke also had a photo of Durham taken in Vietnam shortly before Durham's death and thought Durham's family might want it.

Clarke only knew that Durham was from a small town in upstate New York and that his family ran a dairy farm. Clarke contacted the Marine Corps and asked for information about how to contact Durham's family. The Corps denied his request, citing privacy concerns.

Shortly afterward, Clarke heard a radio broadcast about a group associated with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial who were trying to collect information about all the solders whose names were inscribed on the memorial.

Clarke called the group and asked for help contacting Durham's family. Three weeks passed and Clarke's hopes faded.

Then one of the group's members called Clarke, said he had Durham's sister on the phone and asked if Clarke wanted to speak with her. They talked for more than an hour. Clarke made several copies of the Durham photo and sent them to relatives in New York.

Later, Durham's hometown newspaper began doing monthly features about local veterans who had died in the nation's various wars. The newspaper tributes were accompanied by public ceremonies and services honoring the fallen.

When Durham's turn came to be recognized, his family asked Clarke to attend the ceremony and share some memories of his friend and fellow Marine.

Clarke spoke at the ceremony and spent the night with members of Durham's family. "We talked a lot and reminisced about what we all did over there," Clarke said. "That seemed to settle them. It did me, too. It was one time I finally got some things off my chest."

Clarke still has questions about America's involvement in Vietnam, but none about the men he fought with.

"In retrospect I both question and don't question our motives," Clarke said. "But soldiers serve because they are told to and we did a good job. I support the Commander-in-Chief and I'm a patriot, but sometimes I have questions about the political motives of the government."

Coweta's Bob Kotz wasn't expecting to join the Marines the day he walked into the student center at Western Michigan University in early 1965. Kotz was born and raised in Chicago and was in his final semester of college with an aviation engineering degree in sight.

Kotz's degree and future job assured a draft deferment, but when he saw a Marine recruiter in the student center wearing his dress blues, Kotz had to stop.

"I had friends and relatives who had been Marines, and that uniform looked so good I had to check it out," he said.

Kotz said that after a weekend of heavy socializing and a sleepless night of studying, he didn't resemble a candidate for anything but a long nap. But he stopped to look over the Marine Corps materials. The recruiter invited Kotz to go upstairs and take the Marine Corps officer qualification test.

Kotz agreed, fully expecting to fall on his face. He was told to come back later that day for the results.

He was shocked to learn he had scored high enough to qualify for the Marine Corps officer candidate program. He immediately agreed to give up his draft deferment and enter the Corps after graduation.

"I felt like it was my war," Kotz said. "I called my mom and she said 'What?' But then she said she understood and said that 'If you have to go into combat I'm glad you chose the Marines.'"

In October 1965, Kotz headed for Marine Corps officer training at Quantico, Va. He was among 750 officer candidates. Only 500 finished the course.

By mid 1966 Kotz was a Marine Corps 2nd Lieutenant. Most of the freshly-minted officers went to Vietnam, but the Corps sent Kotz to the Army's missile school in Ft. Bliss, Tx., to study the radar-guided HAWK missile system. HAWK stands for Homing All the Way Killer.

After three months at missile school, Kotz was assigned to Cherry Point, N.C., and became a missile battery commander. He was soon sent to Camp Lejeune, N.C., to organize and command the Marine Corps' first Red Eye missile platoon.

The Red Eye is the forerunner of today's Stinger missile system. Kotz hand-picked his 44-man platoon and believed he got the best the Marines had to offer. He was ready to go to war, but the Corps wasn't ready to send him overseas.

Kotz volunteered for duty in Vietnam 12 times and was turned down time and again.

The Corps finally agreed to send him to Vietnam if he agreed to extend his enlistment from three years to four.

He did, and promptly went to Okinawa, where he joined the Air Control Squadron. He was flown to Vietnam a few days each month to become familiar with the country and the operational setup.

In early 1968, Kotz finally reported to Danang, Vietnam, as Operations Officer of the 1st LAAMB, Light Anti Air Missile Battalion.

The huge U.S. base at Danang was a prime enemy target and under constant attack. The base was surrounded by four hills, called Monkey Mountain, Hai Van Pass, Hill 327 and Hill Seven.

Each hilltop was home to a missile battery under Kotz' command. Each battery consisted of four missile launchers capable of firing three missiles each, plus a radar operation and control center.

Kotz' assignment also included providing ground defense for his missile batteries. He soon learned a few tricks about how to extend his life expectancy.

Kotz and three Marines were traveling by Jeep to Hai Van Pass one day before sunrise. When they reached a bridge an American guard stopped them. That was expected. But the guard called Kotz "sir," which was a surprise, since officers did not wear insignia.

Kotz asked the guard how he knew he was an officer. The guard said it was because Kotz sat so erect in the Jeep. He said an officer committing the same error had been shot by enemy troops not long before.

"I learned how to slouch in a hurry," Kotz said.

On another occasion Kotz's group was ambushed. Kotz said the firefight only lasted "about five minutes" but he fought between two sergeants firing automatic weapons. The noise was so bad Kotz lost his hearing completely for three days and suffered some permanent hearing loss.

"The doctors asked if I had bought any expensive stereo equipment while I was in Okinawa," Kotz said. "I told them I had and they said I would never hear the real high pitches."

Before dawn one day Kotz got an emergency call from Hill 327 saying the missile battery was under attack. He told a sergeant to get all the Marine infantrymen out of bed and into formation.

In minutes 100 Marines had been assembled. Many of them had been partying all night and others were dead tired from extended field operations, but when Kotz said he needed 44 volunteers to defend Hill 327, all 100 Marines volunteered.

"I told my sergeant to pick the 44 in the best shape and send them out," Kotz said. "They went up that hill and came across 20 enemy attackers. They killed six and no Americans were killed, but what I will always remember is the fact that when there was trouble, every last one of those Marines volunteered to go fight."

Kotz was also at Danang when Vietcong guerillas blew up the fuel dump. The huge blast -- more than a mile away -- sent out such a massive concussion wave that it knocked Kotz thirty feet through the air into the radar control center.

"A guy in there said 'did you do that on purpose?'" Kotz said. "We had a good laugh."

Kotz was discharged in 1969, promptly earned his MBA at Rutgers University and had a long career in the franchising industry. He has loved in Coweta County since 1979 and currently serves as an adjunct professor of management at West Georgia Technical College's LaGrange campus.

"I'll always be a Marine and I couldn't be prouder," Kotz said. "I believed in what we were doing to stop the advancement of Communism and I'm proud of the job we did."

Coweta's Mike Corbitt was so intent on joining the Marines he ran away from home to do it. Corbitt was born and raised in South Fulton County, Ga., and attended Campbell High. He was ready to join the Marines before he was ready to graduate.

Corbitt's mother didn't want her 17-year-old son joining up, but the Marines had no such qualms. Corbitt snuck out of his room at 5:30 one morning, jumped in a car driven by a Marine recruiter and was already signed up by the time his mother ran him down at the induction center in Atlanta.

"We were lined up and ready to leave and I saw my mama come through the door," Corbitt said. "She didn't like it but I told her if she stopped me I'd just run off again and go somewhere else, so she finally agreed to it. I joined the Marines because I wanted to, not because I had to. I wanted to go to Vietnam. I was afraid I was gonna miss it. After I got there it was a different story."

Corbitt's cousin taught him map reading and compass skills when he was a boy. Those skills put him ahead of most other recruits. After basic and advanced infantry training, Corbitt moved up in the ranks quickly.

"I had an advantage over the others," Corbitt said. "But I was still just a 140-pound kid. I had lots to learn."

Corbitt arrived in Vietnam in April 1969, and joined the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment at Quang Tri.

Corbitt's unit spent weeks at a time in the jungle, finding shelter where they could and living off the land, eating snake, dog or even monkey when Marine Corps rations ran out.

"The Marines kept us supplied with plenty of ammo but not always with food and water," Corbitt said. "Whenever a chopper lowered a net full of rations, we'd dump the cans in our packs, fill up 11 canteens with water and keep moving."

Corbitt said the South Vietnamese children loved to gather fish the Marines "caught" with hand grenades.

"We'd drop a grenade in a river and those dead fish would come up and the kids really got excited," Corbitt said "It was fun to watch."

The South Vietnamese even showed Corbitt how to eat grasshoppers cooked on a hot rock beside a fire. "It wasn't bad," Corbitt said. "Kind of like fried okra."

Corbitt's unit ran countless search and destroy missions against small villages. He said it didn't take long to figure out the villagers weren't usually the bad guys.

"We'd go through and find plenty of weapons or food or medical supplies and we knew they didn't have it for themselves," Corbitt said. "We knew that the villagers were told if they didn't store those supplies to help the Vietcong their families would be killed. What were they supposed to do?"

Corbitt's unit rarely went a day without encountering the enemy, usually NVA (North Vietnamese Army) regulars. Corbitt fought in countless small skirmishes and in major battles at Signal Hill, Dong Ha, Cam Lo, Mudder's Ridge and Hills 881 and 661.

Corbitt said you could tell when a major encounter was about to happen.

"Before they charged they sent people out that acted kind of like cheerleaders," Corbitt said. "They'd scream 'Kill the Americans' or 'Americans will die.'"

The charges always came before daylight, but were never a surprise. "They smoked a lot of dope before they attacked," Corbitt said. "Even before they hit the perimeter you could smell them coming."

Corbitt quickly advanced through the ranks and became a squad leader. He is still haunted by some of the vicious battles, including two brutal incidents of hand-to-hand combat, one in which he fought with a machete, another where his weapon was a military K-Bar knife.

Details of those fights are too graphic to describe here but Corbitt said that no matter the fight or the circumstances, his main concern was the welfare of his squad.

"You're supposed to be a tough guy," Corbitt said. "But sometimes it just scared the h--- out of me. But my main goal was always taking care of my men. I was a good squad leader and if one of my guys got hurt it almost killed me. I couldn't stand it."

On several occasions Corbitt served as platoon sergeant when the post was temporarily vacant. He left the Marines with the rank of sergeant.

During one mission Corbitt's squad was being flown to a hot landing zone aboard a CH-46 helicopter. When they arrived, fire was heavy and the incoming helicopter was a prime target. Corbitt heard a loud "thunk" then heard bells and whistles going off and realized the chopper had been hit and was going down.

The next thing he remembers is being on the ground and looking over at the helicopter, piled in a crumpled heap several feet away.

"I had been knocked out of the helicopter and fell 25 or 30 feet to the ground before it crashed," Corbitt said. "I couldn't get up. I felt like I was paralyzed. Then I finally got up and got my men together and we moved out."

Three days later, when the squad took a break, Corbitt sat down to rest and couldn't get back up. He was medevac'd to a military hospital at Yakusa Naval Base in Japan.

Doctors said Corbitt's spine had been injured when he fell from the helicopter. Corbitt was kept in traction for two weeks and then told surgery was necessary to repair the damage to his neck and upper spine. He refused, and three days later, was back with his unit.

Corbitt said after North Vietnam's leader Ho Chi Minh died in September 1969 the volume and intensity of enemy raids increased.

"Sometimes they acted like they were crazy," he said. "They'd come at you shooting in the air or in the ground or shooting at each other and shooting at you. It was impossible to tell what they were going to do. I was lucky to get out."

Corbitt was discharged in 1970 and returned to Atlanta but had trouble adjusting to civilian life and tried to rejoin the Marines. By then, the Corps was cutting back on personnel and refused Corbitt's request.

There was only one bright spot in his life. In high school, Corbitt had been in love with a girl three years younger. She was not allowed to date him while they were in school, but she corresponded with Corbitt while he was in Vietnam.

When Corbitt got home, Deborah Cantrell had graduated from high school and had a job. The two finally started dating. It worked out so well that this December, Mike and Deborah Corbitt will celebrate their 41st wedding anniversary.

"The second best thing I ever did in my life was join the Marine Corps," Corbitt said. "The best thing I did was marry my wife."

Corbitt went to technical college and had careers in the HVAC and automotive industries before opening Corbitt's Collision Center, in 1981. He moved to Coweta 16 years ago.

Corbitt was aware public sentiment was against the war while he served and said he was treated rudely by citizens in California and Georgia when he came home. But he said by then, it really didn't matter.

"We knew people were unhappy back here," Corbitt said. "But we didn't think about it while we were over there. We were too busy doing what we had to do to stay alive. I wouldn't give anything for being a Marine and I'm proud of what I did over there."

Wisconsin Vietnam War dead honored at Paper Wall in Green Bay

From the Green Bay Press Gazette: Wisconsin Vietnam War dead honored at Paper Wall in Green Bay
Michael Schumacher and Mike Weaver were equals — as children in Wisconsin, and as men in Vietnam.

They attended the same Janesville high school, served in the U.S. Army in 1968 and 1969, and returned from Southeast Asia at virtually the same time. Weaver walked off the airplane. Schumacher was carried out in a coffin.
"He and I came home together," said Weaver, who now lives in Kaukauna. "I was the Army escort at his funeral. I was the one who handed the flag to his mother."

More than 40 years after Schumacher's death in February 1969, the lives of former schoolmates intersected again when Weaver visited The Paper Wall, a memorial to the 1,244 Wisconsin residents killed in Vietnam. The memorial will remain on display this week on the second floor of the Brown County Central Library, 515 Pine St., in downtown Green Bay, where it has been throughout the summer.

The wall — inspired in part by the granite memorial that honors the Vietnam War dead in Washington — is a collection of newspaper articles about the Wisconsinites who gave their lives during the conflict. Librarians throughout the state collaborated to find and duplicate newspaper articles about virtually every resident who made the ultimate sacrifice. The wall first was displayed in 2010 during the LZ Lambeau homecoming event for Vietnam veterans.

The stories, organized by the county in which each soldier lived, are displayed on panels of the wall. Brown County lost 47 residents in Vietnam. Janesville lost 18. Larger communities, such as Milwaukee County, lost several times that number.
Almost every soldier is represented. And the headlines can be heart-breaking: "Dies in Vietnam on his birthday." "Parents given medals earned by soldier son."

Mary Jane Herber, local history and genealogy librarian for Brown County, said she became involved with the project to provide soldiers, their loved ones and their communities a more complete picture of the sacrifice.

"We wanted to show the potential, the loss of potential, that our communities suffered," she said. "We felt we could do something that was more complete."
For Weaver, who served as an Army medic and continues to honor fallen soldiers by volunteering with an organization called Patriot Guard Riders, the Paper Wall keeps the memories of his fellow servicemen and women alive.

"It's an affirmation of who they were," Weaver said, "and that they have not been forgotten."

Vietnam War babies: Grown up and low on luck

From Tucson Sentinel: Vietnam War babies: Grown up and low on luck
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Vo Van Dang is not Vietnamese.

That, at least, is his contention. Though he has never left Vietnam, speaks no English and lives in a Ho Chi Minh City slum house, where 20 people share an open-air toilet, Dang insists he is American through and through.

“I don’t belong here,” said Dang, born in 1971 during a brief love affair between a nightclub prostitute and a dark-skinned American GI. “I belong in America.”

If only he can prove it.

Dang is among tens of thousands of children fathered in Vietnam by U.S. troops during the 1965-1973 war. Most were born to absent fathers and mothers who risked Viet Cong wrath by working as housekeepers, vendors or bar girls around U.S. bases.

There was once great hope for men and women like Dang: an obscure U.S. visa for Vietnamese nationals fathered by GIs. But the allowance for “Vietnam AmerAsians,” a clunky State Department term for mixed-race children of the war, appears to be fizzling at last.

According to State Department data provided to GlobalPost, the number of approved AmerAsian visas has dwindled to an average of 240 per year in the last decade. Last year, the figure slipped to a new low: 23 admissions.

“My life has been miserable,” said Dang, who spent part of his childhood in a communist labor camp. “Life will still be hard after I move. But I have an American family and we belong in the states.”

The AmerAsian visa was created in 1987, when Congress relented to the outcry over urchins with American faces abandoned in the Vietnamese slums. No one knows exactly how many AmerAsians were born in Vietnam, but the U.S. has vetted and resettled nearly 30,000 children of U.S. troops and employees along with nearly 80,000 Vietnamese relatives.

Still, an estimated 1,000-plus AmerAsians remain in Vietnam. Most live in cramped tenements. They are often poorer than the average Vietnamese, their poverty entrenched by discrimination, their faces bearing the freckles and pastel eyes of men from the world’s most powerful nation yet none of the privileges.

The AmerAsian visa, however, is not dwindling for lack of applicants. Charities devoted to assisting the adult children of GIs insist there is a hundreds-deep backlog of applications. But U.S. consular officers have been hardened by scam artists who see an illiterate half-American as their family’s ticket to America.

Children of the enemy
Much has changed since Ho Chi Minh’s forces captured Saigon in 1975 and renamed it after their communist revolutionary hero. Having ditched purist Marxism in the 1980s, Vietnam’s communist rulers now embrace China-style capitalism. Ho Chi Minh City has the buzz of a nation on the make and a taste for iPhones and KFC.

But while the world has moved beyond the war, AmerAsians remain its bitter relic. The childhood torment exacted on half-American kids still defines them. Most remember being thrashed with sticks by kids or sneered at by adult neighbors who called them “children of the enemy.”

All can recall a signature insult: “Americans with 12 assholes.” The slur rhymes in Vietnamese.

“They loved to chant that at us,” said Nguyen Thi Phan, born in 1968 to a base security officer and the woman who washed his clothes. “The kids would say, ‘Your mom’s a whore. Your dad’s black. Why don’t you get the hell out of Vietnam?” Children of black GIs were doubly mistreated, she said.

“Even now, people look at me and say I’m dirty. It’s hard to get a job because they don’t want a dirty-looking person cleaning houses or dishes,” she said. “They say it’s bad for business.”

Like many AmerAsians, Phan insists she is not Vietnamese. In fact, each of the six Vietnamese children of former U.S. troops interviewed by GlobalPost described themselves as either American or AmerAsian. All bristled at being labelled Vietnamese.

“All my life, everyone told me I wasn’t Vietnamese. So fine,” Phan said. “I’m not.”

Doomed love
To the Vietnamese, AmerAsians are assumed to be the outcome of a paid fling between imperialist grunts and loose, traitorous women.

But according to AmerAsian mothers, many children were born from passionate couplings. The father of Cao Thi My Kieu was so smitten with her mom, a bar girl, that he swept her into a rented apartment and promised she’d never need to sell her body again.

“She was really pretty during the war,” said Kieu, born in 1967 outside a former U.S. air base in coastal Nha Trang. “And he was very kind. He took in her three kids from a previous guy. Americans are strange in that way. They will actually raise someone else’s kid.”

Such domestic arrangements were common, according to Robert McKelvey, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran turned psychiatrist who has studied AmerAsian orphans. “Many fell in love,” he wrote in a 1998 paper, “and lived as de facto spouses for months or years.”

These love affairs were doomed. By 1973, almost all U.S. troops had been deployed home.

And by 1975, South Vietnam had fallen and the Viet Cong emerged from the shadows.

Vietnamese who had fought, colluded or slept with the enemy braced for forced labor or death. Children like Dang, along with their mothers, were sent to communist labor camps to live off a meager vegetable plot and what jungle mice they could capture.

Another AmerAsian interviewed by GlobalPost claimed her pregnant mother escaped punishment by fleeing to the jungle, where she was born in the wild.

Hoarding photos or love letters from an American mate was a fatal liability. “My mom had all these details about my father,” Kieu said. “His U.S. address, letters, everything. She wanted to bury it in a hole before the Viet Cong showed up. My auntie said, ‘Are you stupid? If they find it, you’re dead.’”

So, like many other paranoid mothers of half-American babies, she burned the letters, Kieu said. The evidence she would later need to emigrate turned to cinders in the wind.

“My father’s name is James. James Alexander,” said Kieu, sitting on the floor of her $40-per-month rented shanty. Her husband, also AmerAsian, and three kids live in a single closet-sized room.

“My mom told me, ‘When you finally make it to America, look for a man with a birthmark on his face,’” said Kieu, her eyes running hot with tears. She paused to fumble through a closet and produced a faded U.S. consular rejection letter. In blue ink, a bureaucrat had written: “YOU HAVE FAILED TO ESTABLISH YOU ARE THE CHILD OF A U.S. CITIZEN.”

Though Kieu cannot read the words, she knows the meaning very well. “I am so disappointed in my life,” she said. “All I can do is try to make life bearable for my kids.”

Easy prey
In the late 1980s, Vietnamese opportunists realized the value of a good sob story and a half-American face.

The 1987 Congressional “Homecoming Act” led the U.S. to fund a nearly $500,000 Ho Chi Minh City residential center for AmerAsians, many of them homeless. Consular officers, flying in from U.S. ally Thailand, began offering them U.S. visas by the tens of thousands. Mixed-race features alone could secure free resettlement to the States.

The outcome was inevitable. Barefoot and broke, AmerAsians were easy prey for traffickers. Many kids were paid or coerced to apply with fake relatives, rich Vietnamese who wanted a new life in the U.S. In return, the con rings promised connections inside the consulate that would guarantee approval.

But by the mid-1990s, consular officers were tired of getting duped. They started investigating applicants closely and demanding harder evidence.

“My traffickers put me with a fake husband but let me list my real daughter,” said Phan Anh Nhung, 39, the daughter of a GI and a prostitute. “The consular officers figured it out. They asked my daughter, ‘Who’s your dad?’ She accidentally said her real father’s name instead of the fake guy.”

Another AmerAsian applicant, now a street noodle vendor, confessed that a trafficking syndicate offered her $1,000 to claim 12 bogus relatives.

“It didn’t work,” she said. “Neighbors ratted us out.”

Dashed hopes
Though the flow of AmerAsian visas is down to a trickle, it technically lives on. Only an act of Congress could end the program for good, said Rebecca Dodds with the Bureau of Consular Affairs in Washington D.C.

“With time, immigration through the program is decreasing, but we are not aware of any current legislation to discontinue the program,” Dodds said. Despite rumors to the contrary, she said, new applicants are still accepted.

Consular officers have no ironclad criteria expected of applicants. But these days, they typically request parents’ residential certificates or birth records. Many of these documents were never issued in wartime Vietnam or destroyed after reunification.

Most AmerAsians with proof that solid have long since emigrated to the U.S. The remaining AmerAsians’ best hope is finding their actual father via the internet and persuading him to compare DNA samples. Illiterate day laborers, however, are unlikely to access Google, punch in hazy details and sift through the results.

That chore is instead assumed by an unlikely AmerAsian ally: a working-class Danish furniture painter named Brian Hjort. Though lacking any personal connection to America’s war in Vietnam, he is obsessed with tracking down veterans who left kids behind.

Hjort, 40, has stayed in touch with AmerAsians since the early 1990s, when he stumbled upon war orphans while backpacking in Ho Chi Minh City. “Even though they had nothing, they took me in. I knew I had to help them out,” he said. Hjort went on to devote his spare time and money to connecting AmerAsians with their fathers. He has completed dozens of “closed cases,” he said.

“I’m just Googling and Facebooking guys’ names, units, veterans’ groups, uploading photos,” said Hjort, who maintains a database of AmerAsians’ photos and personal details at his website, FatherFounded.org. “Working on just one case leaves you brain dead. You’re trying to go 40 years back in time.”

Cases often go cold, he said, when he runs out of cash for DNA tests or father-finding expeditions in the United States. “You don’t have to be the Red Cross to help,” he said. “But I’m damn poor myself. I need help with this.”

Even when Hjort is lucky enough to locate a father online, men and their families are not always receptive to a European stranger with revelations about offspring in a far-off land.

“They can be pretty rude. Two times, guys tried to put me in court for harassment,” Hjort said. “I’m like, come on, do you want to do a DNA test? Who’s going to draw the gun first?”

Those who accept the truth often pay a heavy price.

Army veteran James Copeland, 65, kept his half-Vietnamese daughter’s existence secret until this year. “It had been a long and worrisome 40 years,” said Copeland, who lives in northern Mississippi.

When his 14-month deployment ended in 1970, he was forced to leave behind a pregnant Vietnamese girlfriend who worked as a housekeeper at Bien Hoa Air Base. “We just lost contact. The people I knew that were left over there, they rolled out and I had no way to get in touch.”

Through Hjort, he found his daughter living in Pennsylvania. With her mother, the housekeeper, she had relocated to the States after securing an AmerAsian visa in the 1990s.

“I felt like a big weight was taken off of me,” he said. His wife, however, felt the exact opposite sensation.

“It’s a bad situation at home. I still don’t know what the outcome will be with my wife and children,” said Copeland, his voice trembling. “All these years, I had tried to block out a segment of my life. But you can’t do that.”

“In a combat zone, you adjust to your surroundings or you don’t make it. I think we all made mistakes,” he said. “I have friends who think they might have left a child there too. But they don’t want to search. They don’t want to know. They just want to forget.”

Over the years, Hjort said, the AmerAsian cause has lost its allure.

AmerAsians are no longer the doe-eyed, pitiful kids that provoked Connecticut House Representative Stewart McKinney to label them America’s “national embarrassment” in the 1980s.

They are older, broken down and sometimes sick. So are may of the former GIs. “The U.S. did just enough to say, ‘Hey, we did something’ and left the others behind,” Hjort said. “Now they’ve got wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no money. Almost no one is interested.”

Almost no one except AmerAsians like Dang, who fears his father is dead and has pursued DNA links with far-flung relatives in America.

“My mom tells me she stopped dad from grabbing me as a baby and putting me on a plane before he deployed home,” Dang said. “I almost made it out then. I will never stop trying.”

Author Susan Fromberg Schaeffer dead at 71

From the Chicago Tribune (Aug 28): Author Susan Fromberg Schaeffer dead at 71
She wrote with beauty about some of the ugliest things in the world: war, the Holocaust, suicide, heartbreak and despair.

Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, author of 14 novels including "Buffalo Afternoon" (1989), the definitive novel about the Vietnam War and its long and complex echo throughout American life, died Friday. She lived with her husband, Neil Schaeffer, in Hyde Park and had been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago.

She suffered a stroke 2 1/2 years ago, her husband said, forcing her retirement from the university, and had never recovered her speech or mobility. A second stroke last week was the cause of death, he said. She was 71.

"All of her work is elegiac. It is about loss, about how life is difficult and eventually, everything is taken from you," Neil Schaeffer said. "No two books were the same, but they all had the same depth of feeling in them."

The author once said she had been a "radical pessimist" -- until she spent several years talking to Vietnam veterans as part of her research for writing "Buffalo Afternoon." That experience, she said, turned her into "a somewhat hesitant, if not wobbly, optimist."

Fromberg Schaeffer was born in Brooklyn but always claimed that her life truly began at the University of Chicago. She earned an undergraduate degree there in 1961, a master's degree in 1963 and doctoral degree in 1966. Her first teaching jobs, undertaken while she was still in graduate school, were at Chicago's Wright Junior College -- now Wilbur Wright College -- and theIllinois Institute of Technology.

In 1967 she moved back to her hometown to teach at Brooklyn College, where she met her husband, an English Department colleague. Neil Schaeffer is the author of “The Marquis de Sade: A Life” (1999). The couple have two adult children.

At Brooklyn College, Fromberg Schaeffer was a mentor to an African-American poet named Sapphire, encouraging her to begin her first novel. That novel became the acclaimed “Push” (1996).

In 2002, Fromberg Schaeffer returned to Chicago, where she served as a visiting professor in the English and creative writing departments at the University of Chicago.

Along with her novels, which include “The Madness of a Seduced Woman” (1984) and “Poison” (2006), she published six volumes of poetry, two children's books and many book reviews and critical essays.

She never minded pushing boundaries in her work, her husband said, a trait that first manifested itself in grad school at the U. of C.

“She wrote the very first dissertation on (Vladimir) Nabokov. She had to fight to do it, because he was still alive.”

Among more traditional scholars, a living author's reputation has not yet passed the test of time to be deemed great.

Fromberg Schaeffer faced similar resistance when she undertook a novel about the Vietnam War that would become “Buffalo Afternoon.” Some said that a writer who had not seen combat — and who was female, to boot — had no business trying to depict war.

As Fromberg Schaeffer wrote in an essay describing the novel's gestation, “Everyone believed it could not be done by a woman — as if men would somehow be alien beings to a member of the opposite sex.”

She proved them wrong with a superb novel that follows Pete Bravado, a young man from an Italian immigrant family who serves in Vietnam and then must come to terms with what he saw and felt. The book is lyrical but also searingly, viscerally authentic. In his 1989 review, Nicholas Proffitt wrote in The New York Times, “She got it and she got it right, and somehow managed to squeeze the entire Vietnam experience into one epic narrative.”

Fromberg Schaeffer spent years researching the novel, talking to veterans for hundreds of hours.

“She was an excellent listener,” Neil Schaeffer said, “so they told her what was true.”

Her research for other novels was equally scrupulous and painstaking. She would immerse herself in other lives, other historical periods — “Anya” (1974) was about a Holocaust victim from Poland, and “The Snow Fox” (2004) explored the lives of lovers in medieval Japan — and then, once the information and emotion had been digested, would write in a long frantic dash, her husband recalled.

“I loved watching her process of creativity,” he said. “She would spend years on a book, distilling it, and when she sat down to write, she said it was like watching a movie. It was all there. It came out fully formed.”

After relocating to Chicago, he said, they sold their Brooklyn home but kept a Vermont farmhouse as a getaway. “She wrote many books there,” he said.

But Chicago was the city that fired her imagination, first and last.

Her first published novel, “Falling” (1973), was about a suicidal woman at a fictional Chicago college.

The author was not sentimental about her profession, once writing in an essay, “Probably writers should forget what it was like to write the last novel, and the one before that, and the one before that, or we should all be plumbers. It must be good to be a plumber. Everyone is happy to see you, and no one reviews your work.”

The opening of “Buffalo Afternoon” could serve as a summary of Fromberg Schaeffer's career, one devoted to capturing the truth about emotional experiences, one that never flinched from an engagement with some of the darker moments in human history: “There is so much I would like to tell you …”

Tell us she did, and in prose that was passionate and unforgettable.

Legacy enters digital era with MP3 badge

From the Herald Sun: Legacy enters digital era with MP3 badge
VICKIE Barnes was just nine-years-old when her dad was killed in 1969 while fighting in the Vietnam War.

One of seven siblings who benefited from services provided by Legacy, she now looks after other children and widows of deceased war veterans.

"Legacy changed our lives. When dad was killed, a lot of people wanted to help," she said in Sydney today.

Her mother was too proud to accept some of the help, but she allowed Legacy to arrange school holidays for her children.

One of the trips involved flying to Griffith, in south-western NSW, Vickie recalls.

"It was a farm stay. I stayed with a beautiful family who had one daughter and four sons. And now, forty years later, they are still in my life," she said.

As part of an attempt by Legacy to keep up with digital times, an MP3 "button badge" will be offered to raise money during Legacy week in 2011.

At $15 each, the badge is the first of its kind in Australia, and features five songs by Australian artists.

Legacy Australia chairman Charles Wright conceded some older veterans wouldn't even know what an MP3 was, but knew the concept would be a winner among other groups.

"Once we told some of our younger staff and widows that we were bringing this type of concept on board they said 'Wow, this is fantastic! Can you get me one?'" he said.

A limited edition of 5000 of the badges will be sold in 2011.

Vickie was given the honour of choosing one of the songs, a remake of Red Gums' 1983 track, I was Only Nineteen, by hip-hop band The Herd.

"It reminds me of my father," she said.

Others include tracks by Jimmy Barnes (no relation to Vickie), Powderfinger, Boy & Bear and Art v's Science.

More than 50,000 Australian soldiers have served in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past decade, just 5000 less than the number who served in the Vietnam War, Mr Wright said.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars have created 29 widows and 2000 returned soldiers were left with injuries, most of which are psychological.

"Most have post traumatic stress syndrome," Mr Wright said.

Legacy week begins on August 29.