thedrifter
02-14-05, 08:43 AM
A mew memory
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February 13, 2005
ROSELEE PAPANDREA
JACKSONVILLE DAILY NEWS STAFF
When Onslow County teacher Ed Catrett returned to Vietnam late last year, the former Marine found a way of life he never knew and a village that transported him and his son back in time
While he never dwells on it much, Ed Catrett doesn't hold a grudge against the man who shot him in the head almost 40 years ago.
Ed knew the Viet Cong soldier who fired from the grass hut in the small village of Tong Lic on March 6, 1967, was a young man fighting for a cause. At the time, Ed was a Marine machine gunner assigned to India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines also fighting in the Vietnam War.
"We always recognized they were soldiers just like we were soldiers," Ed said. "They had a mission just like we had a mission. They had brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles just like we did."
It's part of the reason why he made sure to distance himself from the people he fought against in Vietnam.
"It's really, really difficult killing people," he said. "In your mind, you always change their names."
Now at age 57 and with a lot of life experience behind him, Ed, who is a seventh-grade social studies and science teacher at Hunters Creek Middle School and a member of the Onslow County Hospital Authority, knows the man who pulled the trigger and nearly took his life was just doing a job.
"Probably if the situation had been different, we may have sat down and got to be friends," he said.
Ed headed to Vietnam for a two-week trip in November with his 23-year-old son, Aaron Catrett. Aaron received a $5,500 Francis L. Phillips Travel Scholarship from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to fund his trip in order to see and learn about the places where his father spent time during the war. For Aaron it was a four-month journey - two weeks of which he spent with his father at his side.
Aaron wanted to understand all that his father experienced. He wanted to be there for him if the memories were too difficult to handle alone. He now has to document his trip and all that he learned to present to the scholarship committee.
"The trip without a doubt filled gaps and not just with practical information like dates, times and where he was but with inferred information like how he must have felt as a kid in the war; how being there must have affected him; and even about his relationship with his family back home," Aaron said.
A different view
The two found out they could travel together well. In the first part of the trip, Aaron felt protective of his father. Ed, who met his son at the airport wearing a beige cap with the American Flag on front, wasn't afraid to make it known he was a former Marine who fought in the Vietnam War.
"I was worried and defensive," Aaron said. "He was wearing the American flag hat. He was Marine who fought in the war, and I was slightly worried that someone might say something rude."
They both discovered that people were impressed when they learned he was a former Marine and welcomed his observations during tours.
The whole trip was dramatically different from what Ed had experienced during his time in Vietnam in the 1960s.
"The first time I spent most of my time out in the jungle," Ed said. "I didn't get to meet the people or see the cities."
There were a few moments that were tough, but Ed doesn't think he ever experienced a true flashback of his time in battle. He thought of it more as a feeling of deja vu, which wasn't always comfortable.
When they got ready to tour the tunnels in Chu Chi, which were intricately built underground by the Viet Cong in an effort to harass occupying forces, the hair on Ed's neck stood on end. He couldn't go in.
"It was a little tough in the tunnels," he said. "It was something I couldn't handle. It was too much of a reminder of what I had been through before."
The one place Ed wanted to take his son was to the village where he was shot. He wanted to show him the grass hut and the rice paddy - the scenery that was once so familiar to him.
Aaron also wanted to find Tong Lic - a 12-hut, cattle-farming village - but he doubted it still existed as his father remembered it.
Surprise twist
A few days before the end of the trip, they hired a car and an interpreter and set out to find the village. The interpreter initially took them to an old bunker because he didn't completely understand where they wanted to go.
After further explanation and a lot of twists and turns off the main road, Ed saw the rice paddy and the familiar grass hut.
"I remembered the hut as soon as I saw the back of it," he said.
He also learned later after talking at length to the interpreter that the man who shot him - at the time just a 16-year-old Viet Cong solider - still lived in the hut.
The man was working in the fields during their visit, but Ed and Aaron met the soldier's wife. The woman, whose name is Mtah, was 8-years-old at the time of the shooting. Her family lived in the hut where the Viet Cong would hide from the U.S. troops at night.
But it was daytime when American forces caught the Viet Cong on March 6, 1967. The firing started and Ed's helmet was hit. The bullet exploded and five pieces of shrapnel lodged into his head. He was sent to Dong Ha for medical treatment.
"For a time I thought that I was dead and they had originally listed me as killed in action," Ed said. "If it wasn't for a friend from graves registration who found me in (Delta Medical), word would have gone home."
Ed was supposed to be laid up for 12 weeks. He was back in battle 18 days later.
"That day probably defined the rest of my life," he said. "When you have a bullet almost take your life, it gives you a whole new perspective on life. Certain things just don't matter any more. Certain things truly are important and the rest is filler."
Ed lost his fear of death that day. He was only 19.
"I think every day for the rest of my life from that day forward was a great day," said Ed who recalled that he had been awake for two days prior to that battle. "I knew that no matter how bad it got, it was better than that day."
Aaron still has his doubts about that. He believes the Vietnam War impacted his father in profound ways - in ways that even Ed might not fully realize.
"He never shares his weaknesses with others, not even his family," Aaron said. "He has them. He just never learned to express them. … In Vietnam, he really opened up after a few days about the truths of war that you don't read about or you don't see in movies - the uneventful things there that have huge impacts on the rest of your life."
Once the interpreter explained to Mtah who the Catretts were, they were invited the one-room hut. There was no stove, no phone, no electricity and no running water. She made them green tea and gave peanuts, popcorn and little cookies - luxuries in short supply in a 12-hut village in Vietnam. They spent time with her family, exchanged photographs and tidbits about their cultures.
"It was touching and so nice," Aaron said. "I was so glad that I got to share that part with Dad."
Different circumstances
For Ed, the day in Tong Lic was the most fantastic part of the trip. He still doesn't know why it was so important to go back to that place where life changed forever.
There were new rubber trees and an abundance of green tea, but most of the landscape remained the same. It was essentially as Ed left it.
He never got the opportunity to see the man who shot him, but he discovered through the man's family that he had been right all these years: If the situation had been different, they might have sat down together. They might have been friends.
"I just wanted to find that village. I liked being able to meet those people," he said, still unsure whether the experience initiated some healing to the part of his life he has pushed away for nearly 40 years.
He just knows it felt good to experience Tong Lic under different circumstances.
"It was neat to meet people who were actually alive that day and living in the village," he said.
Ed's descriptions as they were touring places helped Aaron imagine what it had been like when his father was in Vietnam the first time. Aaron believes both experiences in Vietnam changed Ed and ultimately the relationship that they share as father and son.
"I practically had to become a body language expert to even know what my dad thought when I was growing up," Aaron said. "When he was in Vietnam, he let so much of that go. I don't even think he realized he was doing it but by admitting to me he was scared at this spot and then really going into detail about the memories flooding his mind about what he smelled, what he remembers thinking - reliving those memories in a way - at least I think, liberated him and made him realize he didn't have to continue sitting in a cold, wet jungle hiding his emotions to get the job done or not let anyone see he was petrified."
Ellie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 13, 2005
ROSELEE PAPANDREA
JACKSONVILLE DAILY NEWS STAFF
When Onslow County teacher Ed Catrett returned to Vietnam late last year, the former Marine found a way of life he never knew and a village that transported him and his son back in time
While he never dwells on it much, Ed Catrett doesn't hold a grudge against the man who shot him in the head almost 40 years ago.
Ed knew the Viet Cong soldier who fired from the grass hut in the small village of Tong Lic on March 6, 1967, was a young man fighting for a cause. At the time, Ed was a Marine machine gunner assigned to India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines also fighting in the Vietnam War.
"We always recognized they were soldiers just like we were soldiers," Ed said. "They had a mission just like we had a mission. They had brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles just like we did."
It's part of the reason why he made sure to distance himself from the people he fought against in Vietnam.
"It's really, really difficult killing people," he said. "In your mind, you always change their names."
Now at age 57 and with a lot of life experience behind him, Ed, who is a seventh-grade social studies and science teacher at Hunters Creek Middle School and a member of the Onslow County Hospital Authority, knows the man who pulled the trigger and nearly took his life was just doing a job.
"Probably if the situation had been different, we may have sat down and got to be friends," he said.
Ed headed to Vietnam for a two-week trip in November with his 23-year-old son, Aaron Catrett. Aaron received a $5,500 Francis L. Phillips Travel Scholarship from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to fund his trip in order to see and learn about the places where his father spent time during the war. For Aaron it was a four-month journey - two weeks of which he spent with his father at his side.
Aaron wanted to understand all that his father experienced. He wanted to be there for him if the memories were too difficult to handle alone. He now has to document his trip and all that he learned to present to the scholarship committee.
"The trip without a doubt filled gaps and not just with practical information like dates, times and where he was but with inferred information like how he must have felt as a kid in the war; how being there must have affected him; and even about his relationship with his family back home," Aaron said.
A different view
The two found out they could travel together well. In the first part of the trip, Aaron felt protective of his father. Ed, who met his son at the airport wearing a beige cap with the American Flag on front, wasn't afraid to make it known he was a former Marine who fought in the Vietnam War.
"I was worried and defensive," Aaron said. "He was wearing the American flag hat. He was Marine who fought in the war, and I was slightly worried that someone might say something rude."
They both discovered that people were impressed when they learned he was a former Marine and welcomed his observations during tours.
The whole trip was dramatically different from what Ed had experienced during his time in Vietnam in the 1960s.
"The first time I spent most of my time out in the jungle," Ed said. "I didn't get to meet the people or see the cities."
There were a few moments that were tough, but Ed doesn't think he ever experienced a true flashback of his time in battle. He thought of it more as a feeling of deja vu, which wasn't always comfortable.
When they got ready to tour the tunnels in Chu Chi, which were intricately built underground by the Viet Cong in an effort to harass occupying forces, the hair on Ed's neck stood on end. He couldn't go in.
"It was a little tough in the tunnels," he said. "It was something I couldn't handle. It was too much of a reminder of what I had been through before."
The one place Ed wanted to take his son was to the village where he was shot. He wanted to show him the grass hut and the rice paddy - the scenery that was once so familiar to him.
Aaron also wanted to find Tong Lic - a 12-hut, cattle-farming village - but he doubted it still existed as his father remembered it.
Surprise twist
A few days before the end of the trip, they hired a car and an interpreter and set out to find the village. The interpreter initially took them to an old bunker because he didn't completely understand where they wanted to go.
After further explanation and a lot of twists and turns off the main road, Ed saw the rice paddy and the familiar grass hut.
"I remembered the hut as soon as I saw the back of it," he said.
He also learned later after talking at length to the interpreter that the man who shot him - at the time just a 16-year-old Viet Cong solider - still lived in the hut.
The man was working in the fields during their visit, but Ed and Aaron met the soldier's wife. The woman, whose name is Mtah, was 8-years-old at the time of the shooting. Her family lived in the hut where the Viet Cong would hide from the U.S. troops at night.
But it was daytime when American forces caught the Viet Cong on March 6, 1967. The firing started and Ed's helmet was hit. The bullet exploded and five pieces of shrapnel lodged into his head. He was sent to Dong Ha for medical treatment.
"For a time I thought that I was dead and they had originally listed me as killed in action," Ed said. "If it wasn't for a friend from graves registration who found me in (Delta Medical), word would have gone home."
Ed was supposed to be laid up for 12 weeks. He was back in battle 18 days later.
"That day probably defined the rest of my life," he said. "When you have a bullet almost take your life, it gives you a whole new perspective on life. Certain things just don't matter any more. Certain things truly are important and the rest is filler."
Ed lost his fear of death that day. He was only 19.
"I think every day for the rest of my life from that day forward was a great day," said Ed who recalled that he had been awake for two days prior to that battle. "I knew that no matter how bad it got, it was better than that day."
Aaron still has his doubts about that. He believes the Vietnam War impacted his father in profound ways - in ways that even Ed might not fully realize.
"He never shares his weaknesses with others, not even his family," Aaron said. "He has them. He just never learned to express them. … In Vietnam, he really opened up after a few days about the truths of war that you don't read about or you don't see in movies - the uneventful things there that have huge impacts on the rest of your life."
Once the interpreter explained to Mtah who the Catretts were, they were invited the one-room hut. There was no stove, no phone, no electricity and no running water. She made them green tea and gave peanuts, popcorn and little cookies - luxuries in short supply in a 12-hut village in Vietnam. They spent time with her family, exchanged photographs and tidbits about their cultures.
"It was touching and so nice," Aaron said. "I was so glad that I got to share that part with Dad."
Different circumstances
For Ed, the day in Tong Lic was the most fantastic part of the trip. He still doesn't know why it was so important to go back to that place where life changed forever.
There were new rubber trees and an abundance of green tea, but most of the landscape remained the same. It was essentially as Ed left it.
He never got the opportunity to see the man who shot him, but he discovered through the man's family that he had been right all these years: If the situation had been different, they might have sat down together. They might have been friends.
"I just wanted to find that village. I liked being able to meet those people," he said, still unsure whether the experience initiated some healing to the part of his life he has pushed away for nearly 40 years.
He just knows it felt good to experience Tong Lic under different circumstances.
"It was neat to meet people who were actually alive that day and living in the village," he said.
Ed's descriptions as they were touring places helped Aaron imagine what it had been like when his father was in Vietnam the first time. Aaron believes both experiences in Vietnam changed Ed and ultimately the relationship that they share as father and son.
"I practically had to become a body language expert to even know what my dad thought when I was growing up," Aaron said. "When he was in Vietnam, he let so much of that go. I don't even think he realized he was doing it but by admitting to me he was scared at this spot and then really going into detail about the memories flooding his mind about what he smelled, what he remembers thinking - reliving those memories in a way - at least I think, liberated him and made him realize he didn't have to continue sitting in a cold, wet jungle hiding his emotions to get the job done or not let anyone see he was petrified."
Ellie