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thedrifter
05-02-05, 10:13 AM
Sent to me by Mark aka The Fontman


A war's festering wounds

Vietnam vets, others want government to pursue more research on effects of Agent Orange

By RICK MERCIER
The Free Lance-Star


Date published: 5/2/2005


AM VU, Vietnam--These days, a Westerner is simply a minor curiosity in this small town in the Mekong Delta, about 30 miles south of Ho Chi Minh City.

But when Sam Thompson was here as a young man in 1969 and '70, he was widely viewed as the enemy.

Thompson, 56, of Catalpa in Culpeper County was drafted into the Army and served in this area as a forward observer for an artillery battalion during what people here call the American War.

He said he was just another scared kid who suddenly found himself trying to survive amid the swamps, rice paddies and jungles of southern Vietnam.

"I just did my job as best I could and came home. That was my goal--to get home to my family," he said.

One thing the specialist couldn't avoid, however, was being exposed to the dioxin-laden defoliant Agent Orange, which was sprayed during the war to eliminate enemy cover and food supplies.

Thompson believes every soldier who was in Vietnam for more than about a month must have been exposed to Agent Orange because "it was in everything--the air, the ground, the food, the water."

"You could always tell where the jungle had been sprayed because it was more or less eaten up," he said, likening the ecological destruction to a large-scale version of what happens when homeowners apply a commercially available herbicide such as Monsanto's Roundup.

The 56-year-old Thompson, who heads Piedmont Area Chapter 752 of Vietnam Veterans of America, suffers type 2 diabetes and a skin disorder called chloracne--health problems that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes as being associated with Agent Orange.

While Thompson appears to represent a clear-cut example of a veteran affected by defoliant exposure, the case of Marvin White and his father points to the questions that remain about the long-term and intergenerational effects of wartime herbicide spraying in Vietnam.

White's father, Eddie, a native of Birmingham, Ala., served in Vietnam with the Marines in 1967 and '68.

In August 1998, the retired master sergeant was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He died in December of that year at the age of 57.

The VA does not consider stomach cancer to be related to herbicide exposure during the war, although some research has suggested a link.

Marvin White, born in 1969, the year after his father's return from Vietnam, has severely malformed limbs and gets around in a wheelchair. But the VA doesn't believe his disability is related to herbicides, even though in Vietnam many people with similarly malformed limbs are considered Agent Orange victims.

White, a Stafford County resident, has never seen himself as a victim of any sort and has not spent much time wondering whether his condition is related to Agent Orange. His family--especially his father--taught him not to dwell on his disability.

It was just the "Marine attitude," he said. "You do what you have to do to get things done."

White said his family never talked much about his father's service in Vietnam, so he can't say whether his father was exposed to herbicides in the war.

"We didn't really ask him [about the war] because we didn't want to upset things," he said.

Questions without answers
The U.S. government has spent more than $200 million on Agent Orange research, but no federal agency has ever produced a definitive study on the long-term effects of veterans' exposure to dioxin-laden herbicides.

Some veterans groups see this more as a failure of will than of science, and over the years they have kept pressure on the government to find answers to the riddle of Agent Orange. Their persistence has occasionally paid off, such as in 1991 when Congress passed the Agent Orange Act.

The legislation authorized the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine to evaluate the evidence linking Agent Orange to specific health problems and to assess the feasibility of undertaking further epidemiological studies. It also laid the groundwork for compensating veterans believed to be suffering the effects of herbicide exposure.

The VA now draws on the Institute of Medicine's work to determine the conditions for which Vietnam veterans may receive disability benefits. Some of those ailments include chloracne, type 2 diabetes, Hodgkin's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple myeloma and prostate cancer.

The agency also compensates veterans whose children suffer spina bifida. Women veterans whose children are born with certain other birth defects--including cleft lip or palate, clubfoot and congenital heart disease--are eligible for benefits, as well.

The agency says that these health problems are presumed to be service-related, but it does not acknowledge a cause-and-effect relationship between herbicide exposure and any of the conditions.

Some Vietnamese wonder why it makes sense to compensate American veterans in absence of conclusive scientific evidence, but not Vietnamese.

"Americans have been talking about many things--justice, democracy, very beautiful things --and we want to see this, too," said Nguyen Minh Y, a spokesperson for the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin.

Last year, the association filed a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto, Dow Chemical and other companies that manufactured Agent Orange. The suit was partly modeled after a class action by American veterans against the herbicide's makers.

The American plaintiffs won an out-of-court settlement of $180 million in 1984. More than 50,000 American veterans received payments from the settlement fund, averaging $3,800 each. The fund was exhausted in 1997.

The Vietnamese plaintiffs have not fared as well. Their case was dismissed in March, but has been appealed.

Seeking the truth
Research published in April 2003 may now make it possible to conduct major epidemiological studies that would answer how both Americans and Vietnamese have been affected by herbicide spraying during the war.

Columbia University professors Jeanne and Steven Stellman examined old Air Force data and devised sophisticated computerized maps to determine which U.S. troops and Vietnamese populations were exposed to defoliants, and to what extent.

The Institute of Medicine hailed the Stellmans' work, saying it made possible large-scale epidemiological studies. The institute urged the U.S. government to fund such research.

In November 2003, a bipartisan group of senators and congressman representing the leadership of the Senate and House Veterans' Affairs Committees called on the VA to build on the Stellmans' work by funding new independent epidemiological research.

The VA informed the lawmakers that it would conduct an internal study of the Stellmans' research model.

Critics say the VA is sitting on a promising scientific breakthrough that could help resolve lingering questions about what Agent Orange and other herbicides really have done to people.

But Mark Brown, director of the VA's Environmental Agents Service, which is responsible for the agency's Agent Orange research, said it is necessary to validate the Stellmans' work before funding new studies. He said only the VA has the relevant data--for example, veteran mortality rosters--needed to do the evaluation.

Stellman said any of the data the VA collects can--and indeed must--be made available to the public. She said the VA should accept bids for independent research immediately.

Brown said the VA's internal testing of the Stellman model began about six months ago and may be finished after another year.

"This is all too little, too late," Stellman told a Free Lance-Star reporter by e-mail. "Are we waiting for all the Vietnam veterans to be dead so that their grandchildren can get around to studying what really happened to them? Our veterans sure deserve better than that."

Thompson, who has been waiting for more than seven months for his compensation claim to be approved, echoes Stellman's frustration about the way Vietnam veterans have been treated by the government.

"It's a sad thing that when you go over there you're the most important thing in the world to them. But when you get out of the military, you're no longer needed," he said. "You're a nuisance to them, almost.

"It's a hurtful thing as a veteran to see your government do that to you."

ON THE NET: Vietnam Veterans of America: vva.org/agentorange/index.htm

Veterans Affairs Department: www1.va.gov/agentorange

Jeanne Stellman's Web site: columbia.edu/~jms13/articles .html

To reach RICK MERCIER: 540/374-5637 rmercier@freelancestar.com

Date published: 5/2/2005

Ellie

thedrifter
05-27-05, 07:24 AM
Heroes of the Vietnam Generation
By James Webb

The rapidly disappearing cohort of Americans that endured the Great Depression and then fought World War II is receiving quite a send-off from the leading lights of the so-called 60s generation. Tom Brokaw has published two oral histories of "The Greatest Generation" that feature ordinary people doing their duty and suggest that such conduct was historically unique.

Chris Matthews of "Hardball" is fond of writing columns praising the Navy service of his father while castigating his own baby boomer generation for its alleged softness and lack of struggle. William Bennett gave a startling condescending speech at the Naval Academy a few years ago comparing the heroism of the "D-Day Generation" to the drugs-and-sex nihilism of the "Woodstock Generation." And Steven Spielberg, in promoting his film "Saving Private Ryan," was careful to justify his portrayals of soldiers in action based on the supposedly unique nature of World War II.

An irony is at work here. Lest we forget, the World War II generation now being lionized also brought us the Vietnam War, a conflict which today's most conspicuous voices by and large opposed, and in which few of them served. The "best an brightest" of the Vietnam age group once made headlines by castigating their parents for bringing about the war in which they would not fight, which as become the war they refuse to remember.

Pundits back then invented a term for this animus: the "generation gap." Long, plaintive articles and even books were written examining its manifestations. Campus leaders, who claimed precocious wisdom through the magical process of reading a few controversial books, urged fellow baby boomers not to trust anyone over 30. Their elders who had survived the Depression and fought the largest war in history were looked down upon as shallow, materialistic, and out of touch.

Those of us who grew up, on the other side of the picket line from that era's counter-culture can't help but feel a little leery of this sudden gush of appreciation for our elders from the leading lights of the old counter-culture. Then and now, the national conversation has proceeded from the dubious assumption that those who came of age during Vietnam are a unified generation in the same sense as their parents were, and thus are capable of being spoken for through these fickle elites.

In truth, the "Vietnam generation" is a misnomer. Those who came of age during that war are permanently divided by different reactions to a whole range of counter-cultural agendas, and nothing divides them more deeply than the personal ramifications of the war itself. The sizable portion of the Vietnam age group who declined to support the counter-cultural agenda, and especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during the Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades have claimed to speak for them. In fact, they are much like the World War II generation itself. For them, Woodstock was a side show, college protestors were spoiled brats who would have benefited from having to work a few jobs in order to pay their tuition, and Vietnam represented not an intellectual exercise in draft avoidance, or protest marches but a battlefield that was just as brutal as those their fathers faced in World War II and Korea.

Few who served during Vietnam ever complained of a generation gap. The men who fought World War II were their heroes and role models. They honored their father's service by emulating it, and largely agreed with their father's wisdom in attempting to stop Communism's reach in Southeast Asia.

The most accurate poll of their attitudes (Harris, 1980) showed that 91 percent were glad they'd served their country, 74 percent enjoyed their time in the service, and 89 percent agreed with the statement that "our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win." And most importantly, the castigation they received upon returning home was not from the World War II generation, but from the very elites in their age group who supposedly spoke for them.

Nine million men served in the military during Vietnam War, three million of whom went to the Vietnam Theater. Contrary to popular mythology, two-thirds of these were volunteers, and 73 percent of those who died were volunteers. While some attention has been paid recently to the plight of our prisoners of war, most of whom were pilots; there has been little recognition of how brutal the war was for those who fought it on the ground.

Dropped onto the enemy's terrain 12,000 miles away from home, America's citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity and quality that may never be truly understood. Those who believe the war was fought incompletely on a tactical level should consider Hanoi's recent admission that 1.4 million of its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 58,000 total U.S. dead.

Those who believe that it was a "dirty little war" where the bombs did all the work might contemplate that is was the most costly war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought-five times as many dead as World War I, three times as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in all of World War II.

Significantly, these sacrifices were being made at a time the United States was deeply divided over our effort in Vietnam. The baby-boom generation had cracked apart along class lines as America's young men were making difficult, life-or-death choices about serving. The better academic institutions became focal points for vitriolic protest against the war, with few of their graduates going into the military. Harvard College, which had lost 691 alumni in World War II, lost a total of 12 men in Vietnam from the classes of 1962 through 1972 combined. Those classes at Princeton lost six, at MIT two. The media turned ever more hostile. And frequently the reward for a young man's having gone through the trauma of combat was to be greeted by his peers with studied indifference of outright hostility.

What is a hero? My heroes are the young men who faced the issues of war and possible death, and then weighed those concerns against obligations to their country. Citizen-soldiers who interrupted their personal and professional lives at their most formative stage, in the timeless phrase of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, "not for fame of reward, not for place of for rank, but in simple obedience to duty, as they understood it." Who suffered loneliness, disease, and wounds with an often-contagious élan. And who deserve a far better place in history than that now offered them by the so-called spokesman of our so-called generation.

Mr. Brokaw, Mr. Matthews, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Spielberg, meet my Marines. 1969 was an odd year to be in Vietnam. Second only to 1968 in terms of American casualties, it was the year made famous by Hamburger Hill, as well as the gut-wrenching Life cover story showing pictures of 242 Americans who had been killed in one average week of fighting. Back home, it was the year of Woodstock, and of numerous anti-war rallies that culminated in the Moratorium march on Washington. The My Lai massacre hit the papers and was seized upon the anti-war movement as the emblematic moment of the war. Lyndon Johnson left Washington in utter humiliation.

Richard Nixon entered the scene, destined for an even worse fate. In the An Hoa Basin southwest of Danang, the Fifth Marine Regiment was in its third year of continuous combat operations. Combat is an unpredictable and inexact environment, but we were well led. As a rifle platoon and company commander, I served under a succession of three regimental commanders who had cut their teeth in World War II, and four different battalion commanders, three of whom had seen combat in Korea. The company commanders were typically captains on their second combat tour in Vietnam, or young first lieutenants like myself who were given companies after many months of "bush time" as platoon commanders in the Basin's tough and unforgiving environs.

The Basin was one of the most heavily contested areas in Vietnam, its torn, cratered earth offering every sort of wartime possibility. In the mountains just to the west, not far from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North Vietnamese Army operated an infantry division from an area called Base Area 112. In the valleys of the Basin, main-force Viet Cong battalions whose ranks were 80 percent North Vietnamese Army regulars moved against the Americans every day. Local Viet Cong units sniped and harassed. Ridgelines and paddy dikes were laced with sophisticated booby traps of every size, from a hand grenade to a 250-pound bomb. The villages sat in the rice paddies and tree lines like individual fortresses, crisscrossed with the trenches and spider holes, their homes sporting bunkers capable of surviving direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells. The Viet Cong infrastructure was intricate and permeating. Except for the old and the very young, villagers who did not side with the Communists had either been killed or driven out to the government controlled enclaves near Danang.

In the rifle companies, we spent the endless months patrolling ridgelines and villages and mountains, far away from any notion of tents, barbed wire, hot food, or electricity. Luxuries were limited to what would fit inside one's pack, which after a few "humps" usually boiled down to letter-writing material, towel, soap, toothbrush, poncho liner, and a small transistor radio.

continued

thedrifter
05-27-05, 07:24 AM
We moved through the boiling heat with 60 pounds of weapons and gear, causing a typical Marine to drop 20 percent of his body weight while in the bush. When we stopped we dug chest-deep fighting holes and slit trenches for toilets. We slept on the ground under makeshift poncho hootches, and when it rained we usually took our hootches down because wet ponchos shined under illumination flares, making great targets. Sleep itself was fitful, never more than an hour or two at a stretch for months at a time as we mixed daytime patrolling with night-time ambushes, listening posts, foxhole duty, and radio watches. Ringworm, hookworm, malaria, and dysentery were common, as was trench foot when the monsoons came. Respite was rotating back to the mud-filled regimental combat base at An Hoa for four or five days, where rocket and mortar attacks were frequent and our troops manned defensive bunkers at night. Which makes it kind of hard to get excited about tales of Woodstock, or camping at the Vineyard during summer break.

We had been told while training that Marine officers in the rifle companies had an 85 percent probability of being killed or wounded, and the experience of "Dying Delta," as our company was known, bore that out. Of the officers in the bush when I arrived, our company commander was wounded, the weapons platoon commander wounded, the first platoon commander was killed, the second platoon commander was wounded twice, and I, commanding the third platoons fared no better. Two of my original three-squad leaders were killed, and the third shot in the stomach. My platoon sergeant was severely wounded, as was my right guide. By the time I left, my platoon I had gone through six radio operators, five of them casualties.

These figures were hardly unique; in fact, they were typical. Many other units; for instance, those who fought the hill battles around Khe Sanh, or were with the famed Walking Dead of the Ninth Marine Regiment, or were in the battle of Hue City or at Dai Do, had it far worse.

When I remember those days and the very young men who spent them with me, I am continually amazed, for these were mostly recent civilians barely out of high school, called up from the cities and the farms to do their year in hell and he return. Visions haunt me every day, not of the nightmares of war but of the steady consistency with which my Marines faced their responsibilities, and of how uncomplaining most of them were in the face of constant danger. The salty, battle-hardened 20-year-olds teaching green 19-year-olds the intricate lessons of the hostile battlefield. The unerring skill of the young squad leaders as we moved through unfamiliar villages and weed-choked trails in the black of night. The quick certainty when a fellow Marine was wounded and needed help. Their willingness to risk their lives to save other Marines in peril. To this day it stuns me that their own countrymen have so completely missed the story of their service, lost in the bitter confusion of the war itself.

Like every military unit throughout history we had occasional laggards, cowards, and complainers. But in the aggregate, these Marines were the finest people I have ever been around. It has been my privilege to keep up with many of them over the years since we all came home. One finds in them very little bitterness about the war in which they fought. The most common regret, almost to a man, is that they were not able to do more for each other and for the people they came to help.

It would be redundant to say that I would trust my life to these men. Because I already have, in more ways than I can ever recount. I am alive today because of their quiet, unaffected heroism, such valor epitomizes the conduct of Americans at war from the first days of our existence. That the conduct of Americans at war from the first days of our existence. That the boomer elites can canonize this sort of conduct in our fathers generation alone constitutes a conscious, continuing travesty.

Former Secretary of the Navy James Webb was awarded the Navy Cross, Silver Star, and Bronze Star medals for heroism as a Marine in Vietnam. His novels include The Emperor's General and Fields of Fire.

Ellie

thedrifter
05-29-05, 02:37 AM
Published: May 29, 2005 <br />
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Local News: Rockford <br />
Letters to home: Veteran describes what happened to him in Vietnam <br />
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John H. Berg attended Rock Valley College briefly after graduating from...

thedrifter
05-30-05, 07:29 AM
Remembering the Last Polk Soldier to Die in Vietnam
Bruce Kline Was Killed on a Rescue Mission:

By Gary White
The Ledger

When the phone rang at their Lakeland home on a late spring evening in 1972, Eugene and Louise Kline received a pleasant surprise: The sound of their oldest son's voice.

Bruce Kline, an Army helicopter pilot serving in Vietnam, talked to his parents before asking to speak privately with his youngest brother, Mike, a sophomore at Lakeland High School. Mike listened as his oldest brother described the relentless attacks he faced every time he took off in his UH-1H helicopter.

"He told me it was just a matter of time," Mike, now 49, recalls. "He just said, `Brother, enjoy your life, because I am dead.' "

Less than a week later, Army representatives bearing a telegram knocked on the door. Bruce Eugene Kline, 24, had become the last of 78 men from Polk County to die in the Vietnam War.

The grim notification came May 29, 1972: Memorial Day.

"A FUN GUY TO BE AROUND"

Bruce Kline spent his childhood in Cincinnati before the family moved to Lakeland in the early 1960s. Those who knew him at Lakeland High School describe him alternately as quiet and mischievous, a guy who would sneak out in his parents' car before he was old enough to drive but never got in serious trouble.

" `Wild' would be the wrong word to describe him, but energetic would be a better word for it," said classmate Robert Scharar, who now lives in Houston. "He could play a joke on you, and he could be the brunt of a joke and take it, too. He was just a fun guy to be around." Bruce and his brother Doug, who was a year younger, often hosted poker sessions at the family home that lasted late into the night. A friend, Bill "Tiger" Read, dubbed Bruce "the Cincinnati Kid" in reference to a Steve McQueen movie.

Bruce, a slender teen of medium height with light-brown hair, enjoyed typical activities -- playing pool at the Cue King and, after receiving his license, cruising in his parents' cream-colored Ford Fairlane convertible. He became president of his school's Junior Exchange Club and worked on weekends at a gas station owned by the father of a girl he dated.

Upon graduation, Kline headed to Florida State University in Tallahassee. Following the example of his father, a World War II veteran, he enrolled in the ROTC program, committing himself to Army service after graduation.

Kline majored in history, with a focus on Asia, and he met his foreign-language requirement by studying Chinese. Doug, who enrolled a year behind Bruce at Florida State (along with Doug's fiancee, Delores Carroll of Lakeland), says his brother was smart enough to earn A's but content to receive B's and have an active social life.

Always enamored of fast cars, Bruce acquired a speedy Gran Torino, white with orange stripes. He made a pilgrimage each year to Sebring to watch the 24-hour auto race.

As he progressed through college, Kline moved closer to an inevitable deployment to Vietnam. Delores Kline, his sister-in-law, says Bruce was conflicted about the war, as were many in their generation.

"Bruce was in the active military and ROTC, but he was not GI Joe," she said. "He had friends who were long-haired hippies and were (war) protesters, and he had good buddies who were in the military with whitewall haircuts and the whole thing. He moved between both sides easily."

Bruce graduated from FSU in 1970 and trained in Georgia, Alabama and Texas. He came to Lakeland for Christmas in 1971 with an assignment to Vietnam looming. Doug Kline says his brother was patriotic but had doubts about the war.

"He wasn't just blindly following," said Doug Kline, now 56 and living in Jacksonville Beach. "He could certainly talk about both sides of the issue, whether the United States should be there or not. Sometimes he would get real cynical about it."

Delores Kline recalls that when Bruce opened one of his packages during his last Christmas in Lakeland and found a bracelet, he quipped, "Oh sure, they'll be able to identify my arm when it comes back."

A few days later, Eugene and Louise Kline drove their oldest son to the Tampa airport for the flight that would eventually lead him to Vietnam. Mike, now a resident of Las Vegas, remembers one of Bruce's friends showed up in the driveway and tried to block the car.

"He was pleading with him, saying, `Don't go; you're going to get killed over there,' " Mike said. "(Bruce) said, `I'm in the Army. I'm not going to desert.' "

RESCUE MISSION GOES VERY WRONG

Army 1st Lt. Bruce Kline began his tour of duty with the 48th Assault Helicopter Company on Jan. 4, 1972. He was stationed near Da Nang, not far from the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam. As commanding pilot on a "Huey" helicopter, he flew troops in and out of battles.

In a letter to Doug, Bruce described being shot down during a mission to rescue another chopper that had been hit by enemy fire. He escaped without serious injury.

On May 24, 1972 -- 33 years ago last Tuesday -- Kline and his crew of three were taking Vietnamese marines to a battle zone in the Thua Thien province when they were called to rescue a downed CH-47 helicopter. Kline and crew were on their way to a mountainous site when an SA-7 missile struck their chopper.

A few days later, Kline's family learned he was missing in action. Then representatives from the Army delivered the news that Bruce's body had been recovered.

Doug Kline found out through a phone call from his wife's mother.

"It was just devastating," he says. "I just flopped down on the the bed and cried for a good long time. When I heard he had been shot down, I pretty much assumed the worst, but you still have a little bit of hope."

The Army flew Bruce's remains to Lakeland, where he received a military funeral at Oak Hill Burial Park. Louise Kline, allowed to request members of the honor guard, insisted on bringing home a neighbor serving in the Air Force -- much to the appreciation of the young man's family.

Doug Kline says his father, who encouraged Bruce to enter the ROTC program, blamed himself for Bruce's death. He says his mother, a lifelong Republican, couldn't bring herself to vote for President Nixon in the 1972 election because of the war.

Both surviving sons use the same phrase in describing their mother: "She never got over it."

Mike took ownership of his late brother's white Gran Torino until his mother finally objected.

"She said, `Mike, I've got to get rid of this car; I'll get you another one,' " Mike said. "She just couldn't stand to see it in the driveway any more."

Cancer took Louise Kline's life in 1990, and Eugene Kline died last year at age 89.

UNHEALED HURT

A granite monument at Lakeland High School bears Bruce Kline's name, along with those of 29 other graduates killed in Vietnam. He also occupies a place on a "wall of honor" in the Army ROTC building at Florida State.

The name "Bruce Eugene Kline" can be found at panel 01W, line 30 on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

"Many times I've thought, `I need to go to Washington to see the wall,' then I sort of conveniently forget about it or put it on the back burner,' " Doug Kline said. "I want to do it, but I don't want to do it."

Today, as always on Memorial Day, Doug Kline will think of his older brother as he raises a flag on his house. Doug says he often wonders what Bruce would have done with his life had he returned from Vietnam.

"He seemed to have an entrepreneurial kind of bent," Doug said. "He would throw out things about doing some kind of business, like opening his own pool hall. . . . He may well have been a career (officer) in the Army. That wouldn't have shocked me."

His younger brother disagrees.

"I think he kind of wanted to get into teaching, but I know he wouldn't have wanted to stay in the Army," Mike Kline said. "He'd seen too many people die over there, and he didn't want any part of it."

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or at 863-802-7518.

Ellie

thedrifter
05-30-05, 09:25 AM
Lingering Loss
By Gary White
The Ledger

When the phone rang at their Lakeland home on a late spring evening in 1972, Eugene and Louise Kline received a pleasant surprise: The sound of their oldest son's voice.

Bruce Kline, an Army helicopter pilot serving in Vietnam, talked to his parents before asking to speak privately with his youngest brother, Mike, a sophomore at Lakeland High School. Mike listened as his oldest brother described the relentless attacks he faced every time he took off in his UH-1H helicopter.

"He told me it was just a matter of time," Mike, now 49, recalls. "He just said, `Brother, enjoy your life, because I am dead.' "

Less than a week later, Army representatives bearing a telegram knocked on the door. Bruce Eugene Kline, 24, had become the last of 78 men from Polk County to die in the Vietnam War.

The grim notification came May 29, 1972: Memorial Day.

Bruce Kline spent his childhood in Cincinnati before the family moved to Lakeland in the early 1960s. Those who knew him at Lakeland High School describe him alternately as quiet and mischievous, a guy who would sneak out in his parents' car before he was old enough to drive but never got in serious trouble.

" `Wild' would be the wrong word to describe him, but energetic would be a better word for it," said classmate Robert Scharar, who now lives in Houston. "He could play a joke on you, and he could be the brunt of a joke and take it, too. He was just a fun guy to be around." Bruce and his brother Doug, who was a year younger, often hosted poker sessions at the family home that lasted late into the night. A friend, Bill "Tiger" Read, dubbed Bruce "the Cincinnati Kid" in reference to a Steve McQueen movie.

Bruce, a slender teen of medium height with light-brown hair, enjoyed typical activities -- playing pool at the Cue King and, after receiving his license, cruising in his parents' cream-colored Ford Fairlane convertible. He became president of his school's Junior Exchange Club and worked on weekends at a gas station owned by the father of a girl he dated.

Upon graduation, Kline headed to Florida State University in Tallahassee. Following the example of his father, a World War II veteran, he enrolled in the ROTC program, committing himself to Army service after graduation.

Kline majored in history, with a focus on Asia, and he met his foreign-language requirement by studying Chinese. Doug, who enrolled a year behind Bruce at Florida State (along with Doug's fiancee, Delores Carroll of Lakeland), says his brother was smart enough to earn A's but content to receive B's and have an active social life.

Always enamored of fast cars, Bruce acquired a speedy Gran Torino, white with orange stripes. He made a pilgrimage each year to Sebring to watch the 24-hour auto race.

As he progressed through college, Kline moved closer to an inevitable deployment to Vietnam. Delores Kline, his sister-in-law, says Bruce was conflicted about the war, as were many in their generation.

"Bruce was in the active military and ROTC, but he was not GI Joe," she said. "He had friends who were long-haired hippies and were (war) protesters, and he had good buddies who were in the military with whitewall haircuts and the whole thing. He moved between both sides easily."

Bruce graduated from FSU in 1970 and trained in Georgia, Alabama and Texas. He came to Lakeland for Christmas in 1971 with an assignment to Vietnam looming. Doug Kline says his brother was patriotic but had doubts about the war.

"He wasn't just blindly following," said Doug Kline, now 56 and living in Jacksonville Beach. "He could certainly talk about both sides of the issue, whether the United States should be there or not. Sometimes he would get real cynical about it."

Delores Kline recalls that when Bruce opened one of his packages during his last Christmas in Lakeland and found a bracelet, he quipped, "Oh sure, they'll be able to identify my arm when it comes back."

A few days later, Eugene and Louise Kline drove their oldest son to the Tampa airport for the flight that would eventually lead him to Vietnam. Mike, now a resident of Las Vegas, remembers one of Bruce's friends showed up in the driveway and tried to block the car.

"He was pleading with him, saying, `Don't go; you're going to get killed over there,' " Mike said. "(Bruce) said, `I'm in the Army. I'm not going to desert.' "

Army 1st Lt. Bruce Kline began his tour of duty with the 48th Assault Helicopter Company on Jan. 4, 1972. He was stationed near Da Nang, not far from the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam. As commanding pilot on a "Huey" helicopter, he flew troops in and out of battles.

In a letter to Doug, Bruce described being shot down during a mission to rescue another chopper that had been hit by enemy fire. He escaped without serious injury.

On May 24, 1972 -- 33 years ago last Tuesday -- Kline and his crew of three were taking Vietnamese marines to a battle zone in the Thua Thien province when they were called to rescue a downed CH-47 helicopter. Kline and crew were on their way to a mountainous site when an SA-7 missile struck their chopper.

A few days later, Kline's family learned he was missing in action. Then representatives from the Army delivered the news that Bruce's body had been recovered.

Doug Kline found out through a phone call from his wife's mother.

"It was just devastating," he says. "I just flopped down on the the bed and cried for a good long time. When I heard he had been shot down, I pretty much assumed the worst, but you still have a little bit of hope."

The Army flew Bruce's remains to Lakeland, where he received a military funeral at Oak Hill Burial Park. Louise Kline, allowed to request members of the honor guard, insisted on bringing home a neighbor serving in the Air Force -- much to the appreciation of the young man's family.

Doug Kline says his father, who encouraged Bruce to enter the ROTC program, blamed himself for Bruce's death. He says his mother, a lifelong Republican, couldn't bring herself to vote for President Nixon in the 1972 election because of the war.

Both surviving sons use the same phrase in describing their mother: "She never got over it."

Mike took ownership of his late brother's white Gran Torino until his mother finally objected.

"She said, `Mike, I've got to get rid of this car; I'll get you another one,' " Mike said. "She just couldn't stand to see it in the driveway any more."

Cancer took Louise Kline's life in 1990, and Eugene Kline died last year at age 89.

A granite monument at Lakeland High School bears Bruce Kline's name, along with those of 29 other graduates killed in Vietnam. He also occupies a place on a "wall of honor" in the Army ROTC building at Florida State.

The name "Bruce Eugene Kline" can be found at panel 01W, line 30 on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

"Many times I've thought, `I need to go to Washington to see the wall,' then I sort of conveniently forget about it or put it on the back burner,' " Doug Kline said. "I want to do it, but I don't want to do it."

Today, as always on Memorial Day, Doug Kline will think of his older brother as he raises a flag on his house. Doug says he often wonders what Bruce would have done with his life had he returned from Vietnam.

"He seemed to have an entrepreneurial kind of bent," Doug said. "He would throw out things about doing some kind of business, like opening his own pool hall. . . . He may well have been a career (officer) in the Army. That wouldn't have shocked me."

His younger brother disagrees.

"I think he kind of wanted to get into teaching, but I know he wouldn't have wanted to stay in the Army," Mike Kline said. "He'd seen too many people die over there, and he didn't want any part of it."

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or at 863-802-7518.

Ellie

thedrifter
05-31-05, 09:14 AM
Posted May 31, 2005


Semper fi: Marine book includes tale of Appleton man

Former firefighter Thiel explains how Corps helped him

By John Lee
Post-Crescent staff writer

Jim Thiel is the first to admit he wasn’t an ideal child growing up in Appleton in the 1960s.

He didn’t apply himself in school and wasn’t really looking toward the future.

“I wasn’t in trouble with the police, but I thought I knew it all,” he says now.

But his transformation from a cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking runaway at 15 to a devoted father of two sons, a career in firefighting and his retirement as deputy Appleton fire chief began on his 17th birthday, when he became a Marine.

He went to the recruiting station with a friend, and enlisted even after his friend decided not to. His father, Thiel said, signed the papers allowing him to enlist, hoping it would change his attitude.

Now James E. Thiel — “Jet” to his friends — tells his story, and how his 52-month service in the Marines changed his life, in a book, “Once a Marine.”{ The book was compiled by Charles W. Latting, who was company commander of Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, in Vietnam from 1965-66, and Dr. Claude DeShazo, who was battalion surgeon during its training and combat in Vietnam.

The two solicited the stories from Marine veterans — all enlisted men, and no officers — to show how “the vast majority of Marine Corps Vietnam veterans become well-adjusted, successful citizens, parents and providers.

“The journey of every Marine from boy to man to Marine is very special, and that’s what it’s all about. It’s about the journey,” Latting said.

Latting, who lives in South Pasadena, Calif., left the Marines as a major after 10 years of service, and later served 21 years as an FBI agent.

He said he and DeShazo came up with the idea after meeting after 40 years.

They would bristle when they’d read media accounts about a Marine gone bad, and wanted to do a book on Marines gone good, Latting said.

“Any time a former Marine committed a crime, that’s the first thing the media would highlight. They never say ‘insurance salesman,’” he said. “It’s just more readable to look at it and say, ‘Oh yeah, trained killer.’

“What we tried to say in the book is the military is a good thing.”

Nearly all the writers featured in the book have earned Purple Hearts, and Latting said they wanted to show how the Marine creed of honor, courage and commitment defined the rest of their lives.

“If you were in Desert Storm or World War II or Korea, it doesn’t matter. One thing that doesn’t change is Marine boot camp,” he said. “This is not a war book. This is a book about people’s lives. It’s about the process.”

He said a Marine general wants to give the book to all Marine recruiters in the nation, and said a special benefit is that all profits will go to the First Marine Division scholarship fund.

“I would have to say that if all America could read this book, it’s more important than Tom Brokaw’s ‘Greatest Generation.’ It’s more in-depth,” Latting said.

“(Thiel’s) what every father would like a son to grow up to be. It was a struggle, but he got there. The Marine Corps gave him the commitment to dedication to duty to become very successful.”

The stories compiled include those of George Patrick Murphy, who went from an impoverished childhood to a federal judgeship; Arthur W. McLaughlin Jr., who became a captain with the Massachusetts State Police; and John Stoddard, vice president and general manager of the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles.

Thiel received a Purple Heart for his service in Vietnam after being shot in the arm during Operation Utah, where 26 of the 40 members of his platoon were killed or injured.

Thiel retired from the fire service in 1999 as deputy fire chief and commander of the department’s HazMat unit, which provides hazardous material emergency response to several area counties as one of seven regional HazMat units in the state.

Now living in Appleton with his wife, Barb, Thiel is best known as incident commander for the 1996 Weyauwega train derailment.

Thiel said he was honored to be asked to write a chapter of the book, and surprised when one of his comments made the back cover.

“Some of the things that we were taught in boot camp stillstick with me after all these years. I still hang my clothes in my closet facing in order to the left and lace my shoes left over right, though I no longer tell my wife how to wash the dishes,” he said.



John Lee can be reached at 920-993-1000, ext. 362, or by e-mail at jlee@postcrescent. com.

Ellie

thedrifter
05-31-05, 11:29 AM
Vietnam War still echoes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Marine Corps Times
May 30, 2005

WHAT'S UP: More than 30 years ago, millions of Americans protested against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Even today, that conflict continues to haunt and shape U.S. policy. Now, the fledgling nonprofit Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation wants to correct the "false history" of the war that "has been used to demoralize our troops in combat, undermine the public's confidence in U.S. foreign policy and weaken our national security," said its president, retired Air Force Col. George "Bud" Day, who was held as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict. Day, a Medal of Honor recipient, also served in Korea and World War II.

WHAT'S NEXT: Day, who sued the U.S. government - unsuccessfully - seeking the free health care for life that older retirees say they were promised in return for making a career of the military, said his new group will produce "independent films and documentaries" and provide material and exhibits to libraries and museums in its mission to "set the record straight" on the Vietnam War. Its members are frustrated with what they say is the negative image of the war veterans and a lack of public understanding about the conflict. More information is available at www .vietnamlegacy.org.
“Freedom is not free, but the U.S. Marine


Ellie