thedrifter
12-26-07, 08:22 PM
SOLDIER'S VIETNAM DIARY
Dead Marine's letters bring life in Vietnam home to family
By MONI BASU
The Atlanta Journal-Constution
Published on: 12/27/07
As a child, Terri Walker peppered her family with questions about the man in the Marine uniform whose photograph hung in the hallway of her grandmother's house. A copy of the photo sat atop a Victrola in the formal living room of her own house.
He was like an apparition. His face haunted her.
"I can't talk about it," Walker's mother, Jean, said in response to the questions.
As she grew older, Walker knew she had an uncle who, at the tender age of 17, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and shortly after went to fight in Vietnam.
She knew his name was Tommy J. Holtzclaw and that, in 1967, he came home in a body bag.
She and her sister Connie Hughes heard that other Marines and soldiers often talked about losing their souls in the jungles of Southeast Asia. They wondered about their uncle's last days.
And then, unexpectedly, their grandmother's death last year opened their eyes to the world occupied by "Tommy J."
Leila Holtzclaw, who could not utter a word about her son, had saved every note he wrote home.
Through Tommy Holtzclaw's letters, which Walker compiled into a recently published book, the sisters mourned a man they never knew and helped heal their family's scars.
Shielded as girls from all that was Vietnam, the two women can now claim an understanding of conflict and personal sacrifice in a time when America is once again at war.
Over four decades, Leila Holtzclaw neatly kept her son's letters, snapshots, high school mementos, Purple Heart and military commendations. She saved the telegram she received from the military informing the family of Tommy's death, the newspaper obituary and the program from the funeral.
She kept it all in cardboard boxes that her younger son, Johnny, took home to sort through after Leila's funeral in September 2006.
The two Holtzclaw boys grew up close, sharing a bedroom and a love for soccer and football. Johnny, 56, looked through the letters his brother wrote home almost every day; remembered reading them when they arrived from Da Nang and Nui Loc Son.
Then he thought he would burn them all. What use was it now, 40 years later, to dredge up memories? Who'd want to read his brother's letters anyway?
Tommy Holtzclaw was not the only casualty that April 21; he had died along with other Marines as his regiment came under enemy rifle fire. The Holtzclaw family buried a host of emotions along with Tommy's remains.
Maybe it was best left undisturbed, Johnny Holtzclaw thought. But at the last minute, he chose not to toss the boxes into the flames.
Instead, he gave them to Walker. He blamed himself for his nieces not knowing the man that his brother was; that all the girls ever had was a present Tommy gave to Connie: a stuffed red dog that had lost its eyes, mouth and an ear.
Walker, a 43-year-old Atlanta market research publisher, looked through her grandmother's possessions, fascinated by the glimpses of an uncle who might have played a large role in her life. She contacted her uncle's high school friends to find out more.
She worked long hours on the book, "Letters from Tommy J." She was leery of the family's reaction and kept her work a secret until it was finished. All those months, the apparition came to life by day, as she lingered over every word Tommy Holtzclaw sent home.
"I cannot believe I had a uncle who at the age of 18 did all this," Walker said. "I cannot believe I missed out on knowing him."
Walker knew that her grandparents argued so much about signing Tommy's enlistment papers that their marriage was threatened. They blamed each other for their son's death. She knew that "Mama Leila," especially, was never the same after the two men in uniform showed up at their Atlanta home one Sunday, just days before Tommy's 19th birthday.
She couldn't bear to open the door — her younger son Johnny had to do it.
"There was resentment, anger, blame," recalled Johnny Holtzclaw, an anesthetist at Piedmont Hospital. "We didn't know how to pick up our lives again."
Silence befell the Holtzclaw household as though tragedy could be erased by it.
Johnny Holtzclaw inherited his brother's black Chevy Bel Air. He graduated from O'Keefe High School, where his tall, scrubby brother had never missed a single football practice but kept up his A's and B's in class.
But even two years after he died, Johnny could not say his brother's name without crying.
Every April, Leila Holtzclaw fell ill, thinking about the dates of her elder son's birth and death.
Once in a while, she took the boxes from her closet and tried to read her son's letters. She could get through only one or two at most, then folded them up and put them away again.
"We just let it lie," said Johnny's wife, Cyn Holtzclaw.
Leila Holtzclaw did visit the Vietnam Wall memorial in Washington, D.C., once, when Walker offered to take her along on a 1986 business trip.
"It's not right that a mother should outlive her son," the stoic Leila told Walker then.
That was all she ever said.
That's why Walker could not stop reading the letters.
By no means are they extraordinary. They are not unlike others written by American service members from Vietnam — and now from Iraq and Afghanistan.
But for the first time, Walker began to understand the man in the Marine uniform. He revealed his fears about confronting an unseen enemy and how much he missed home.
April 10, 1967: "We got one of our men killed and 5 wounded. I have never had so many rounds hitting me. I have not calmed down yet, I was so scared. We just had them trapped and they were fighting back. It was the first time I had got that close to a V.C. where I used my rifle to hit a V.C. There you really know how close you are to death. It is there also that you know you have actually had to kill and it is not a very good feeling."
Tommy Holtzclaw sent this particular letter to the parents of his best friend, Pat Hogan, who shared with Walker the mail his family received.
"After all these years," Hogan wrote to Walker, "I still miss him."
Hogan, now 60 and working two part-time jobs on Topsail Island, N.C., said his friend's Vietnam experience helped shape his own views on war and killing. He, too, did a tour of Vietnam, two years after Holtzclaw was gunned down.
"You start with believing in what you do," Hogan said. "In the end, all you want to do is go home."
He said he sent Holtzclaw's letters to Walker because he believes the book can be a healing experience — not just for his friend's family but for every family scathed by war.
Walker said she can never again watch a news report about an American war death without feeling grief for loved ones left behind.
She is glad she unearthed the essence of her uncle. And relieved that after 40 years, Tommy J. Holtzclaw's name is no longer taboo.
She and her sister hope the book "will bring closure" to all those who knew their uncle.
"It's almost like they wanted us to find them," Hughes, 44, said of the boxed-up belongings and the family who kept them a secret.
It's almost like Tommy J. Holtzclaw has finally come home.
Ellie
Dead Marine's letters bring life in Vietnam home to family
By MONI BASU
The Atlanta Journal-Constution
Published on: 12/27/07
As a child, Terri Walker peppered her family with questions about the man in the Marine uniform whose photograph hung in the hallway of her grandmother's house. A copy of the photo sat atop a Victrola in the formal living room of her own house.
He was like an apparition. His face haunted her.
"I can't talk about it," Walker's mother, Jean, said in response to the questions.
As she grew older, Walker knew she had an uncle who, at the tender age of 17, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and shortly after went to fight in Vietnam.
She knew his name was Tommy J. Holtzclaw and that, in 1967, he came home in a body bag.
She and her sister Connie Hughes heard that other Marines and soldiers often talked about losing their souls in the jungles of Southeast Asia. They wondered about their uncle's last days.
And then, unexpectedly, their grandmother's death last year opened their eyes to the world occupied by "Tommy J."
Leila Holtzclaw, who could not utter a word about her son, had saved every note he wrote home.
Through Tommy Holtzclaw's letters, which Walker compiled into a recently published book, the sisters mourned a man they never knew and helped heal their family's scars.
Shielded as girls from all that was Vietnam, the two women can now claim an understanding of conflict and personal sacrifice in a time when America is once again at war.
Over four decades, Leila Holtzclaw neatly kept her son's letters, snapshots, high school mementos, Purple Heart and military commendations. She saved the telegram she received from the military informing the family of Tommy's death, the newspaper obituary and the program from the funeral.
She kept it all in cardboard boxes that her younger son, Johnny, took home to sort through after Leila's funeral in September 2006.
The two Holtzclaw boys grew up close, sharing a bedroom and a love for soccer and football. Johnny, 56, looked through the letters his brother wrote home almost every day; remembered reading them when they arrived from Da Nang and Nui Loc Son.
Then he thought he would burn them all. What use was it now, 40 years later, to dredge up memories? Who'd want to read his brother's letters anyway?
Tommy Holtzclaw was not the only casualty that April 21; he had died along with other Marines as his regiment came under enemy rifle fire. The Holtzclaw family buried a host of emotions along with Tommy's remains.
Maybe it was best left undisturbed, Johnny Holtzclaw thought. But at the last minute, he chose not to toss the boxes into the flames.
Instead, he gave them to Walker. He blamed himself for his nieces not knowing the man that his brother was; that all the girls ever had was a present Tommy gave to Connie: a stuffed red dog that had lost its eyes, mouth and an ear.
Walker, a 43-year-old Atlanta market research publisher, looked through her grandmother's possessions, fascinated by the glimpses of an uncle who might have played a large role in her life. She contacted her uncle's high school friends to find out more.
She worked long hours on the book, "Letters from Tommy J." She was leery of the family's reaction and kept her work a secret until it was finished. All those months, the apparition came to life by day, as she lingered over every word Tommy Holtzclaw sent home.
"I cannot believe I had a uncle who at the age of 18 did all this," Walker said. "I cannot believe I missed out on knowing him."
Walker knew that her grandparents argued so much about signing Tommy's enlistment papers that their marriage was threatened. They blamed each other for their son's death. She knew that "Mama Leila," especially, was never the same after the two men in uniform showed up at their Atlanta home one Sunday, just days before Tommy's 19th birthday.
She couldn't bear to open the door — her younger son Johnny had to do it.
"There was resentment, anger, blame," recalled Johnny Holtzclaw, an anesthetist at Piedmont Hospital. "We didn't know how to pick up our lives again."
Silence befell the Holtzclaw household as though tragedy could be erased by it.
Johnny Holtzclaw inherited his brother's black Chevy Bel Air. He graduated from O'Keefe High School, where his tall, scrubby brother had never missed a single football practice but kept up his A's and B's in class.
But even two years after he died, Johnny could not say his brother's name without crying.
Every April, Leila Holtzclaw fell ill, thinking about the dates of her elder son's birth and death.
Once in a while, she took the boxes from her closet and tried to read her son's letters. She could get through only one or two at most, then folded them up and put them away again.
"We just let it lie," said Johnny's wife, Cyn Holtzclaw.
Leila Holtzclaw did visit the Vietnam Wall memorial in Washington, D.C., once, when Walker offered to take her along on a 1986 business trip.
"It's not right that a mother should outlive her son," the stoic Leila told Walker then.
That was all she ever said.
That's why Walker could not stop reading the letters.
By no means are they extraordinary. They are not unlike others written by American service members from Vietnam — and now from Iraq and Afghanistan.
But for the first time, Walker began to understand the man in the Marine uniform. He revealed his fears about confronting an unseen enemy and how much he missed home.
April 10, 1967: "We got one of our men killed and 5 wounded. I have never had so many rounds hitting me. I have not calmed down yet, I was so scared. We just had them trapped and they were fighting back. It was the first time I had got that close to a V.C. where I used my rifle to hit a V.C. There you really know how close you are to death. It is there also that you know you have actually had to kill and it is not a very good feeling."
Tommy Holtzclaw sent this particular letter to the parents of his best friend, Pat Hogan, who shared with Walker the mail his family received.
"After all these years," Hogan wrote to Walker, "I still miss him."
Hogan, now 60 and working two part-time jobs on Topsail Island, N.C., said his friend's Vietnam experience helped shape his own views on war and killing. He, too, did a tour of Vietnam, two years after Holtzclaw was gunned down.
"You start with believing in what you do," Hogan said. "In the end, all you want to do is go home."
He said he sent Holtzclaw's letters to Walker because he believes the book can be a healing experience — not just for his friend's family but for every family scathed by war.
Walker said she can never again watch a news report about an American war death without feeling grief for loved ones left behind.
She is glad she unearthed the essence of her uncle. And relieved that after 40 years, Tommy J. Holtzclaw's name is no longer taboo.
She and her sister hope the book "will bring closure" to all those who knew their uncle.
"It's almost like they wanted us to find them," Hughes, 44, said of the boxed-up belongings and the family who kept them a secret.
It's almost like Tommy J. Holtzclaw has finally come home.
Ellie