thedrifter
08-10-08, 05:26 AM
August 10, 2008
'Something's left unfinished'
Vietnam veteran ready to make his peace with war memories.
For 42 years, Don Alexander has woken up in the night, terrified.
The terror is not for himself, but for another.
It is always the same: "Why didn't I do something?" he asks himself. "Why didn't I DO something?"
But as he wakes further and the cobwebs clear, reality sets in: There wasn't anything he could have done. He'd just been shot and his pelvis shattered. He couldn't move.
Across his legs lay the body of the window gunner of the helicopter that was trying to pick up Alexander and take him to a MASH unit in Da Nang. The gunner was shot in the chest while firing back at North Vietnamese soldiers shooting at the copter. Alexander could do nothing but lie there, feeling his fellow Marine bleed to death on his body.
He didn't even know his name.
"The utter futility," he says now, on the 42nd anniversary of the man's death on Aug. 10, 1966. "Couldn't I have at least rolled over and held his hand?" Earlier, waiting for the helicopter, laid out in a creek bed with other wounded while the bloody fight went on above them, he had been able to get to another man's hand as he heard the soldier's throat begin to rattle. He was holding it when Staff Sgt. Ernesto Amador died.
It was Operation Colorado in the Que Son Valley in August 1966, where 500 Marines were sent in to rout out North Vietnamese soldiers who'd had free rein of the territory. "We went looking for them, then they ambushed us," then-corporal Alexander explains. "Then they encircled us -- 2,000 Vietnamese regulars."
When Alexander came back to the States, he finished the wildlife management degree he'd started at Missouri State University. But news from the war front "drove me nuts," especially the Tet Offensive, thinking of his brother soldiers and wanting to go back to Vietnam.
Then he realized there was one important and far-reaching way he could continue to help warriors mired in the hellish bloodshed: "I probably was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but I don't think I realized it. I thought, 'Hey, I could work with vets.' I thought maybe if I could get another chance, here's my chance to give back to (the window gunner) and other vets."
Alexander earned a master's degree in guidance counseling at Missouri State University, then specialized in counseling veterans and other victims of trauma for 25 years.
And he never stopped thinking about the man who lost his life saving his. He wondered who he was, what his life had been before the war brought him to Vietnam. Did he have a family, a wife, small children, as Alexander did? "Something's left unfinished," Alexander reflects now. "I think I've always been serious about it (finding information about the man) somehow. It was always in the back of my mind.'"
For 25 years he led veterans through the horrifying ghosts of post-traumatic stress, and slowly discovered he was bleeding from the condition, too. "When I was counseling people, I could hide behind the mask of working with other people." But as the men opened up their wounds, it brought Alexander's to the forefront and he began to work through his own PTSD. "It was like, 'physician, heal thyself.'"
Alexander bought a computer several years ago, but didn't know it would open the long-closed door leading to the man who lost his life in the old U34 helicopter.
Alexander's friend and fellow vet Gary Harlan showed him how to get onto a Web site devoted to the fallen soldiers of the Vietnam War. "When I first found about The Wall Web site, I went to it immediately," Alexander says.
The site asks you to enter a few pieces of information about the person you're looking for. He entered the man's branch of service and death date, and up came Staff Sgt. Robert Walsh. There was his photo and a short bio, with short commemorative comments from those who served with him, as well as tributes from fellow soldiers who didn't even know him.
"I made contact with some of the guys who knew him, and I was able to find out it was him." The first fellow soldier who e-mailed him back wondered how Alexander found him, and he replied that it was The Wall site. "It was pretty emotional for me. I told him, 'I was on that chopper.'"
From those first e-mails, he was connected to Walsh's two daughters. Tentatively, the daughters are scheduled to attend the 2008 reunion of the USMC Combat Helicopter Association in Washington, D.C., this coming Thursday through Saturday, as are Don and his wife, Dixie.
Alexander will also meet other members of Walsh's crew. One of them sent him a photo of the refurbished helicopter, call number YN19 -- Yankee November 19 -- in which he was rescued, and in which Walsh died. It will be on display at the helicopter-crew reunion. Found in a boneyard in Arizona in 2000, several crew members rebuilt her, and fly her in East Coast airshows.
As Don and Dixie prepare to travel to Washington, he shuffles papers he has taken from the Web site with information on several men who died while he served with them. In the margins, he has handwritten notes: Beside Amador's bio are the words, "Lay beside him in creek bed." Next to Jimmy Brais: "Saw Doc Long treating him in creek bed as I went by them." Next to that of Navy corpsman Lawrence Steiner, with whom he traded stories of their wives and babies back home: "Doc Steiner. Talked with daughter he had never seen, 2002."
Next to Robert Walsh: "Died on my (medevac) chopper. Have always regretted I could do nothing for him." And next to the bio of a 19-year-old corporal, in a memory so personal that I don't use his name: "Screaming on 'trail.'"
"Is that morbid?" he asks now. "No, it's not morbid. When you go through the fires of hell with someone else, you have every right to vividly remember your time with them, the best and the most horrifying and gruesome. You deserve to wonder what their lives were like before hell, who they were, did they have families, who are their surviving family members today.
"I'd like to know about every one of these guys," Alexander reflects.
"The other evening I finally realized I'd just made another step toward closure. That's what this trip is all about, closure."
Ellie
'Something's left unfinished'
Vietnam veteran ready to make his peace with war memories.
For 42 years, Don Alexander has woken up in the night, terrified.
The terror is not for himself, but for another.
It is always the same: "Why didn't I do something?" he asks himself. "Why didn't I DO something?"
But as he wakes further and the cobwebs clear, reality sets in: There wasn't anything he could have done. He'd just been shot and his pelvis shattered. He couldn't move.
Across his legs lay the body of the window gunner of the helicopter that was trying to pick up Alexander and take him to a MASH unit in Da Nang. The gunner was shot in the chest while firing back at North Vietnamese soldiers shooting at the copter. Alexander could do nothing but lie there, feeling his fellow Marine bleed to death on his body.
He didn't even know his name.
"The utter futility," he says now, on the 42nd anniversary of the man's death on Aug. 10, 1966. "Couldn't I have at least rolled over and held his hand?" Earlier, waiting for the helicopter, laid out in a creek bed with other wounded while the bloody fight went on above them, he had been able to get to another man's hand as he heard the soldier's throat begin to rattle. He was holding it when Staff Sgt. Ernesto Amador died.
It was Operation Colorado in the Que Son Valley in August 1966, where 500 Marines were sent in to rout out North Vietnamese soldiers who'd had free rein of the territory. "We went looking for them, then they ambushed us," then-corporal Alexander explains. "Then they encircled us -- 2,000 Vietnamese regulars."
When Alexander came back to the States, he finished the wildlife management degree he'd started at Missouri State University. But news from the war front "drove me nuts," especially the Tet Offensive, thinking of his brother soldiers and wanting to go back to Vietnam.
Then he realized there was one important and far-reaching way he could continue to help warriors mired in the hellish bloodshed: "I probably was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but I don't think I realized it. I thought, 'Hey, I could work with vets.' I thought maybe if I could get another chance, here's my chance to give back to (the window gunner) and other vets."
Alexander earned a master's degree in guidance counseling at Missouri State University, then specialized in counseling veterans and other victims of trauma for 25 years.
And he never stopped thinking about the man who lost his life saving his. He wondered who he was, what his life had been before the war brought him to Vietnam. Did he have a family, a wife, small children, as Alexander did? "Something's left unfinished," Alexander reflects now. "I think I've always been serious about it (finding information about the man) somehow. It was always in the back of my mind.'"
For 25 years he led veterans through the horrifying ghosts of post-traumatic stress, and slowly discovered he was bleeding from the condition, too. "When I was counseling people, I could hide behind the mask of working with other people." But as the men opened up their wounds, it brought Alexander's to the forefront and he began to work through his own PTSD. "It was like, 'physician, heal thyself.'"
Alexander bought a computer several years ago, but didn't know it would open the long-closed door leading to the man who lost his life in the old U34 helicopter.
Alexander's friend and fellow vet Gary Harlan showed him how to get onto a Web site devoted to the fallen soldiers of the Vietnam War. "When I first found about The Wall Web site, I went to it immediately," Alexander says.
The site asks you to enter a few pieces of information about the person you're looking for. He entered the man's branch of service and death date, and up came Staff Sgt. Robert Walsh. There was his photo and a short bio, with short commemorative comments from those who served with him, as well as tributes from fellow soldiers who didn't even know him.
"I made contact with some of the guys who knew him, and I was able to find out it was him." The first fellow soldier who e-mailed him back wondered how Alexander found him, and he replied that it was The Wall site. "It was pretty emotional for me. I told him, 'I was on that chopper.'"
From those first e-mails, he was connected to Walsh's two daughters. Tentatively, the daughters are scheduled to attend the 2008 reunion of the USMC Combat Helicopter Association in Washington, D.C., this coming Thursday through Saturday, as are Don and his wife, Dixie.
Alexander will also meet other members of Walsh's crew. One of them sent him a photo of the refurbished helicopter, call number YN19 -- Yankee November 19 -- in which he was rescued, and in which Walsh died. It will be on display at the helicopter-crew reunion. Found in a boneyard in Arizona in 2000, several crew members rebuilt her, and fly her in East Coast airshows.
As Don and Dixie prepare to travel to Washington, he shuffles papers he has taken from the Web site with information on several men who died while he served with them. In the margins, he has handwritten notes: Beside Amador's bio are the words, "Lay beside him in creek bed." Next to Jimmy Brais: "Saw Doc Long treating him in creek bed as I went by them." Next to that of Navy corpsman Lawrence Steiner, with whom he traded stories of their wives and babies back home: "Doc Steiner. Talked with daughter he had never seen, 2002."
Next to Robert Walsh: "Died on my (medevac) chopper. Have always regretted I could do nothing for him." And next to the bio of a 19-year-old corporal, in a memory so personal that I don't use his name: "Screaming on 'trail.'"
"Is that morbid?" he asks now. "No, it's not morbid. When you go through the fires of hell with someone else, you have every right to vividly remember your time with them, the best and the most horrifying and gruesome. You deserve to wonder what their lives were like before hell, who they were, did they have families, who are their surviving family members today.
"I'd like to know about every one of these guys," Alexander reflects.
"The other evening I finally realized I'd just made another step toward closure. That's what this trip is all about, closure."
Ellie