thedrifter
05-31-09, 08:52 AM
The Wall That Heals
By Tom Netherland
Special to the Herald Courier
Published: May 31, 2009
Photographer Wants To Record Veterans’ Stories June 4-7 Through His Project “IF”
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – It don’t mean nothin’.
Except that it does. Now anyway.
“It” being Project “IF,” founded by Vietnam War veteran Woody Woodruff in conjunction with The Library of Congress and its Veterans History Project.
Woodruff hopes to interview American veterans of all combat wars as a means of collecting their oral histories for storage and public access via The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
“This has never been tried before,” Woodruff said.
Woodruff’s Project “IF” will debut on June 4 and initially run through June 7, coinciding with the visit of The Wall That Heals to Johnson City.
A half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., The Wall That Heals will ceremoniously ease into Johnson City on June 2, be assembled on June 3 and open via grand ceremony at 10 a.m. June 4 at The Liberty Bell Track at Freedom Hall in Johnson City.
As with its full-size counterpart, The Wall That Heals contains each of more than 58,000 names of Americans who died during the Vietnam War. Woodruff knew many of those men, more than he will say.
There are thousands of untold stories.
“My goal is to get at least 100 stories [during the Wall’s visit],” Woodruff said.
WOODY’S STORY
Woodruff eased into a room in Bristol, Tenn., on Tuesday, sat and crossed a leg.
“Call me Woody,” he said.
Woody it is.
Born and reared in Jonesborough, Woody grew up much as countless American boys had before and have since. He played guard and linebacker on Jonesborough High School’s football team. He played catcher and pitcher on the baseball team.
He loved rhythm and blues music of the era.
“Sam and Dave, James Brown, Percy Sledge, Otis Redding,” Woody said.
Woody had a mother and a father and a brother and a sister and more girlfriends than he could count. He was an all-American boy.
And like many an American boy, his father and his grandfather had served in the military, each of them in the Marine Corps.
And so soon after he graduated high school at age 17, Woody joined the Marines. War in Vietnam was escalating by then, so it was only a matter of time before Woody was sent to war in a place that even his vivid imagination could not fathom.
VIETNAM WAR
“I had just turned 18 when I shipped out to Vietnam,” Woody said. “They played a Jefferson Airplane song and Country Joe and the Fish’s ‘The Fish Cheer & I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag’ on the bus that took us to the airport on the way to Vietnam.”
By then, Woody had received his assignment. He would take photographs in Vietnam as a combat photographer.
“I had never taken even one picture before I joined the military,” Woody said.
He soon found out that even a photographer during wartime equated to dangerous work. Bullets, after all, do not discriminate.
“I arrived in Vietnam on April 22, 1968,” Woody said. “We had just lost four photographers.”
No time for small talk and get-to-knows, Woody was sent to the field of battle right away.
“Then, some North Vietnamese shot the antenna off my radio after only 30 minutes,” Woody said. “That was my first indication that my feet were not under my daddy’s table anymore.”
That was nothing. OK, rude awakening, but that was slight indication of the carnage that lay ahead.
“The first real combat I saw was with the 4th Marines in Dai Do. It was 120 degrees,” Woody said. “That’s where I first saw guys get their arms blown off, their legs cut off, boys holding their intestines in.”
Yet Woody said he did not take a single photograph of a dead Marine.
“That was the code,” he said. “You just didn’t do that.”
SHORT ROUND
Woody’s nickname in Vietnam was Flash. As with most soldiers, he knew most of his buddies by their nicknames. They had such names as Grease, Easy Ed, Bum, Iron Head, Pancho and Mack.
Then, there was Short Round. Woody never knew either his first or last name.
“He was only about 5 feet tall,” Woody said. “They assigned him to me. I showed him how to pack his pack, store his film, which f-stops to use.”
Short Round was from the north, Ohio perhaps, Woody said. No family details, names of girlfriends, particular likes or loves or well, much of anything.
“He had blue eyes,” Woody said. “Had a cheerful smile. Had a nasty temper.”
Woody only knew Short Round for about three weeks.
“When he got there, we hadn’t lost anybody for a month or two,” Woody said.
So into the field they went, Woody and Short Round. Battle was on as bullets whistled all about them.
“I told him to stay on my back,” Woody said. “It was in a hot LZ – taking fire. Short Round was right on my back. The firefight only lasted about 45 seconds.”
When the firing stopped, Woody looked around for his small-framed friend. Then, he found him.
“He had gotten shot in the head,” Woody said, whose eyes suddenly saddened.
Woody paused. He looked down and then up.
“He died in my arms,” he said slowly. “He was asking for his mother.”
Woody was helpless. He was a trained photographer, not a doctor or a nurse, and so beyond providing comfort to his dying friend, he could do nothing to save him.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Woody said. “But I made a battlefield promise that when I came back home I would become a nurse.”
WOODY POST VIETNAM
After Vietnam, Woody kept his battlefield promise. He said he worked for 23 years at Johnson City Medical Center as a nurse, 10 of them as an intensive care nurse and 13 as a trauma nurse.
Now 61, the divorced father of two children and grandfather of four grandchildren, once again works as a photographer. He runs Metro Productions and Photography in downtown Johnson City, through which he specializes in shooting model portfolios and weddings.
But Vietnam changed him forever. Even now, 40 years after he left Vietnam, the scars remain deep inside and far from sight, but he knows.
“[Vietnam] was hell,” Woody said. “But I’ve been through worse.”
Indeed, three months after having to tell a mother that her 4-year-old, teddy bear-clutching little girl didn’t make it through surgery, Woody retired as a nurse. He went back to photography.
“I’m a damn good photographer,” he said, “and I still love what I do.”
THE WALL
When the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. was dedicated on Nov. 13, 1982, it quickly became a site of solace. Woody decided to visit.
“I made it halfway down the wall, saw one name … and I lost it,” Woody said, still bothered by the experience. “It was someone I knew.”
His name was Shadigh, spelled as such as best Woody can recall.
“I ran my fingers across his name,” he said. “I don’t know what it was, but it brought back the memories – the good times more than the bad.”
Seems that Shadigh was quite the character.
“Shadigh was a comedian. Pothead from the word go,” Woody said, followed by a pause and a look around. “He got killed by an artillery round.”
PROJECT “IF”
Woody founded Project “IF” a mere two months ago.
Officials connected with the touring The Wall That Heals had asked him for help, which prompted his idea to seek and gather veterans and their stories.
“With Project ‘IF,’ I want all the veterans of all the wars to tells their stories,” Woody said. “Some historian or high school kid would then be able to go to The Library of Congress [in Washington, D.C.] and hear what the wars were really like from every aspect.”
Not only historians can learn from the men who fought the wars. Their families, too, will be able to hear words that for many would not come when speaking to a family member.
“There’s so many veterans who have not opened up to their children about their stories,” Woody said. “With Project ‘IF,’ veterans can come in and tell their stories. Then, maybe in their will or death bed, they can tell their kids to go to The Library of Congress to hear their stories.”
Interested veterans can come to The Wall That Heals exhibit between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. from June 4-7, sit down with an interviewer and tell their story. Also, Woody said that he is in need of volunteers to work as interviewers and transcribers.
SHORT ROUND FOUND
Woody can speak of most anything – his divorce, his kids and his numerous past girlfriends. He can speak of horrors seen in Vietnam, of the deaths of nameless men he never knew, of jungle rot and the Viet Cong.
But two little words spoken, Short Round, the little friend he knew for three weeks in hell, bring water to Woody’s hound dog eyes.
“I spent probably 15 to 20 hours at The Library of Congress trying to find his name,” he said. “One of my open wounds about the war is that I still don’t know his name.”
Then, on Wednesday afternoon in his photo-lined office in Johnson City, Woody held a photograph in his hands. Pictured were a half-dozen or so American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Three had their backs to the camera.
“All three of those men with their backs to the camera died,” Woody said.
To the left and to the right stood taller men. In the middle stood a short, child-sized fella.
“That’s Short Round,” Woody said, beaming at his just-discovered photograph.
Woody flipped the photo over. Forty years after losing his friend that he knew only as Short Round, he had a name and the date he died, each of which were written on the back of the photo.
His name was Garrison, which was most likely his last name, and he died on July 20, 1968. Woody could barely speak.
“I finally found him,” he said.
IT DON’T MEAN NOTHIN’
Imagine seeing your buddies die in disgustingly horrific ways. Every new day could be the day a mortar shell finds and rips you to shreds.
So the phrase, “It don’t mean nothin’ ” developed into heavy use during the Vietnam War.
“When you’re out there in the bush and people were dying, yes, you mourn for your buddies and it takes part of your soul,” Woody said, “but it wasn’t you. That phrase sort of paraphrases how we dealt with it all.”
Soldiers in Vietnam adopted the term to compartmentalize the horrors as a way of maintaining some semblance of sanity.
“It keeps you from going crazy. It don’t mean nothin’ was our release valve,” Woody said. “Now, Project ‘IF,’ I want that to be our calling card.”
TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at features@bristolnews.com .
Video
http://www.tricities.com/tri/news/local/article/the_wall_that_heals/24783/
Ellie
By Tom Netherland
Special to the Herald Courier
Published: May 31, 2009
Photographer Wants To Record Veterans’ Stories June 4-7 Through His Project “IF”
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – It don’t mean nothin’.
Except that it does. Now anyway.
“It” being Project “IF,” founded by Vietnam War veteran Woody Woodruff in conjunction with The Library of Congress and its Veterans History Project.
Woodruff hopes to interview American veterans of all combat wars as a means of collecting their oral histories for storage and public access via The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
“This has never been tried before,” Woodruff said.
Woodruff’s Project “IF” will debut on June 4 and initially run through June 7, coinciding with the visit of The Wall That Heals to Johnson City.
A half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., The Wall That Heals will ceremoniously ease into Johnson City on June 2, be assembled on June 3 and open via grand ceremony at 10 a.m. June 4 at The Liberty Bell Track at Freedom Hall in Johnson City.
As with its full-size counterpart, The Wall That Heals contains each of more than 58,000 names of Americans who died during the Vietnam War. Woodruff knew many of those men, more than he will say.
There are thousands of untold stories.
“My goal is to get at least 100 stories [during the Wall’s visit],” Woodruff said.
WOODY’S STORY
Woodruff eased into a room in Bristol, Tenn., on Tuesday, sat and crossed a leg.
“Call me Woody,” he said.
Woody it is.
Born and reared in Jonesborough, Woody grew up much as countless American boys had before and have since. He played guard and linebacker on Jonesborough High School’s football team. He played catcher and pitcher on the baseball team.
He loved rhythm and blues music of the era.
“Sam and Dave, James Brown, Percy Sledge, Otis Redding,” Woody said.
Woody had a mother and a father and a brother and a sister and more girlfriends than he could count. He was an all-American boy.
And like many an American boy, his father and his grandfather had served in the military, each of them in the Marine Corps.
And so soon after he graduated high school at age 17, Woody joined the Marines. War in Vietnam was escalating by then, so it was only a matter of time before Woody was sent to war in a place that even his vivid imagination could not fathom.
VIETNAM WAR
“I had just turned 18 when I shipped out to Vietnam,” Woody said. “They played a Jefferson Airplane song and Country Joe and the Fish’s ‘The Fish Cheer & I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag’ on the bus that took us to the airport on the way to Vietnam.”
By then, Woody had received his assignment. He would take photographs in Vietnam as a combat photographer.
“I had never taken even one picture before I joined the military,” Woody said.
He soon found out that even a photographer during wartime equated to dangerous work. Bullets, after all, do not discriminate.
“I arrived in Vietnam on April 22, 1968,” Woody said. “We had just lost four photographers.”
No time for small talk and get-to-knows, Woody was sent to the field of battle right away.
“Then, some North Vietnamese shot the antenna off my radio after only 30 minutes,” Woody said. “That was my first indication that my feet were not under my daddy’s table anymore.”
That was nothing. OK, rude awakening, but that was slight indication of the carnage that lay ahead.
“The first real combat I saw was with the 4th Marines in Dai Do. It was 120 degrees,” Woody said. “That’s where I first saw guys get their arms blown off, their legs cut off, boys holding their intestines in.”
Yet Woody said he did not take a single photograph of a dead Marine.
“That was the code,” he said. “You just didn’t do that.”
SHORT ROUND
Woody’s nickname in Vietnam was Flash. As with most soldiers, he knew most of his buddies by their nicknames. They had such names as Grease, Easy Ed, Bum, Iron Head, Pancho and Mack.
Then, there was Short Round. Woody never knew either his first or last name.
“He was only about 5 feet tall,” Woody said. “They assigned him to me. I showed him how to pack his pack, store his film, which f-stops to use.”
Short Round was from the north, Ohio perhaps, Woody said. No family details, names of girlfriends, particular likes or loves or well, much of anything.
“He had blue eyes,” Woody said. “Had a cheerful smile. Had a nasty temper.”
Woody only knew Short Round for about three weeks.
“When he got there, we hadn’t lost anybody for a month or two,” Woody said.
So into the field they went, Woody and Short Round. Battle was on as bullets whistled all about them.
“I told him to stay on my back,” Woody said. “It was in a hot LZ – taking fire. Short Round was right on my back. The firefight only lasted about 45 seconds.”
When the firing stopped, Woody looked around for his small-framed friend. Then, he found him.
“He had gotten shot in the head,” Woody said, whose eyes suddenly saddened.
Woody paused. He looked down and then up.
“He died in my arms,” he said slowly. “He was asking for his mother.”
Woody was helpless. He was a trained photographer, not a doctor or a nurse, and so beyond providing comfort to his dying friend, he could do nothing to save him.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Woody said. “But I made a battlefield promise that when I came back home I would become a nurse.”
WOODY POST VIETNAM
After Vietnam, Woody kept his battlefield promise. He said he worked for 23 years at Johnson City Medical Center as a nurse, 10 of them as an intensive care nurse and 13 as a trauma nurse.
Now 61, the divorced father of two children and grandfather of four grandchildren, once again works as a photographer. He runs Metro Productions and Photography in downtown Johnson City, through which he specializes in shooting model portfolios and weddings.
But Vietnam changed him forever. Even now, 40 years after he left Vietnam, the scars remain deep inside and far from sight, but he knows.
“[Vietnam] was hell,” Woody said. “But I’ve been through worse.”
Indeed, three months after having to tell a mother that her 4-year-old, teddy bear-clutching little girl didn’t make it through surgery, Woody retired as a nurse. He went back to photography.
“I’m a damn good photographer,” he said, “and I still love what I do.”
THE WALL
When the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. was dedicated on Nov. 13, 1982, it quickly became a site of solace. Woody decided to visit.
“I made it halfway down the wall, saw one name … and I lost it,” Woody said, still bothered by the experience. “It was someone I knew.”
His name was Shadigh, spelled as such as best Woody can recall.
“I ran my fingers across his name,” he said. “I don’t know what it was, but it brought back the memories – the good times more than the bad.”
Seems that Shadigh was quite the character.
“Shadigh was a comedian. Pothead from the word go,” Woody said, followed by a pause and a look around. “He got killed by an artillery round.”
PROJECT “IF”
Woody founded Project “IF” a mere two months ago.
Officials connected with the touring The Wall That Heals had asked him for help, which prompted his idea to seek and gather veterans and their stories.
“With Project ‘IF,’ I want all the veterans of all the wars to tells their stories,” Woody said. “Some historian or high school kid would then be able to go to The Library of Congress [in Washington, D.C.] and hear what the wars were really like from every aspect.”
Not only historians can learn from the men who fought the wars. Their families, too, will be able to hear words that for many would not come when speaking to a family member.
“There’s so many veterans who have not opened up to their children about their stories,” Woody said. “With Project ‘IF,’ veterans can come in and tell their stories. Then, maybe in their will or death bed, they can tell their kids to go to The Library of Congress to hear their stories.”
Interested veterans can come to The Wall That Heals exhibit between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. from June 4-7, sit down with an interviewer and tell their story. Also, Woody said that he is in need of volunteers to work as interviewers and transcribers.
SHORT ROUND FOUND
Woody can speak of most anything – his divorce, his kids and his numerous past girlfriends. He can speak of horrors seen in Vietnam, of the deaths of nameless men he never knew, of jungle rot and the Viet Cong.
But two little words spoken, Short Round, the little friend he knew for three weeks in hell, bring water to Woody’s hound dog eyes.
“I spent probably 15 to 20 hours at The Library of Congress trying to find his name,” he said. “One of my open wounds about the war is that I still don’t know his name.”
Then, on Wednesday afternoon in his photo-lined office in Johnson City, Woody held a photograph in his hands. Pictured were a half-dozen or so American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Three had their backs to the camera.
“All three of those men with their backs to the camera died,” Woody said.
To the left and to the right stood taller men. In the middle stood a short, child-sized fella.
“That’s Short Round,” Woody said, beaming at his just-discovered photograph.
Woody flipped the photo over. Forty years after losing his friend that he knew only as Short Round, he had a name and the date he died, each of which were written on the back of the photo.
His name was Garrison, which was most likely his last name, and he died on July 20, 1968. Woody could barely speak.
“I finally found him,” he said.
IT DON’T MEAN NOTHIN’
Imagine seeing your buddies die in disgustingly horrific ways. Every new day could be the day a mortar shell finds and rips you to shreds.
So the phrase, “It don’t mean nothin’ ” developed into heavy use during the Vietnam War.
“When you’re out there in the bush and people were dying, yes, you mourn for your buddies and it takes part of your soul,” Woody said, “but it wasn’t you. That phrase sort of paraphrases how we dealt with it all.”
Soldiers in Vietnam adopted the term to compartmentalize the horrors as a way of maintaining some semblance of sanity.
“It keeps you from going crazy. It don’t mean nothin’ was our release valve,” Woody said. “Now, Project ‘IF,’ I want that to be our calling card.”
TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at features@bristolnews.com .
Video
http://www.tricities.com/tri/news/local/article/the_wall_that_heals/24783/
Ellie