Reflections from The Wall

Robert B. Robeson, Lincoln, NE

18 October 1988

My palms started to sweat and my throat tightened and became dry as I neared the end of an extended odyssey to say goodbye to some gallant and special friends who’d been waiting patiently for nearly 10 years to have me drop by. The last time I’d seen them was in 1969-70 in Viet-Nam, as a helicopter medical evacuation pilot, with dead and wounded overflowing my aircraft’s cargo compartment. On this day in our nation’s capital, though, I was merely a middle-aged, retired soldier trying to complete a long, overdue quest.

Most walls keep us apart, but the Vietnam Veterans Memorial had drawn me from Nebraska like steel filings to a magnet — a tide tugging me home. As I approached the twin black granite scrolls that gracefully join in the center on a carpet of green in a peaceful corner of the Mall, I was awestruck. Nearly two decades after my initial combat involvement, I knew in an instant of awareness that whatever the people whose names had been grit-blasted into that wall and I had been to each other, we still were. They all share equal billing on this memorial erected to bear the unbearable grief of our Viet-Nam involvement and to note the brevity of human life in time of war, any war.

Memories of combat and the personalities therein can be likened to a yo-yo. You can watch them fall away toward the end of the string, but they never die there. They merely sleep. The point in time always comes when, in a moment of reflection, they roll back up into your hand again. As long as they are tied to your life and soul in this manner, you can be assured that they will keep returning to your thoughts on a regular basis, like swallows to Capistrano.

I didn’t stop to check the alphabetical directories located at each end of the memorial. Instead, I stubbornly tramped The Wall looking for a panel marked “1970.” When I found it I checked each row for the name “John R. Hill” — Captain John Richard Hill, missing in action. It was located in the center of panel 11 west, on line 58. For long minutes, I stood there silently, gazing at his name and those of our comrades who surrounded him. The images of earlier days and faces returned, leapfrogging each other like children at play.

People passing by whispered, trying not to disturb the tranquility of the setting or those who stood transfixed before this commanding stone presence. The brooding black wall drew my full attention. My fingers reached instinctively to softly trace John’s name and others carved on that polished panel. Remembrances of life and death in a place called ’Nam had been burned into my brain like a brand.

John Richard Hill

When I first met John in 1970, we were both newly-appointed “Dustoff” air ambulance detachment commanders. He commanded the 237th Medical Detachment in Quang Tri — an hour flight up the coast to the north — and I had just become commander of the 236th Medical Detachment in Da Nang, located at Red Beach on the edge of Da Nang Harbor. We both belonged to the 61st Medical Battalion. Not long after this initial introduction, we flew together to battalion headquarters at Qui Nhon for a commanders’ meeting. There we became acquainted not only as aviators and commanders, but also as friends. A couple of the things I remember John mentioning then were that his wife was a nurse and that he hailed from Waynesburg, PA.

When he dropped me off in Da Nang on our way back from Qui Nhon, I distinctly remember feeling compelled to share something with him. “John,” I said, as we waited for his bird to be refueled on our flight line, “anytime you’re down this way or just passing through, feel free to stay over. We have extra cots, bedding and plenty of room for you and your crew. No use pushing it after dark or in bad weather. ‘Get-home-itis’ has wiped out more of us than Charlie (the enemy) has.” I wouldn’t realize how prophetic these words would be until a few months later — 27 April 1970, to be exact.

The word circulated quickly in hushed tones throughout our compound. John, his copilot, a warrant officer, medic and crew chief had been flying up the rocky coastline toward Phu Bai in marginal weather conditions, trying to sneak home low-level under the cloud cover just above the surface of the South China Sea. The weather had suddenly deteriorated to nearly zero-zero visibility when John made the decision to turn around and head back toward Da Nang. The warrant officer, who was flying, attempted a 180-degree turn. In the process of banking sharply, their main rotor blades made contact with the water. They crashed offshore.

All four crewmembers managed to get out before the aircraft sank. The medic and crew chief in the cargo compartment were wearing heavy armored vests. This weight took them under before they could get them off. The warrant officer began swimming toward a buoy not far away. He heard John call for help behind him because his arm was injured or broken and he was having difficulty swimming. When he turned to provide assistance, John had already disappeared beneath the waves. The warrant officer swam to the buoy and was later rescued. John’s body was never recovered and has been listed as missing in action ever since. It was an accident of war. It could have happened to anyone under similar circumstances, but that time it was John’s misfortune, along with two enlisted members of his flight crew.

Inscribed in granite

All the names of those who lost their lives and of those who remain missing are inscribed on the mirror-like surface of those V-shaped granite walls, whose panels are as flat as still water, in the order they were taken from us. The latest 24 names added to this roll call of the dead bring the current number of names on the memorial to 58,156. Each of the 250-foot-long walls is composed of 70 separate inscribed granite panels. The largest panels have 137 lines of names; the shortest have one line.

Many of these young people were barely out of high school. The average age of a soldier in this conflict was 19. Viet-Nam belonged to their generation and they were all the perfect age to participate, sacrifice and pass on. All of them gave up two lives: the one they were living and the one they would have lived.

During the four days I spent in Washington, I visited John and my friends at the memorial four different times. Passing before these granite mirrors in the middle of the night and observing the cool, still universe was refreshing. There is something about the silence and the beauty of lights along The Wall’s base — with the Washington Monument also reflected from this memorial — that I will never forget. The lights atop the Washington Monument in the background are like stars in the sky placed there to watch over these fallen brothers and sisters from a distance.

Gray hairs have appeared above my ears and my hair is thinning in the back. I’ve put on some weight, crow’s feet have appeared around my eyes, and time has added a few wrinkles here and there to my face, but none of these Americans ever grew old. Now they never will. They didn’t have to deal with a life of physical or mental disfigurement, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Agent Orange or flashbacks. They discovered that the length of life is as uncertain as the morning fog. Now you see it, soon it’s gone. For them, there’s nothing left to worry about. Only survivors can shed tears, be angry or feel guilty.

Reflections from The Wall are like laser beams to the soul. The list begins in the center of the memorial and ends in the center. As you stand reading the inscribed names, you see yourself reflected in the black granite. Regardless of from which angle you view it you are looking at yourself through the names of the dead. You are a part of it. The Wall and those whose names appear on it, in turn, will always be a part of us, too. When it rains, all of the names disappear because water makes the etched portions of the stone take on the same color as its polished surface. When we weep, the names are not easily seen, either — until the weeping is over.

Healing the soul

I’m sorry it took me five years to make the journey to say goodbye, but this time was needed to ready myself emotionally for seeing them all at once.

How far removed from the horrors of combat and its aftermath this memorial is. The bitterness and anger I felt when remembering all those lifeless and broken bodies that we hauled out of the rice paddies, mountains and jungles of ‘Nam was laid to rest here. I could “numb myself out” and forget lowlife hippies and collegiate intellectuals spitting in the faces of returning combat veterans at the San Francisco Airport; the American protestors who chanted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the N-L-F (National Liberation Front) is going to win;” and the young soldier with an arm missing who was asked by an older man, “Lose it in Viet-Nam?” When the answer was “Yes,” the elder American replied, “Serves you right!” It all happened so long ago.

Meeting John Hill and my other friends, again, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was a moving and memorable moment. Now their names — one of the most sacred parts of a person — are forever relegated like sand castles to time and tide.

When I viewed Frederick Hart’s sculpture of the three servicemen near the west end of the memorial, a sensation started somewhere in my spine and rippled upward in tingly waves to my scalp, raising goose bumps as they raced along. There we were. That was us in our youth, a perfect reproduction of idealistic young people confronted by the terrors of fighting, killing and being killed by other human beings — alone and vulnerable. Since it is the young who traditionally fight and die for a country’s foreign policy, the statue of these three weary young men — seemingly leaning on each other for support as they chance upon this monument to their fallen comrades — captures the essence of our extended struggle in Viet-Nam in an attempt to bring freedom to oppressed people or to stabilize regional conflicts.

Viet-Nam was my generation’s war, but each combat veteran has his own “John Hill” to carry forever in his memory bank, regardless of the conflict or the manner in which they died. It may be a person who saved your life while losing his, a buddy who brought humor to harried and horrific moments and made you realize that all you can do is your best and not to take yourself too seriously, or it may be a person who taught you the valuable fact that love does exist in combat and that there were people in every branch of service — whom you’d never met — who were willing to risk their lives on your behalf. Not because you were black or white, a general or private, or a Democrat or Republican — but because you were an American.

As most theatergoers know, at the end of Hamlet the stage is littered with dead bodies, but some of the people are still alive, and life must go on. Even the tragic ending, in other words, sends some characters and the entire audience out into the challenges of “yet a little while,” of one more and perhaps several more chances. The catharsis at the end of tragedy may find the protagonist dead but it leaves the rest alive and somehow impelled to continue.

We’ve all had to come to terms with the trauma of our war involvements. After all these years, I’ve learned that it’s all right to have survived combat when so many others didn’t. Bonus time and opportunities have been allocated to me, for some reason, and my responsibility is to be wise in their use, but I will never forget those who have suffered so long in so many conflicts or who have given so much for others at such young ages. Because the fact remains, in death, courage and even the simplest human gesture or kindness, we often touch others in ways we might never imagine. These special comrades understood the terms “sacrifice,” “devotion,” “honor” and “duty” better than most in our society. All I can say is “God bless them, every one.”