Don's Coming Home
Page 3
 

On August 1,1965, Don and his battalion boarded the U.S. Naval Ship, Maurice Rose, for their month long ocean voyage to Vietnam.  I didn't hear from Don again for about six weeks. It was mid September when a letter arrived telling me about life aboard ship.  He wrote that it was great to be back on dry land and he and his unit were setting up a huge base camp in a place called An Khe.  He described a giant airfield that was being built that everyone called the Golf Course.  It was going to be the largest helicopter base in the world.  He also explained that he and his unit were doing a lot of training in and around a place called Happy Valley and that it was good to be back on dry land again after having spent a month aboard ship.  He closed by asking me to say hi to everyone in Lake Charles and promised to write again soon. It was a wonderful letter.  I read it over and over and even carried it in my purse so others could also read it.  It was as if somehow that letter was proof that everything was going to be all right.  A couple of weeks later I received another letter from Don with a couple of photographs.  One was of him in combat gear and another was of a scorpion he found in his bedroll.  "Things were fine", he wrote and promised to write again soon.

It was about a week or so later when I was getting ready for my shift at the hospital that the radio caught my attention. It was the network news and they were reporting a major battle, taking place in Vietnam. I heard the words 1st Air Cavalry and 7th Cavalry and my blood froze. I immediately called my parents in North Carolina. My father answered the telephone and I blurted out, "Have you heard the news? Dons unit is in combat. It was on the radio." "Now relax," my father said, "It was on the TV news last night and your Mother was in such a state that I called an old Army friend at Fort Benning and the unit involved was the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry. Don's in the 2nd Battalion of the 7th".

Every day I would go to work, listening for the news before and after my shift. My parents called me almost every day or I called them. My Mom called one Thursday morning and told me she knew Don was dead, she just knew it. Dad dismissed it, but I certainly worried more. No one can deny that there's a special connection between mothers and sons and of course, Don being her first born, had a special bond with mom.

About ten days after the battles of LZ X-ray and LZ Albany our family received our official notification. By today's standards the notification was crude and poorly done. My later understanding was that the Army was simply not prepared for the loss of that many solders at one time. I learned they didn't even have enough body bags in Viet Nam to accommodate the losses.

My father called me sobbing. He had just gotten off the phone with Don's wife Sylvia, in Houston. She had just been delivered a telegram. The deliveryman had no idea what he was delivering until, as he was leaving, he heard Sylvia scream. She was alone in her apartment with her baby son Kevin when she read that Don had been killed. Her parents lived about 60 miles away and my parents were in North Carolina. It was a terrible time to be alone and separated from family. I didn't leave my apartment for several days. I was numb with grief.

My parents drove from North Carolina to Sylvia's in Houston. There they arranged for Don's memorial service at McNeese State, It was to be held in the same church that Don and Sylvia were married in only a couple of years before. There were many problems in arranging for Don's return. We couldn't get an exact date for his arrival. We were told there were not enough officers to escort all the bodies coming home for burial. The protocol is to have a soldier of equal or higher rank escort the remains. Finally, we got a date and all arrangements were completed, and we were notified Don would arrive by train the next day.

We all went to the station in a state of shock, grief, anger, and numb from days of sobbing. When the train arrived the entire family, along with an ROTC honor guard from the college stood waiting for the escort officer from the passenger car. I looked down to the end of that awful train and saw a wooden crate containing Don's coffin being unloaded, they were loading it on to a large baggage cart. An officer jumped down from the freight car unaware of our presence and placed a flag over the crate. My brother, my soul mate, and the man I admired most in my life, my heart--brought home in a wooden crate. My wonderful brother coming home in a crate.

The Memorial Service was held the next day. The church was full to overflowing. People were lined up outside and down the sidewalk into the street. The McNeese ROTC Pershing Rifles provided the honor guard and pallbearers. The local TV station filmed the service and it was on the local news at 6 and 11 that evening. Don was the first McNeese alumni to die in Vietnam and was still well remembered in Lake Charles.