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VIETNAM ECHOES IN IRAQ FOR ONE VETERAN --
Wes Harvey walks on his treadmill and
lifts a hand to adjust his oxygen tube.
Story here...
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=114214&ran=156807
Story below:
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Vietnam echoes in Iraq for one veteran
By JOANNE KIMBERLIN, The Virginian-Pilot
"I prayed one prayer when we took off from San Francisco ... when I
watched the coast of California going under that plane, I said: 'God,
please don't let me be captured or mutilated... Please just let me be
killed'... I thought, well, this is it. Goodbye, America. I'll never see
you again."
- Wes Harvey, recalling November 1967
NORFOLK - Wes Harvey walks on his treadmill. He lifts a hand to adjust
his oxygen tube. On the TV news, soldiers in sand-colored uniforms wage
a dusty war - a war that seems so different than his jungle one, and yet
so eerily the same.
The young soldiers remind him of things he has tried to forget. Memories
that come in the night to beat against the inside of his skull.
Nearly 40 years ago, Harvey went to Vietnam. He survived the war, only
to come home and fight a lifelong battle with the effects of Agent
Orange. He's no authority on things military. Just a guy who's been
there, and has paid for it nearly every day since.
Not that it's all bad. There are gentle times, when the pain opens its
fist and his wife lays her head on his shoulder and the sun sizzles
orange and pink into the Elizabeth River behind their home.
Other days are spent in bed racked with tremors, his chest heaving for
breath. Doctors have written him off more than once. It's a source of
pride that he's now 65.
Harvey doesn't feel sorry for himself. He loves his country. He blames
no one. It was what it was. It is what it is.
He does worry about the fresh-faced soldiers. He knows that as much as
times change, war never does. Unthinkable things happen. They leave
scars that can last a lifetime.
Harvey didn't question the right or wrong of his war. He doesn't
question the right or wrong of this one. He went for the same reason the
new soldiers go. Because nations have always asked that of their men.
And someone is expected to answer.
No regrets. No apologies. Just the reflections and recollections of, as
he sometimes calls himself, a "dead man walking."
Four decades and 4,000 miles separate Vietnam and Iraq. Yet the longer
today's war continues, the more it's compared to yesterday's.
Some say that's unfair - nothing more than an anti-war tactic intended
to link Iraq with an infamously ill-fated effort. They say Iraq is a
battle for homeland security, while Vietnam was a Cold War chess match -
bloody, but remote.
Others say shades of Vietnam are unavoidable. It wasn't that long ago
that we were there, embroiled in someone else's civil war, trying to
plant the seeds of democracy, being picked off by the guerilla warfare
of the Viet Cong.
There is one undisputed similarity, sinking support at home.
In the late 1960s, climbing body counts in Vietnam sparked a bitter -
and sometimes violent - social divide that ultimately pressured a U.S.
withdrawal.
As for Iraq, a CNN poll conducted last month indicated that just 38
percent of Americans back the war, compared with the 72 percent who were
on board just after the fighting began.
The poll also asked how many feel Iraq "has turned into a situation like
the United States faced in the Vietnam War."
More than half - 52 percent - said they did.
Harvey sees the ties. In his mirror, there is a silver-haired, thick-set
man who walks with a shuffle. In his past, there was a square-jawed,
strapping soldier in a crisp uniform.
He settles into his favorite armchair. The couple's poodle jumps into
his lap. Harvey strokes the soft ears absent-mindedly and allows his
thoughts to roam back.
Back to his war. To a time when he was a wide-eyed kid thrust into an
alien culture. A place where the enemy was willing to accept astounding
losses for its cause. A place where it was hard to sort friend from foe.
His voice is deep - punctuated by gulps for air, graveled by the hard
road behind him.
"We were going down the street in Saigon... I saw this kid... sneaking
up on the side... low-down, crouched... running toward the jeep... we
were right downtown. There were people going across the intersection and
everything. I turned around and looked at this kid... I grabbed my
pistol and pulled it out... he turned around and ran... He had his hand
behind his back but when he ran he pulled it out and I could see what
looked like a grenade... he was going to dump that in our jeep and kill
us both... he was going to get us. A lot of our troops died like that."
Harvey's background did not prepare him for war. He grew up in Dover,
N.J., the son of a preacher in a family with eight kids. He wanted to be
a minister himself. He got married, worked his way through college. The
draft notice came almost as soon as he graduated.
As a young Army officer, he volunteered for Vietnam. He said he felt
spiritually led.
His wife was angry. His commander tried to talk him out of it. Half of
his family was against the war. Some of his brothers stopped speaking to
him.
Harvey landed in 'Nam as a 26-year-old first lieutenant - a maintenance
officer with the First Infantry Division, the "Big Red One" of World War
II fame. He was shuttled north toward Cambodia. On layovers, he was
hustled into a bunker.
"They liked to mortar the new guys," Harvey said of the enemy. "They
knew when our planes came in."
He wound up at Quan Loi, an Army outpost dug into the red dirt about 60
miles north of Saigon. A former French rubber plantation, Quan Loi was a
place where nothing added up. Vibrant birds darted through a deep jade
canopy. Bullets whizzed by out of nowhere.
Within two months of his arrival, the Tet Offensive began - the North's
year long, full-bore assault into the South. When battles raged near
Quan Loi, Harvey's crew followed the infantry into the thick of things,
where they plucked out damaged tanks and patched them up so they could
get back into the action.
Tet didn't turn out to be all the communist regime had hoped for, but it
was ferocious enough to sap public will back home and leave its mark on
those who stood in its way.
"The camp wasn't much. At least not our part. Just a bunch of trenches.
We had to build our own hooches and bunkers.... At night, the North
Vietnamese would come down by the thousands and try to overrun the base
camp.... We were so close to Cambodia and they knew we weren't allowed
to cross the border to chase them... so we'd work all day, then go down
to the perimeter and fight those guys off all night. Or lie in the
bunkers while they threw mortar at us. In no time, you were just
exhausted.... But they didn't quit. No matter how many we killed. They
just kept running into our guns, screaming and blowing this horn they
had. It had this certain sound. I can still hear it.
"Our biggest fear was running out of ammunition.... I made every bullet
count. Aim at the chest, pull the trigger, make sure he falls. Aim at
the chest, pull the trigger..."
More than 58,000 American troops died in Vietnam during the eight years
of major combat. Enemy deaths are estimated at 1.7 million. The toll
among Vietnamese civilians: anywhere from 2 million to 4 million.
Iraq has been less lethal - with 2,838 U.S. military personnel killed
since the war began 3-1/2 years ago. Death tolls for Iraqis vary wildly,
with anywhere from 40,000 to 600,000 civilians said to have perished as
a result of the war.
As for American troops, advances in medicine have saved untold lives.
During Vietnam, one in four wounds proved fatal. In Iraq, it's one in
10.
Better equipment also plays a role. Body armor, hardened Humvees,
robotic bomb defusers and remote-controlled weapons all help reduce the
number of casualties and the severity of wounds. Another factor: fewer
boots on the ground. At the peak of the Vietnam War, 500,000-plus U.S.
uniforms were in the country. Troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan have
hovered around 150,000.
Behind the smaller number, however, is a practice Harvey finds
troubling. Nearly one-third of those sent to Iraq and Afghanistan have
been sent more than once.
Harvey can't fathom asking anyone to report to the same war twice.
"You're lucky to survive it once," he said. "I would've never made it
again."
Hanging on a wall in his small den, a shadow box holds the tailfins of
two mortar shells. Harvey says they're souvenirs from a couple of very
close calls.
Fortified by an unusual mix of faith and fatalism, Harvey can laugh
about such things - about finding himself face down on the ground after
an explosion, certain he was dead and crawling toward the proverbial
"light." It turned out to be his flashlight lying next to him.
Other memories rasp in his throat. The ones about the other guys. His
eyes lock on to his listener's for support.
"He stepped into a booby trap... a hole in the ground... they used punji
stakes... needle-sharp bamboo sticks... dipped in water buffalo dung...
they'd set up this trap and cover it with leaves... we heard the crash
and the screaming... this guy was face down on these punji stakes... you
can't help a guy like that, you know what I'm saying? He would have, at
the best, two hours to live if we could get him out, but we had no way
to reach down in there - every time he would move, the stakes would go
deeper into his body - I kept hoping one would pierce his heart... and
the guy could die... this major came up... I walked away... I heard two
shots right in succession and the screaming stopped... there was total
silence... and for a moment, I thought, the war's over. "
Such a death tends to bring more death. Haditha comes to mind, where
Marines are accused of killing two dozen Iraqi civilians after a
roadside bombing killed one of their own in a city known as an insurgent
stronghold.
It is one of a string of incidents in Iraq in which Americans in uniform
have been charged with murder.
In response, a group of Vietnam veterans from Massachusetts has started
a legal defense fund for U.S. service members accused of war crimes.
The Vietnam vets - with eight Purple Hearts among them - say they're not
debating the guilt or innocence of the accused. They simply worry that
service members will be unfairly convicted for the kind of violence they
know can erupt in a split-second in a war zone.
Harvey understands the madness all too well.
"It wasn't unusual for us to come across the bodies of five or six men
who were American soldiers and they were mutilated terribly... and you
got war rage... it came from way down here... and it went all the way up
through your brain. And the hatred and the rage that you felt toward the
enemy... President Bush has said that if you harbor the enemy, then you
are the enemy - he never made those comments gender- or age-specific...
and that's the way we felt... those people who were obviously the wives
and children of Viet Cong out in those rice paddies were fair game....
You can't be in your right mind and fight a war. Something has to drive
you. It's either fear, or it's rage."
Rules of engagement are meant to restrain such powerful emotions. But
they can be frustrating to honor, particularly when the enemy doesn't.
Terrorists are prime violators. They target civilians, hide among the
innocents, torture and behead captives. That's why some grunts on the
ground were left shaking their heads when the military turned down a
chance in July to take out hundreds of bad guys at once.
The decision came to light after a TV news journalist posted a military
spy photo online in September. The grainy black and white photo showed
an estimated 190 Taliban fighters gathered in Afghanistan for the burial
of fellow insurgents killed in coalition operations.
After the photo appeared, U.S. military leaders acknowledged that they
were aware of the gathering, had the group in the sights of an unmanned
Predator drone, but decided not to take the shot. The rules of
battlefield engagement forbid attacks inside cemeteries.
In Harvey's opinion, war isn't the place for that kind of moral high
ground: "War has only one rule: Kill or be killed."
Agree or not, in the midst of Iraq's unpre-cedented media coverage, such
decisions play out in public like never before.
In Harvey's war - for better or worse - there was less scrutiny, despite
the fact that Vietnam was the first war to unfold across TV screens.
"We saw reporters," Harvey said, "but not many. Mostly they'd show up at
our camp when the USO people came."
Even so, plenty of small print was in place to govern the fighting, all
complicated by a maze of politics that often hog-tied U.S. military
capability. Of particular frustration at Quan Loi: the prohibition
against entering Cambodia, the enemy's refuge.
Now and then, Harvey says, the rules were quietly ignored. In September
1968, a helicopter went down near Quan Loi, killing all on board,
including the commander of Harvey's division, Maj. Gen. Keith Ware. The
soldiers retaliated:
"We targeted some North Vietnamese officers and captured them. We
'motivated' them. They talked. A huge pig roast involving hundreds of
NVA (North Vietnamese Army) officers and thousands of troops was planned
just over the border in Cambodia to celebrate the killing of Gen.
Ware... a plan was hatched... they never heard the B-52s coming... the
pig roast ended before dessert."
Quan Loi had the misfortune of being in one of the lushest areas of
South Vietnam. Leafy rubber trees and thick tropical forests provided
plentiful cover for the enemy. As a result, the area took more than its
share of the 20 million gallons of defoliant the United States sprayed
in Vietnam. The most heavily used chemical was stored inside 55-gallon
drums marked with an orange stripe: Agent Orange.
Later studies would connect the dioxin contained in Agent Orange to a
variety of cancers, birth defects and other health problems. Tens of
thousands of vets say they were exposed to the chemical and suffered
serious ill-effects. Still, it would take until 1993 for Congress to
authorize Agent Orange benefits.
The verdict is still out on Gulf War Syndrome, a baffling array of
symptoms veterans of the Iraq wars say they're experiencing.
The way Harvey views it: "Just because a soldier doesn't come home with
a Purple Heart doesn't mean he wasn't injured. If he did what his
country asked him to do, and he's suffering because of it, he should be
taken care of."
Harvey says the men of Quan Loi suspected Agent Orange was trouble. As
planes and choppers sprayed circles around the camp, those who could
would duck inside and button down their tents.
As a young officer, however, Harvey was expected to set an example. His
boss made that clear: "He said, 'I want you walking through the company
area to show these guys that it's safe.' "
"No matter where you were... somewhere you were going to be downwind. It
would come right across the base camp... I would get soaked to the skin.
We had two pairs of fatigues - one that was in the laundry and one we
wore and we wore it everyday until the laundry came back... we had a
shower once a week, if we were lucky... there was no where to wash or
spray off... the sun would dry it up on me and I'd get up the next day
and put the same pair of fatigues on and go back out and do my job...
and I just knew - I knew - this was a really bad thing."
Harvey left Vietnam in November 1968 with two Bronze Stars for
"meritorious service" and an emptiness in his soul. One plane ride and
he was back in The World, with the smell of the jungle still in his
nose. No one met him at the airport. His wife had moved on.
Plenty else had changed, too. His country seemed upside down. Peaceniks
were calling guys like him "baby killers." There were civil rights riots
in the streets. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy - both
assassinated. So much had happened in the year he'd been gone. He just
wanted to forget. Fade away.
He made his way back to his college town, Rochester, N.Y., where he shed
his uniform and got his old job back at Kodak.
The sickness entered his life around 1970. It began in his lungs, one of
what would eventually be eight cases of pneumonia. Then it moved to his
head. The long dark clouds of depression. It stalked his sleep with
nightmares. Ravaged his days with nausea and vomiting.
And so began an endless round of tubes, treatments and hospital s.
Eventually, Harvey's list of ailments would include various skin
cancers, gastrointestinal troubles, near-constant pain in his muscles,
joints and nerves. In the mid-1970s, he discovered he was sterile - news
that did little to help his second marriage. They divorced. A few years
later, Harvey married again.
It didn't go well. By 1990, Harvey says, he'd spiraled into despair. He
was agitated, unable to concentrate, plagued with suicidal thoughts.
That kind of mental torture follows many home from war. The numbers
range widely, but studies indicate that at least 20,000 Vietnam vets
returned, only to take their own lives. Surveys of Iraq vets reveal a
similar torment. Among those returning from war this year: Nearly 1,700
reported thoughts of hurting themselves, or feelings that they would be
better off dead.
Harvey was desperate. His third marriage fell apart. He underwent
electric shock treatments. Somehow, they eased the worst of his demons.
By now, he was 50. Kodak had kept him on all those years, but mostly out
of sympathy. Now, the company offered him early retirement. He took it.
Sandy, his fourth wife, entered the picture in 1992. Three years later,
the couple climbed into an RV, headed south, stopped in Hampton Roads
and fell for the area. They sank everything into a condo in Norfolk with
a breathtaking view of the Elizabeth River.
Eight years ago, Harvey began his fight for Agent Orange benefits from
the Department of Veterans Affairs. He also submitted a claim to the
Agent Orange settlement fund, a $180 million pool set up after a group
of Vietnam vets and their families sued the companies that made the
chemical.
The VA turned Harvey down. The settlement fund sent him $1,578.67. He
and Sandy laughed when they opened the envelope.
"I almost sent it back," he said.
In 2000, doctors found a large tumor in Harvey's upper left lung. They
ruled it inoperable and told him he had two to six months to live. That
was enough for the VA, which finally rated his condition as
"service-related" and began sending a monthly disability check.
Thirty-seven doses of radiation and eight chemo sessions later, the
tumor is gone and Harvey is still here.
And once again, young men put on uniforms and walk into the daily hell
of war. Harvey knows there are no easy answers, but he wonders if his
country remembers the lessons of its past, and the high cost of the
learning.
"This war now, it's going to be a hard one. I can't really see Iraq ever
being this pearl of democracy in the middle of all those people who hate
us. Our troops, they're exhausted. And the partisan politics in our own
country? They're stupid and they're killing us. But if we're going to
accomplish anything over there, we've got to send more troops. No one
wants to hear the 'D' word - but if we have to go back to the draft,
then that's what we have to do. I mean, our enemies are building huge
armies, and we're cutting back on ours?
"If we give up now, the whole thing collapses, just like it did in
Vietnam. The North overran the South and then they rounded up and killed
everyone who helped us. So what have you done then? What was any of it
for?"
Harvey sees one thing America seems to have learned well from Vietnam.
Troops come home to a hero's welcome now, despite anyone's take on the
war. Many receive counseling sessions and decompression time before they
hit the front door.
He doesn't draw much distinction between today's volunteer force and
yesterday's largely drafted one. "A lot of guys like me volunteered for
Vietnam," he said. "It didn't make things any easier."
Harvey remembers heroism among them all, "the everyday kind, in a
hundred small ways." He remembers the war-weary South Vietnamese, "who
just wanted to be left alone to grow their rice."
Harvey figures his own end will come before the Iraq war's. When his
time draws near, he says, if the pain is too much:
"I'll take myself out. I'm not afraid to die."
No regrets. No apologies.
"I've had enough. I'm tired."
Sources used in this story include: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs;
U.S. Department of Defense; The Virginian-Pilot research; The Associated
Press; New England Journal of Medicine; Seattle-Post Intelligencer; The
Federal Practitioner; CNN.com; The New York Times; USA Today.
# Reach Joanne Kimberlin at (757) 446-2338 or
joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com.
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Larry Scott
