We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (54 page)

The pain and grief of that autumn so long ago still echo across the years, fresh as yesterday for many of the wives and children and parents and siblings of those who died in the Ia Drang Valley. Some of them agreed to write their stories of what one death in battle did to their lives, in hopes that their words might somehow comfort other families who have lost loved ones in war.

Betty Jivens Mapson is forty-two and has grown children of her own today, but she has been haunted for years by the trauma of her father's death on November 15,1965, in the Ia Drang Valley. She says, "After the initial shock of receiving the telegram announcing Daddy's death, we kids had to go back to school because it would be two weeks or more before his body would arrive home. It seemed everyone was looking at us and whispering, not really knowing what to say except how bad it was our Daddy died over there.

"They mostly left us alone," Mrs. Mapson continues. "There were no support groups or any of that to help us cope. Our family was left alone in our grief. My brothers did not talk about their feelings at all. My mother was devastated. She and Daddy were sweethearts in school but each went on to marry other people. When both were divorced around the same time they met again and were married. Daddy and I used to take trips together on the Greyhound bus, mostly home to Savannah. Whenever he and my mother went out, he would not be ready until he sat in a chair and had me comb and brush his hair. It was cut real close but he made it seem like I had really done something special.

"I remember when he first told us he had to go to Vietnam. We drove him to Fort Benning. I remember the Army trucks filled with soldiers and hearing Daddy say he might not come back. I was young and didn't really see the seriousness of it. He was a good, strict father and my brothers and I thought his being away for so long meant we would be able to stay out later and have more fun. I blamed myself for Daddy being killed because of those selfish feelings when he left. My Daddy was a good man, a preacher's son. His given name is Jeremiah."

She adds: "Two weeks after the initial telegram we got another one stating when to meet the body at the train station. The hearse was already there when we got to the station and soon a wooden cart with a long gray box was being pulled toward us. My Daddy! This is how he came back to us. And the pain started all over again for us, only more so because now he was home. You could have heard me screaming three states away. At the funeral home I remember looking at him closely and for a long time to make sure it was really him. Then I saw that little mole on his cheek and I knew.

"I am so very proud of my father and wished that somehow he could know that and know that he is still very much alive with us. For a long time it seemed to me that he was just away like he usually was on Army duty, and one day he would come home. For a lot of years I waited and watched our driveway because I wanted so much for him to come home for my Momma and my brothers and me. I would like to visit the Ia Drang. It is something I have to do for my own sake. I have to know, have to see that this place really exists. I need to see and to be where my Daddy died.

Then maybe this will all somehow be complete for me. I just wish with all my heart that we had not been so alone to deal with such a monumental tragedy back then. We needed someone to reach out to us, to explain for us, to help us see why. My mother has passed away now. She never remarried. She loved Daddy so." Catherine Metsker Mccray, now fifty years old, says the story of how she met and married Tom Metsker, her dashing young Army officer, seems to have taken place a lifetime ago. "I didn't know him in the early days.

He absolutely drove his parents crazy--constantly on the go; accident prone; strong; never sat still. They were especially proud of his athletic feats--on the state championship football team in high school, Southern Conference pole-vault champion at The Citadel. Tom was raised in Japan and Korea. His father, also named Tom, was with the State Department and worked for the Agency for International Development. High school brought Tom, his mother Zoe and older sister Ibby back to Indianapolis while his father was on a hardship tour. The parents were originally from Indiana; graduates of Indiana University.

"Torn then left for college at The Citadel. While he was there his family was transferred to the Washington, D. C., area. I was a sophomore at Depauw University. It was spring break and my friend Betty Orcutt and I decided to spend the week at my parents' home. My father was a colonel in the Air Force stationed at the Pentagon in Washington. I met Tom on a blind date; we were married on October 5, 1962. We eloped. On October 8, Tom left for Germany where he was to be stationed for six months. I stayed home to graduate from Depauw, then joined him when he returned to Ft. Benning, Georgia.

"I remember these days as the most exciting in my life. He was in a combat-ready unit. A phone call would come at 4 a.m. and the troops would assemble and leave Ft. Benning. The wives didn't know where they were going or whether it was for a day or a month. It was the time of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. I remember sitting in our Camellia Garden apartment with the gray and pink metal, furniture and the one plug in the kitchen, behind the fridge. If you moved the fridge out, you could make toast. I learned to be patient and brave, but mostly I just missed Tom. When he was home, I would stay awake at night and stare at him, wondering how I could be so lucky. Karen Doranne Metsker, 9 pounds 9'/2 ounces, was born on May 31, 1964, and Tom was ecstatic. Tom had wanted a boy but he was so happy to have a girl. Ten days after Karen was born we moved to Washington, D. C., for Tom's language school. We three camped out in my parents' basement while we looked for an apartment. Sometime during that school, Tom got orders for Vietnam. He was excited to be going to Vietnam. It was what he had trained for. It was his job.

"I didn't share his excitement--not because of the danger but because of the separation. We were sent back to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, to get him ready for Vietnam. I was going to stay there with the baby. Training went quickly. They received a photo of their unit. Tom joked it was ' we can X out the guys who get zapped.' All our friends were also being transferred, I knew no one at Bragg and I was pregnant again. I decided to move back to Indiana to my family during his Vietnam tour.

"Tom left from the Evansville airport in August of 1965.1 cried a lot.

We wrote each other every day and Karen and I had a routine of going to the mailbox every day to mail a letter to Daddy. Tom's parents were stationed in Monrovia, Liberia, so I didn't see them. I had a miscarriage in October.

"The telegram came Sunday night, November 14. Tom was dead. I had to make the arrangements. I had never even been to a funeral before. There was no place for friends to gather, except our motel room. AH of our friends from the Army came. All of them had orders for Vietnam. Standing on the sidelines was the wrestling team Tom had coached while we were in Washington. He had meant so much to them.

"I wanted to die but had to stay alive for Karen. I guess she saved my life. I started teaching as soon as I got back from Washington. I was offered tranquilizers. No one knew about counseling back then; it just wasn't an option. When

Tom's belongings were returned, I threw them all away. That way, I thought, I wouldn't be reminded of him. It didn't work.

"I stayed numb for so long a time. And smiled. The pain was indescribable. I kept it all inside for years. Twenty years later I went into therapy. With help, I was finally able to put Tom to rest. I am now at peace about that. When I think about Tom I see a smiling young man. I will always miss him."

Karen Metsker Rudel, twenty-seven years old, is married and the mother of two daughters and a son. "One bullet of the billions fired in Vietnam changed the path I would follow for the rest of my days. I wonder how many other lives were just as drastically altered as the result of one bullet? My father, Thomas Metsker, was killed when I was 17 months old.

I have no memory of him, although I have seen pictures of the two of us together. We look alike. He was a career Army man, a 1961 graduate of The Citadel. I have spent much of my life asking, '?' Why did he go to Vietnam knowing he might not come back? Why did he have to die? Why would anyone imply that he deserved it for being in Vietnam? Why did it have to be me?

"My mother remarried when I was four. He was a lawyer who was divorced and had two children from his previous marriage. Michael Mccray adopted me, so my given name Karen Doranne Metsker was left behind and I became Karen Metsker Mccray. Just before my fifth birthday my younger half brother was born, followed a year later by my half sister.

"With the his, hers and theirs meld of our family, I often felt like an outsider. I suppose that how I dealt with it was no better nor worse than any other child. After all, who ever taught me how? I became an over-achiever. I wanted desperately to fit in, but never quite figured out how to do so, at home or at school.

"My father was not discussed. I knew no one else who had lost a relative in the War and sensed at an early age that it was not an acceptable topic of conversation. I would often sneak down to our basement to investigate the trunk where what remained of my father's things were stored. For some reason, my mother threw away most everything that was his after he died. I remember well the musty smell of the triangular flag which had been draped over his coffin at his funeral in Arlington Cemetery; the scrapbook full of condolence letters from a multitude of meaningless officials; the old musical white Teddy bear my parents had bought for me when I was a baby; a bunch of medals including a Purple Heart; and the handful of photographs that, to me, was my Dad. I once found a card which my mother had given my Dad from me on his first Father's Day. I don't recall the outside of the card, but the inside said: ' I'll always be Daddy's Little Girl.' I cried a lot when I went through that trunk. On April 25, 1987, Scott Rudel and I were married and that was the first of the four happiest days of my life. The others were: March 1, 1988, when we had our first daughter, Alison Elizabeth; on October 11, 1989, when Abigail Catherine was born; and on March 1, 1992, when Thomas Alexander was born.

"An amazing chain of events happened in the fall of 1990. An article in U.S. News & World Report described my Dad's death in Vietnam. It told how my Dad had been shot and was waiting to be evacuated when he got out of the helicopter to help load a much more severely wounded comrade, Captain Ray Lefebvre, and was mortally wounded. My mother wrote a letter to the author of the article, who put her in touch with Hal Moore. There were a few lengthy calls and a letter to Ray Lefebvre asking him to come to the Ia Drang Alumni reunion marking the 25th Anniversary of the battle. I was so excited and nervous to meet these men who had fought alongside my Dad. I anticipated meeting a group of chest beating macho types, all pro-war, pro-killing and all the other things I had heard about over the years.

"I am a pacifist but felt compelled to meet with them. My notions about these men were absurd. What I met, and I hope they don't mind the analogy, was a bunch of Teddy bears. Even my husband was pleasantly surprised to meet what I eventually came to feel was another family.

"Ray Lefebvre received my letter asking him to attend the reunion in the middle of his daughter's wedding week. He didn't hesitate a second. He told me of the wounds he had received and said that had it not been for my Dad he probably would not be alive today. I spent a lot of my childhood detesting the anonymous man that my Dad loaded onto that helicopter; the man mentioned in the letter in the trunk. I had always felt that my Dad traded his life for that man. It meant so much to me to be able to look that man in the eyes. I know now if the roles had been reversed Ray Lefebvre would have done the same for my Dad.

"I made my first trip to the [Vietnam Veteran's Memorial] Wall that weekend. I walked its length while its power consumed me. I have never before been so moved by any work of art. I suppose I never will be again. I feel that things have come full circle and I can go on. I will always mourn my Dad's death, but I feel now that I can put to rest the hurt, the anger and the feeling that I was cheated out of knowing half of myself. I know myself now and finally I like who I am. I can only hope that we learned something from Vietnam and that all was not for nothing."

Edward Dennis Monsewicz was seven years old when word came that his father, Sergeant Lloyd Joel Monsewicz, had been killed on November 17,1965, in Landing Zone Albany. "My story begins in France, the country where my father met my mother and the place of my birth. I was a year old when we came to the United States. I can remember living in Missouri at Ft. Leonard Wood. A few years later he got orders for Korea. He moved us to Jacksonville, Florida, to be close to his family. We lived there for a year. From there we went to Ft. Benning, Georgia. By this time I had three brothers. My mother was still learning to speak English. The things I remember most about my Dad are how much he enjoyed working in the yard, spending time with us, and listening to Marty Robbins. Every Sunday we would go to church at Sand Hill. I couldn't wait till the services were over because I knew that I would get cookies and milk.

"In the few months before he left for Vietnam, I remember him training for his mission, coming home and dyeing his tee-shirts green and sorting out his field gear. During the last few days before he left he spent a lot of time with us. The day before he left he put me on top of his car and tried to explain to me, the best way he could, what was happening.

He told me that I had to be the Daddy of the family while he was gone and look after my brothers and help Mom. Through the years that has stuck in my mind. My Mom was left alone to raise four boys on her own. I remember receiving several letters from Vietnam in which my Dad mostly talked about the weather and how much he missed home. In one letter he talked about having to go into An Khe Village and feeling very nervous because he never knew who the VC might be. He said he felt safer in the jungle than in the village, because he could blend in with the foliage.