We Were Soldiers Once...and Young (55 page)

We got along the best way that we could, hoping for his return home.

"The first telegram came by taxi stating that he was missing in action.

One week later the second telegram arrived stating that he was killed by hostile fire. About a week later we were laying him to rest at Ft.

Benning. I was seven years old and I am now thirty-four. Through the years I wondered why this had to happen. Within the last two years I have finally been able to talk to other Vietnam veterans about this battle, and I am hoping one day to be able to find someone who knew my father during that time or was with him when he was killed. Now I have my own family: two boys ages four years and nineteen months and a beautiful wife who has stood beside me for the last thirteen years. My mother is still living and my brothers have all made lives of their own.

"These men fought and died for their country and it affected a lot of people in so many ways. President Bush said on national television that the Vietnam syndrome is over and done with. Not for me, and not for so many others. We can never do enough to help the Vietnam veterans. May God bless and keep all the loved ones who are still affected by this senseless war."

His career at Pennsylvania Military College from 1959 to 1963 may have made some think that Jack Geoghegan was born to be a great captain in war. He was president of his class in his junior and senior years; cadet brigade sergeant major his junior year; cadet brigade commander his senior year. He won every medal and award of distinction the college granted. But Jack Geoghegan postponed his Army ROTC obligation to complete a master's degree in international relations at the University of Pennsylvania.

While there he married his college sweetheart, Barbara Weathers. Then Jack and Barbara left for East Africa, where they spent almost a year working for Catholic Relief Services in the villages of Tanzania. In May of 1965, he reported for duty as a new second lieutenant at Fort Benning. His daughter, Camille Anne, was born there. In July he was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, and in August he sailed with his unit to Vietnam. Here is Barbara Geoghegan Johns's story:

"I never really believed he would die. At twenty-three and untouched by the sorrows of life, even sending my husband off to war didn't shake my feeling that Jack would live. I felt that God had great plans for him.

Jack would complete his commitment to the Army and then return to Tanzania--the place that fulfilled his spirit, the place where we had spent most of our first year of marriage in Africa. He was extraordinarily idealistic. His nature was not warlike. The goal of his life was to help people in need. Even in Vietnam he volunteered his platoon to help rebuild a school, and ultimately he died as he lived, going to the aid of one of his men, Willie Godboldt. Their names are next to each other on the Vietnam Memorial.

"When Jack left for Vietnam I chose to move to Redding, Connecticut, so that Cammie and I could be near his parents. We would support and sustain each other for the year that Jack would be gone. They owned a small house on six acres and were having a large house built nearby. We shared the little house until their home was completed. When they moved to the big house, I stayed on in the little house. They named their home "Wind Ridge.' I named the little house ' Salaam' or Haven of Peace. Cammie was only two months old when her father left for Vietnam, and she was the focal point for all of us. She kept us all smiling and, because she looked like her father, she was a constant happy part of him in our presence.

"When my world turned upside down on November 17, 1965, the night the telegram came, I felt thrust into another existence, as in a dream. I couldn't comprehend that what I firmly believed wouldn't happen had happened. I was with Jack's Aunt Pat in New Rochelle when Mom called. I remember looking out the window and being surprised that there were people driving by, that everything looked the same as it did before her call. I wanted to scream to everyone to stop. I went upstairs to look at Cammie, sleeping peacefully, not knowing how her life was so altered. In a recent letter, Jack had said: ' about giving Cammie a little brother when I get back?' Now there would be no more little Geoghegans.

I picked up my sleeping baby and hugged her hard, still not believing that an end had come to everything we had hoped and dreamed and planned.

"The news came on November 17, Jack's Dad's sixty-second birthday. Jack was buried in Bethel, Connecticut, on December 2. The funeral Mass was held in Pelham, New York, where he grew up, and the church was filled to overflowing. That week the newspaper of the Pennsylvania Military College devoted most of three pages to tributes to Jack."

Afterward his mother wrote this letter published in The Pelham Sun, January 13, 1966:

Dear People of Pelham:

On November 17, the dreadful telegram arrived notifying us of Lance's death in Vietnam in the Battle ofia Drang. He was, as you know, Barbara's husband, the father of little Cammie, and our only child.

While we awaited the return of his body, we tried to gather up the pieces of our broken hearts. We said to ourselves: It is God's will. He knows best. And for a minute or for an hour, we managed some degree of resignation, but then suddenly an old sweater, a bowling ball, a photograph, and that bright redheaded boy was bounding up the stairs, three at a time, or rounding the curve on Manor Circle, tooting the horn to let us know he was home from college--from Africa--or from Fort Benning, and our resignation dissolved in the unalterable knowledge that he was dead. We would never, never see his dear face again.

We began to make funeral arrangements. We reasoned that since Lance's grammar and prep school companions lived in the Pelham--New Rochelle area, we would bring him to his hometown for the services. We phoned the Pelham Funeral Home. We did not wish to inflict our sorrow on others and I think we also felt deep down inside that perhaps no one was too much interested, so we asked Mr. Flood to put a short notice in the paper and to arrange for a brief, simple service.

Lance's body arrived by plane from Vietnam. We gathered what courage we could find and went to the funeral home. As we looked down at his dear face, we felt that the world had fallen in on us. He had fought in an action that was not termed a war; he had died thousands of miles from his beloved country; his blood and the blood of his men, whom he had loved so much, had now become part of the soil of Vietnam, and there were no bands, no parades, no anything--just three desolate people standing beside his coffin. Never had we been so alone.

Behind us a door quietly opened. Someone came into the room. It was a man. He was crying. He knelt. He prayed. He came over to us. He said fond, kind things about our boy. He left. But that was the beginning of what [one friend] said was "a spontaneous outpouring of love for a boy."

Again the door opened, and again and again. People poured into that room-- people who had known Lance--people who wept for him unashamedly--people who cared--people, blessed wonderful people.

Through Bob Cremins [a family friend], a service was held for him at the monument. Braced against the evening's cold, clergymen of all faiths voiced their tribute. The American Legion was there; the Veterans of Foreign Wars, men who had made possible our boy's growth in a free country, through their own sacrifices. And again the people, hundreds of them crowding the street for this lovely ceremony--and that beautiful flag at half staff with the wind gently raising its folds like a benediction over all.

We cried, the tears streaming down our faces in sheer gratitude to everyone in Pelham for such a remembrance. The day of burial came and the police quietly cleared a path for the funeral cortege through the streets. They stood straight and tall at each intersection with arms raised in a last salute. St. Catherine's Church was filled to overflowing. Lance's flag-draped coffin rested at the feet of his God.

This boy had loved people so much. He didn't care if they were black or white. If they needed him, he always came a '. He had fed and cared for them in Africa, and he was in Vietnam because he had heard the same summons and was answering it, and suddenly we realized that Lance was really all the boys in Vietnam--the weary, the courageous, the wounded, the dead--and Pelham had said: We love you all, opened its arms and gathered them all to her heart in the person of one young man, Lieutenant Lance Ge oghegan.

On behalf of our boy, his men of the 2nd Platoon and all the young Americans in Vietnam, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. God bless you.

His Family.

Barbara continues her story: "Quite a while after Jack's death, two battered boxes arrived in the mail. They had been returned from Vietnam, marked ' deceased.' They were the chocolate chip cookies I had sent two months before. There was also a camera Jack had asked for and never received. Then there was the shipment of his personal effects, among them his wallet in which he had kept a picture of the ' house' in Connecticut to which he longed to return. Also in that wallet was a letter from his mother. It says, in part, ' is asleep and I am sitting in the den--thinking of you--loving you--wishing you well--wishing you home--thanking God for our wonderful son. Dad and I pray so constantly for you and your men that the seconds, the minutes, the hours are full of you."

"I don't know how I would have managed had it not been for Jack's parents. Years later they said the same thing about me and, of course, Cammie. I guess we kept each other going. When one was weak, another was strong.

"Not long after Jack's death I received a beautiful letter from Jack's battalion commander, Colonel Hal NMoore. He also wrote to the Geoghegans, and reached out to us across all those miles, bringing us consolation and courage and wonderful words about Jack. In one of his letters, Colonel Moore suggested that he might stop by to see us. The day came, in 1967. We would be grateful for even five minutes with him. He was with us for five hours. He came first to my house. I picked up Cammie and went outside to greet him. He walked slowly up the stone stairway to us, staring at us with sorrow in his piercing eyes, and surrounded both of us in his arms. This man who had carried my husband's body off a bloody battlefield thousands of miles away was now here at our home. What a painful and difficult task he had, coming to speak of war in a setting so full of tranquility. We hurried up the hill to the Geoghegans' house and there were more hugs and tears. Then we sat and talked and talked. It was cathartic, sitting together, sharing the pain and grief that enveloped us all. Then Colonel Moore asked where Jack was buried. When I told him St. Mary's Cemetery was two miles away, he wanted to go there, so I took him. We walked to Jack's grave. After standing there a minute, Colonel Moore asked if he could spend some time alone at the grave. I sat in the car while he did so. I glanced at him just once, and saw him kneeling by the grave, his head in his hands. I quickly looked away, not wanting to intrude on this private moment. The healing effect of that visit lasted to the end of Mom and Dad Geoghegan's lives, and the memory of it will stay with me always.

"About two years after Jack's death, Mom Geoghegan chose a moment to tell me something that she and Dad felt I should know. They wanted me to know that they wanted me to marry again; that I should not feel tied to them because of our deep closeness; or that I would somehow betray Jack by loving someone else. I could not imagine loving someone else. I loved them so much. In December, 1968, a neighbor asked Mom and Dad how they felt about him introducing an old friend to me. Since they wanted me to meet people, they agreed and invited him to bring Lieutenant Colonel John Johns over for cocktails when he visited from West Point where he was stationed. John and I met on December 21, 1968, and we were married on April 5, 1969. John adored children and instantly fell in love with Cammie and she with him. She was almost four when we married. For years we'd talk about when we married Daddy. In May, 1970, a son was born and two years later we added a sister. Mom and Dad Geoghegan remained a vital part of our lives all of their lives. They were a third set of grandparents and all three of our children loved them. Our family was their family.

"America at War! That's how NBC News started out every night during the recent Persian Gulf War. A war. Not a skirmish. Not a police action. A war. Back home the country was in fervent support; flag companies did record business; tons of care packages were shipped to the troops; children wrote letters by the thousands to Any Soldier. What a contrast to Vietnam. Was it guilt feelings? America should feel guilty for its collective treatment of the Vietnam veteran and so should our government--or at least those who governed during the Vietnam conflict.

They wouldn't even call the long, long siege in Vietnam a war, because war was never declared.

"Jack's original death certificate read that he died ' the result of gunshot wounds to head and back, received in hostile ground action.' In 1978,1 had to write for another death certificate for insurance purposes. What a shock when the certificate arrived in the mail. Under "Casualty Status' the box titled '-Battle' was checked. I looked up the one remaining original certificate. That whole section was blanked out. I was horrified and wondered for a moment if I had been lied to; maybe Jack had been killed by friendly fire and no one wanted to tell me. My husband worked in the Pentagon and checked it out. A written answer was forthcoming that very day: ' policy in 1965 was that hostile deaths were treated as non-battle since the conflict had not been recognized as a war or battle. Because of numerous comments received, the policy was later changed to properly classify combat deaths as battle casualties."

"Even after 26 years, it is still there, that golden thread in the tapestry. I may see an expression on Cammie's face for an instant that brings a feeling. Or it may be a dream. The doorbell rang in the dream.

Cammie, age 8, was beside me; Bobby, age 3, on the other side. The baby, Barbi, age 1, was in my arms. I opened the door and there was Jack, in his tan uniform. He stared at the four of us through the glass storm door and I, my children surrounding me, stared back. Nothing was said. His face broke into a smile, and then his image faded way. When I awoke, at first I felt deep sadness, then a feeling of guilt that my life had taken such an unexpectedly happy turn when once I thought I would never be happy again. But I focused on the smile on Jack's face as his image faded. I knew that if Jack could be present in any sense, he would have been profoundly happy for me."