My Father's Vietnam Page #6

Loring with me up on the knoll...

giving out instructions, "Okay,

we want our grenade launchers"

to cover those gullies

over there.

"We want the M60's along this straight

area, this flat area that's open."

Normal things you would do

to set up for a perimeter.

I can't recall exactly how

long we were up there,

but we were up there shuffling around

this area for quite some time.

Then I said, "Okay, let's get

that set up" then I walked away,

and that's when

the explosion went off.

And to my knowledge, there wasn't

anything left of either Loring or Robert.

I was blown through the air... what

seemed like quite a long distance,

but I really don't have any way

of objectively measuring that.

I know one individual about an

arm's length in front of me...

had a big piece of shrapnel

sticking out through his shoulder.

He survived but had significant nerve

damage on his right arm, his shoulder.

It would have to have gone within

inches or a foot of me to hit him,

just with the line of sight.

And I remember lying there,

not knowing what

the heck had happened.

Ears are ringing and I remember

saying, "My legs, my legs!"

And another lieutenant

came along,

and I can still

picture him. He said-

It seems funny

but in this tragic situation...

He said, "There's nothing wrong

with your legs, Wilson, get up!"

And so I got up... The

rest of it's pretty hazy.

Every night somebody had

to go in at 12:
00 at our office,

the information office, and then go

over to the tactical operations center

where all of the communications from

the fields was filtered into one room,

a sort of action room,

or war room,

where the colonel could come and see the area

of operation and see where various units are,

what military intelligence was

telling us, where people were.

And then there was a list on a corner of

enemy and friendly missing in action,

killed in action,

wounded in action.

That particular day, I was on duty, and so I

had to go over and I went over at noontime- ...

Or not noontime, at midnight.

On the board it said

two KIA, 1st and the 20th.

Before I went back

to wire it in, I went down

to graves registrations,

where the bodies went.

And anyway I asked

the enlisted in charge

the names of the people

who were killed.

One was a sergeant and the

other was Loring Bailey.

And I said "How'd he die?"

And he said...

The euphemisms for a booby

trap, a mine or booby trap,

was traumatic amputation.

So he died of

traumatic amputations.

Then he sort of sarcastically said, "Do you

want to see the body?" and I declined.

I didn't think I could take it.

Anyway, I dutifully went back to the

detachment and called the division,

called the numbers in and Loring became a

number. He went from a person to a number.

The device that killed

both Loring and Robert

was either an artillery

round or a mortar round,

and we suspect that it was either

a 155mm round or a 175mm round,

and that was triggered,

we think,

by a battery and

a couple of metal plates.

And when the contact was made,

completed the circuit, and up it went.

The officer...

that came and

announced Ring's death...

I was at work and I was putting

my coat and hat on the rack

and I heard someone say, "He just

came up on the elevator." And then...

another man that worked

with me came down and said,

"Look, they want you in the

conference room right away."

So he and I walked up to the

office and he opened the door,

and I stepped in thinking he would come in

right behind me, but he closed the door.

And here I was face to face

with a service officer, a major,

and a sergeant major.

And he was on one

side of the board table

and I was facing him

across the table

and the sergeant

was on his right.

And he introduced himself as Major So-and-So,

I can't think of his name right now.

But his daughter worked at

SUPSHIP across the street,

so we had a little chat about the

fact that I knew his daughter.

Then he said, "I have some..."

Well, I looked at him,

and it was perfectly reasonable.

I saw that he had

a bronze oak leaf,

and the device

on his lapel indicated

that he was

of the engineer corps,

corps of engineers.

That seemed to be perfectly normal

to me, so, what's this all about?

It never dawned on me

until he said, "I have some

very bad news for you."

And even then,

until he went to work and said,

"Your son was killed

on the 15th, Monday the 15th."

And this was Wednesday,

just two days later.

March 17th darling, March 17th.

And that was a...

that was a tough thing.

[Rik] My mother called me

and told me that he was gone.

I mean, she just said,

"He's gone."

And I walked out the back door

and I went home,

and I went home and you

know, you see it in movies

the olive green sedan,

with the dress uniforms,

that drives up to the house.

And there was the olive green sedan

in front of my mother's house,

and my sister was there...

[signing]

- I'm sorry.

- It's okay.

And the Army men were there,

and their shoes were

so, so f***ing shiny.

At the time that we were

informed of his death,

the officer that was responsible

went to the apartment,

the address that Ring had.

That was his abode at the time that he

went into the service was Hartford.

So that officer went to

the Hartford apartment

and he received a very

unpleasant greeting

from a member of Marie's family.

When they were leaving,

I said to him

in my anger, I said,

"It's too bad he was

fighting on the wrong side."

The young brother,

Marie's young brother

was sort of a wild

kid in college,

and I don't know what the name

of the association was,

but he represented

the ultra extreme

student opposition to the war.

[Rik] I was involved

in antiwar activity.

I had a choice

when I went to college.

Some of my friends went further to the left, went

to what they called the Weather Underground.

I was involved with a group called Students

for a Democratic Society, it was SDS.

And I went with what was

called the moratorium.

The moratorium was

symbolized by the dove,

and it was the peace movement.

And it wasn't just kids like us with

long hair. It was grandmothers.

It was real people who really wanted to end

this war and make the world a better place.

So I talked with

the older brother,

and I gave him a little

bit of a warning, I said,

"As a result of

Rik's involvement..."

I think you should be aware

that I've been informed

that there's a possibility

"that students may go

to work and demonstrate."

They were concerned

about me at the funeral.

They were concerned that I'd do

things that, I don't know...

All I did was cry.

I couldn't drive my car.

I've never known

that amount of grief ever.

[Soren] Loring M Bailey Jr. was killed on March

15, 1970 in an explosion that also killed

19-year-old Staff Sergeant Robert A.

Wood of Savannah, Georgia.

In a letter to my mother dated

March 17th my father wrote,

"I just learned yesterday that a good

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes