My Father's Vietnam Page #8

not only to the individual who survives,

or is in fact killed,

but there's a ripple effect.

It effects the family in

physical and psychological ways.

Elizabeth essentially

has had to contend

with a different person than

she married after one year.

The person you had or my offspring

experienced a different person than I was

before I went in the military,

and those things don't go away.

Those things are perpetuated.

It's like the ringing in my ears

from the concussion.

It's there all the time and

it's very close to the surface

and I can hear it all the time.

Sometimes it's louder, sometimes

it's softer, but it's always there.

That's self-serving because I also know that

it affects my son, my daughter, my wife.

It's not that I feel guilty

for surviving. I just-

I just...

Why do these things happen?

It's hard. I'm trying

to find the right words.

I'm not guilty for surviving...

but I guess you wonder, well...

what made me walk away at the moment?

Where was I going?

Was I truly done there? Did somebody

call me away to do something else?

Why wasn't I there?

I went years and years dealing

with the symptoms,

and then we figured out, "Oh, of

course, it's post traumatic."

So one of the options here is to take

some anti-depressants or whatever,

which didn't seem to do the job.

But it's still there. It's not necessarily

going to kill you, but it's there.

You can't rationalize it. You can identify

it, but you can't make it go away.

I would like to be able to remember

everyone's face that I lost in my unit.

I would like to know the names.

I would like to be able to, in

some way, go back through those...

Even though they

were horrible things...

Because I just feel like

I'm not doing justice to them

to not be able to remember who

the heck they were when...

they died there right in front of me doing

things we were all supposed to be doing.

I have a very low

startle threshold.

If I was napping or if you came

up behind me in the garage

and tapped me on the shoulders,

my reaction is to spin around or put up my

hands, or somehow go into a defensive position.

I'm telegraphing to,

whether it's Elizabeth or you or my

daughter that the world is hostile.

If you want to survive,

this is how you have to be,

and it's an unspoken

message, it's telegraphed.

I remember him overreacting

to certain things,

but the thing is that

that's sort of, that's Dad.

So he will overreact to things,

but then it'll be fine.

And his overreaction wasn't

a big deal to me, ever.

Ever. It was just the way it was

and it's sort of like,

I knew it wasn't something

that he could control.

My daughter, my son, my wife have experienced

somebody who, since coming back,

often times does not take

that step of thinking,

but reacts as if in the jungle.

He's definitely been

affected by Vietnam.

I mean, he probably was a

different person before Vietnam,

but he's not a bad person now.

He's a great person now.

Living with guilt is awful, and I think

that guilt and regret and remorse

and all those things

are real wastes of emotion,

because you can do

something about them.

So if you feel guilty about something

what can you choose to do?

[Peter] I always had this interest in terms

of finding where Loring Bailey was buried.

I checked a couple

graves registrations

and went on the Internet

when the Internet was available,

and found nothing

in the immediate area.

And of course 20 years later, it was our

first Memorial Day weekend here in Mystic.

Elizabeth said,

"You're not going to believe,"

or, "Take a look at the

front page of the paper."

And the front page of the paper had that picture

I showed you of Loring Bailey, the son,

in Vietnam, and the story that accompanied

it had to do with Memorial Day

and the mother and father living in

Stonington which is four miles away,

three miles away, and the fact

Loring is buried

less than two miles

from where I'm living right now.

In any case, I read the article and was

incredulous that after all these years,

and my failure to find where he was

buried, the front page of the newspaper,

sort of rubbed my nose in it saying,

"Here they are, here's the family."

So I picked up the telephone,

introduced myself,

"I apologize in advance

if this is a painful subject,

but I just wanted to let you know I knew

your son, and he was a wonderful person."

Your father said...

"You don't know who I am,

but I was with your son

in Vietnam and I

was with him at OCS."

And I said, "Oh, where are you?"

"Well," he said,

"I'm in Old Mystic."

The thought that I had was, "Well, he must

have picked up Rings name from the stone",

the monument down in Old Mystic.

And I hesitate to call you because I

didn't want to bring back bad memories,

"and I hope you don't mind."

He said, "I don't mind at all."

I said, "I'll stop by sometime," and he

said, "What are you doing in 10 minutes?"

"We would like

very much to see you."

And he said, "Well I'd be glad to come over, and

I'll come over as soon as I change my clothes."

And I said, "Well that's

fine." I hung up.

I turned to Dot and I said,

"I have no idea where he is, he's

going in to change his clothes.

He couldn't have been

at the monument in Old Mystic."

It never dawned on me that

he was living in the area.

So he came up to the front door and

that's how we met, at the front door.

It was quite interesting.

[Peter] We've been visiting

each other ever since.

And, as I told them,

I was, for 20 years, 30 years,

more interested in where he was

buried than where they were living,

which is probably a regret or

probably a monumental oversight,

but that's the way

it played out.

And I think he felt like he helped them to

really get to understand what their son's...

Some of the times that he spent

in the last year of his life,

because when your son

is in training or OCS.

So just the stories

he could tell,

a little bit about what his last

months might have been like,

or what it was like in Vietnam.

I know he thinks he performed a service

and really was helpful to them.

Dorothy obviously feels a loss, and

is still very, very sensitive.

Not to say he isn't,

but he's in military history

and that kind of thing and follows the

history of his son's involvement.

And then when we talk we talk about,

typically I'm talking to the father.

I think about him now

and it's just sadness,

that a man would lose

his son at the age of 24.

That the whole lifetime

would be taken away.

And now here I am, I'm 60 years

old and my son is a Marine.

And who'd of thought that my son

[chuckles] would be a Marine?

Now I fly an American flag

in front of my house,

and I wouldn't have

thought of it then,

or I would have flown it upside

down or something like that.

[Elizabeth] I think it's fascinating,

that at least you've told me,

a number of people you've been in touch

with about this process of making this,

working on this film, where they have said, "I

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