Why Don’t You Come to Asia Too?

My husband was in Law School and I was in my second year of teaching elementary school when his Army orders to Viet Nam came. He could get circuitous travel and settle me in Bangkok before going on to his Saigon assignment. I found a postage-stamp size apartment with A/C bedroom and outdoor pool replete with shared housekeeper, laundress and houseboy. Emotions heated up when he found he’d been sent upcountry in Viet Nam as a 2nd Lieutenant to take command of a 500-inch howitzer gun near Quan Loi.

I was hired to teach at the International School of Bangkok, and the Thai Headmaster obtained an extended work permit for me. My gifted 4th grade class kept me diverted from the worry of a spouse fighting the war. Weekends I toured about, visiting and taking photos at the Wats (temples), open markets, jewelry stores, art shows at the Siam InterContinental, playing tennis on the grass court at the British Embassy and buying jasmine scented flowers and leis for the apartment.

With double holidays, American and Thai, there was ample time to visit the ancient Thai capitol at Ayutha, upcountry to Chaing Mai, to the beach at Pattaya, and out-of-country to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Vientiane in Laos and the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon, South Viet Nam. When homesickness and worry overcame me I’d visit the Officer’s Club with its long bank of military telephones. I was successful once in getting patched through to Quan Loi, talking to all the fellow homesick American military dispatchers along the way. This also was a protected spot of Americana where hamburgers, fries, and ice cream complemented by the Beauty Shop treats and jewelry and gift store items you didn’t have to bargain for abounded.

More was packed into this one year, 1969-1970, than one could expect. On the way home I routed through Tokyo for the summer as I had been selected as a National Science Foundation Fellow to study Math and Science for teachers. We both arrived Stateside in August to meet family and friends in Seattle while waiting for final military orders which came through quickly for Fort Carson in Colorado Springs.

Fern Zabel

Mukilteo

Photographs credited to:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffwerner/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

When We Were Young

It was the fall of 1967. I returned to college for my sophomore year as a married woman. No, I didn’t “have to get married.” I just thought I couldn’t live without my high school sweetheart. I had had a big wedding the month before – 5 bridesmaids, 5 groomsmen, a maid of honor, a matron of honor, a ring bearer and a flower girl. My ring bearer was my young nephew. I had to ask my brother if it would be ok if his son wore black velvet shorts and a jacket with a big white lace collar, white tights and Mary Janes. I had seen that in a picture in Life Magazine for one of the Rockefeller weddings. My young niece wore an antebellum dress and tossed rose petals down the aisle to make way for the bride.

The Vietnam War was figuratively and literally miles away.

Amazing how things can change in only a few months. Three months later, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, and six months later, my husband was drafted. A 20-year-old non-college student from the Midwest was a sitting duck. I remember writing to my congressman asking him to spare my husband, because he was the only son of an only son of an only son. I think I had that mixed up with the Sole Survivor Policy, which was a direct result of the death of the Sullivan brothers, five brothers who all died on the same warship in World War II. That it protects “only sons” and sole surviving sons is a common misconception, I guess.

So off he went to the Army. After I said goodbye and dropped him at the bus, I went off and bought a dress I had wanted. I guess that is what 19 year olds do. I only saw him twice in the next three years. Once he and his new Army buddy snuck away from boot camp to see me. I cried when I saw that they had shaved off all of his hair. He looked so young. Living alone in married housing, I would watch the news coverage of the war on Walter Cronkite every night. Part of me hoped I would see him as they filmed the soldiers on patrol and half of me was scared I would see him wounded or dead. You see, back then the media acknowledged we were at war, and there was extensive and gruesome coverage. Not like now.

I also have to say that I took quite a bit of flack from fellow students and even professors about my husband fighting in Vietnam. I was against the war like almost everyone in my college environment. Being a sophomore in college and married was one thing, but my husband being in Vietnam was quite controversial. But it also gave me a perspective about the war – on the one hand I was against it, but on the other, I didn’t blame the soldiers.

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried has brought much of this back to me and made me realize I had no idea what my husband was really going through, despite the letters and occasional phone calls. We were in very different worlds. And everyone was so young.

Fortunately, he made it safely back. Three years later. His Army buddy he had brought to meet me was not so lucky. He was killed.

Turns out my husband saw a lot of battle – in the war and at home. We broke up soon after he returned.

Wars separate people. Wars change people. Young people at war see and do things that change them forever. That they will carry forever. Those left behind sometimes move on.

Turns out I could live without my high school sweetheart after all.

Rosy Brewer
Sno-Isle Libraries


Photograph courtesy of Rosy Brewer. All rights reserved.