Taps
By: Paul Hilding
I am alone, standing on the crumbling back steps of the old church, my trumpet by my side in my right hand. The church cemetery, dotted with countless rows of neatly arranged headstones, descends gradually towards the slate grey sea. It is a raw blustery day in mid-April. The first buds have appeared on the wild roses that have overgrown the cemetery wall, and on the storm-blasted stand of oak trees beyond. A single white sail is visible offshore. The damp salt air carries a faint smell of decay, of seaweed and debris washed up on distant beaches. Far below, a small group of mourners is gathered by an open grave.
He and I were about the same age, from neighboring towns, but had never met. Still, I knew well the difficult choice he had been forced to make fifty years ago, as he graduated high school and began planning his life. It was the same choice I had faced, at about the same time. It was the same choice faced by the three others I had played for in the past year, dozens of others over past decades. All of them had chosen to serve. All except me.
Someone from VFW called me a few days ago. They know I play for Vietnam vets. This also is my choice. But, no matter how many times I play, it seems I can never make up for that other choice I made, so long ago.
The newspaper story had been respectful but short. He had been a good student and an athlete, a star wide receiver in high school. Wounded at Lang Vei. Bronze star. Purple Heart. Two weeks ago a road crew had found him under a bridge, most of his worldly possessions in a rusty shopping cart hidden in the brush nearby.
As always, I needed to know more. By now, after so many, I had a set routine. As soon as I received the call from VFW, I Google-searched the name. I tracked down family and friends. I learned as much as I could about where and when they had served, battles they had fought, what they had done after the war. But mostly, I tried to figure out why. Why had they chosen to serve? I felt like I had to know before I could play at the service, before I could even attempt to honor the sacrifice. The sacrifice I had avoided making.
From my investigations of the others, I learned that some had believed in the war, but that many thought it was a mistake. They hadn’t bought the bullshit about falling dominoes, about fighting for democracy in a godforsaken jungle on the other side of the world. They had gone anyhow, even though there had been other choices.
What about this one, the one under the bridge? His name was Daniel. Such a promising life ahead of him. Why had he gone?
As I began gathering information about Daniel, and reading about the Battle of Lang Vei, I soon realized his funeral would not be like the others. As difficult as they had been, for me Daniel’s would be by far the most wrenching. It was not just because of the horrific accounts of the battle I located online. No, there was something else. There was a coincidence, a brutal personal connection. The deeper I dug into Daniel’s story, the more excruciating the pain I felt. I doubted I would be able to play at the funeral. But I also realized I could never live with myself if I did not.
Lang Vei had been a small Special Forces outpost deep in the jungle in the far north of South Vietnam. It was one of North Vietnam’s first targets during the Tet Offensive, the North’s all-out attempt to win the war in early 1968. On February 6, 1968, two dozen Green Berets and a few hundred South Vietnamese and Lao soldiers were directly in the path of three battalions of North Vietnamese infantry and a dozen Soviet-made tanks.
The defenders put up a fierce fight, taking out five of the twelve tanks. But the base was quickly overrun and, as eight of the surviving Green Berets fell back to the reinforced concrete command bunker, they learned that their repeated requests for reinforcements from Khe Sanh, a large American marine base just six miles away, had been denied.
Somehow, they managed to hold out in the bunker for fifteen hours, as the North Vietnamese tried to dislodge them with tear gas, fragmentation grenades, point-blank tank fire and, finally, several bricks of C-4 in the ventilation system. All but one of the Green Berets were badly injured by gunfire, shrapnel and the shock waves from the repeated explosions in the enclosed space of the bunker. But, under cover of long-delayed American air strikes, seven of the eight managed to escape.
I also found online the cruel footnote to the story. After months of defending Khe Sanh against the North Vietnamese attack, after American planes had dropped more than 100,000 tons of bombs on enemy forces in the area, after thousands of American troops had been killed or wounded, the North Vietnamese assault was finally defeated. However, only two months later, in June of 1968, America’s war planners decided that Khe Sanh no longer served America’s military strategy and all troops were withdrawn. Khe Sanh was abandoned.
* * *
As it happened, February 6, 1968 was also an important day in my own life. On the very day that Daniel and his comrades were trying to escape that firestorm of machine gun fire, artillery rounds and Russian tanks, I was also planning an escape. I had spent that morning at home, packing a suitcase and backpack and had then jammed them, along with my trumpet case, into the trunk of my first car, a battered old Volkswagen Beetle with bald tires and a cracked windshield.
I had already decided that the Vietnam War was both stupid and immoral. My parents and nearly all my friends agreed with me. I had just read, cover to cover, the newly-published “Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada.”
Later that day I had a final, somber dinner with my parents. We went over my options one more time. Yes, the war was wrong. But what was the right thing to do? Serve anyway, be complicit in senseless killing, and possibly lose my own life? Resist, join the anti-war protests, and end up in prison with a criminal record that would last a lifetime? Or escape to Canada, and risk never being able to return home? As before, we came to the same conclusion. Canada was only 200 miles away. It was the best of three lousy choices.
Dad quietly reviewed with me the procedures for requesting permanent immigration status, job leads he had managed to get through family friends in Montreal, college classes he would help me pay for, and plans for my return home “after the war.” I remember the brave smile on my mother’s face, her tearful reassurance about how wonderful Canada would be. After a sleepless night and goodbye hugs in the icy driveway the next morning, I started driving north on mostly deserted roads across a grey winter landscape.
I did not return home for nine years, after the amnesty. I had enough credits from courses in Canada that I was able to quickly finish my music degree and find a job teaching at a nearby high school. After a short, childless marriage, I moved into a one-bedroom apartment near the school and busied myself with my job, conducting both the high school band and chorus and giving voice and instrumental lessons.
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