27 Mar 70
Dear Mom & Dad,
I just received my orders for the field early this morning, so I left Bien Hoa for Tay Ninh by Chinook. We’re going to be operating near and around Black Virgin Mountain near the Cambodian border.
I gotta make this quick cuz we’re processing in now and don’t have a lot of spare time. Please write and send Paul’s and Grandpa Petes address. Bye.
Love
Rog
Happy Easter!
PFC RJ McInerny
###-##-####
Co C 2/8 1st Cav Div AM
APO SF 96490
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Roger J. McInerny, Jr.
Private First Class Roger J. McInerny
Note:
I found this document among papers I had collected regarding Roger Jr. It apparently is a typed version of a newspaper article written about Roger, my parents and siblings. I do not know who the author is, nor if the type written account is an accurate reflection of the original article. Judging from references in the article, the original article appears to have been written in 1997. I have made minor spelling, punctuation and paragraph spacing corrections. Thank you. Paul D. McInerny, June 8, 2011
Private First Class Roger J. McInerny, Jr. and his company were hard at work securing a fire support base in the area of Tay Ninh, Vietnam, when they suddenly came under heavy rocket, mortar and ground attack. He immediately moved to the perimeter of the base, where he fired until his weapon malfunctioned, though he was within feet of impending explosion. After his weapon failure, Roger proceeded to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat until he was mortally wounded.
Roger J. McInerny, Jr., lovingly called “Rog” by his family, was a nineteen-year-old boy. He had just graduated from a Catholic high school and was attending junior college. He teased and bickered with his five younger siblings, (oldest to youngest) Paul, Jenny, Vivi, Maurice and Joe. He worked hard to make his parents, Roger and Luella, proud of him. He was your average American young man. This young man lost his life fighting for his country, and for democracy, far from home in the Vietnam War.
There are many stories like his, because the average American soldier was a nineteen-year-old, middle class boy. The way Rog’s family reacted to his death was diversified to each member of the group. Their different reactions provide an enlightening reflection of the overall effects on American society.
Vietnam is often described as a “working class war.” One of its main source of criticism is that many families lost their sons and brothers to a conflict that they hardly understood. Luella, Rog’s mother, exemplified this principle. “I hadn’t a clue as to what was going on. Housewives were involved in trying to make a pound of burger feed eight people. I was a homemaker with six kids to take care of and the war was ‘over there.’ Who even thought of it?”
With three brothers involved in the military, and two sons fast approaching the age of 18, Roger Sr., who had a more vast knowledge of current world events, paid much attention to the war. “The way I saw it was that we were in Vietnam to prevent communism for taking over South Vietnam as they had tried to do in 1950 South Korea.”
Vivi, Rog’s second sister, looks back on the “working class war” label bitterly. “I had heard my brother, my family and everyone like us, dismissed as chumps and suckers, dumb enough to die.”
The younger children, such as Joe, the youngest, were completely confused as to why they had sacrificed a brother. “Initially, I didn’t understand at all what the war was about. In fact, I didn’t understand what the Army was. When Rog went into the Army, I imagined it was like when Maurice (second youngest child) and I played army. I thought he joined up, got a uniform and a gun, and started shooting at people.”
The same basic results would be found of anyone in these positions in 1960s/1970s society. Mothers and homemakers were concerned with feeding the family, the father was concerned with politics and reading the evening paper, and children grasped at their quickly disappearing innocence, enjoying as much of their youth as they could in the shadow of a war.
Though understanding of the conflict was limited to the father in the family, a sense of honor and patriotic duty were abound in the McInerny home. “I was and am very proud that (Paul) and…Roger volunteered for service in 1969…[He] and [Rog] were a part of our national history,” remarks Roger Sr.
Luella commented that, “all of the boys in [Roger Sr.’s] family were in the service, and were very strong about patriotic duty.” Roger Sr. recounts a conversation with Rog. “Roger had told me that one of his professors said that poor blacks were bearing the brunt of the war, and Roger wanted to do his share. [He] had a sense of honor and duty.”
Vivi has mixed feelings about Rog’s patriotism. She describes him as, “a boy – all of nineteen-years-old who held onto traditional beliefs of honor and duty to his country a little longer than was fashionable. Certainly, too long.”
Though this type of patriotism was abundant in Midwestern communities like that of Richfield, Minnesota, and in families with strong military backgrounds, boys Roger’s age in other parts, and with different family belief systems were not so quick to enlist.
Both parents agree that religion played a large role in coping with their loss. Luella first states, “I guess it didn’t change my religious practices other than to make me, of course, include [Rog] in my daily prayers, and to pray more for the kids all here that this would never happen again,” she then adds, “I guess it did make me more religious now when I think of it.” Roger Sr. concurs with; “Our Catholic faith and family love were very essential to our coping with that terrible ordeal in April 1970. I’m thankful we had that faith and love.”
The event played a major role in the formation of the younger children’s beliefs, also. Jenny, the third child, recalls, “When I saw my parents remain strong in their beliefs despite the most devastating thing that could happen to a parent, I think it caused me to become stronger in my beliefs.”
She also recalls an incident with Maurice upon the delivery of the bad news. “He said he didn’t understand why we were all crying because Rog was in heaven now, and shouldn’t we all be happy? Mom smiled and said, “from the mouth of babes.” She smiled and told us Maurice was right.” Luella reaffirmed Maurice’s faith by explaining to him that she did believe Rog was in heaven, but she had to cry because she would miss him terribly.
This type of terrible trauma affected many families in America wartime. In every religion, faith was being tested, patience and understanding were being stretched to their utmost limits. This created tension within every type of family.
One of the frequent effects of a loss in a war is the loss of trust in the government. Luella clearly states, “ After Roger’s death, I have never trusted the government again. I feel they all lie just to make things sound good.” Not only has she lost trust in the government, but she also seems to have developed an acute disgust for it. "I now feel very sad when baby boys are born as I just think of them as cannon fodder for the old coots in Washington who decide to fight a war. It is okay with them because they don’t send their own kids, but only someone’s else’s.”
The younger members of the generation, like Joe, see the era as their first, and rather distasteful introduction to politics and the U.S. government. “I essentially came of age understanding that our president was a bad person, kind of like an evil king who had to be overthrown.” Constant protests, such as the infamous Kent State University incident, attest to this widely shared belief. Youth from all over the nation began to develop a distaste and distrust for their government.
Family life was also subject to a drastic change during the ordeal of dealing with Rog’s untimely death. Luella remembers the change in attitudes at home. “Rog’s death changed the family in that [Roger Sr.] had a hard time with disciplining the younger ones ever again. I had to try to be the firm hand in the family and I was not good at it.”
Jenny recalls her change toward her parents and toward her children now. “Having seen my parents in such pain, I tried never to hurt them at all. I hate to yell at my own kids – remembering that something could happen to them and those would be the last words they heard from me.”
Joe was younger, but still had the same idea. "It was the most traumatic change for me, having seen my parents go through so much sadness. I just didn’t want them to feel sad anymore.” This type of awful event often affects the way the next generation of children is brought up, thus having profound, but indirect effect on the new members of American society.
Even now, over twenty years after the United States fought many losing battles and twenty-seven years after the death of Rog, the McInerny family is still affected by the war and their loss in many ways. Roger Sr. writes, “It was a terrible shock to lose a son – it still hurts. Even after all these years there are frequent reminders of him throughout the house and neighborhood.” On an optimistic note he adds, “I never feel the need to blame anyone for his dying a hero’s death. At the time, it seemed that all our efforts had been in vain. Now, twenty years later, the Berlin Wall is down, Germany is united, communism has been rejected in Russia and in Eastern Europe, and we now have an ambassador in Vietnam and commerce with China. Perhaps what we did in Korea, Vietnam Libya and Grenada were all important factors in the ending of the Cold War and for the first time in fifty years, a major war isn’t a dominant concern for our world.”
Luella’s constant reminders of the war don’t give her much consolation. “I find I can’t watch war shows or the film clips of the war or any of the enactments at the various military places around. It is too close to what really happens.”
Vivi [a writer for the Oregonian Newspaper – added by Paul D. McInerny 6/8/2011] receives a steady stream of reminders of her brother from men now who would be the same age. “I feel a strange connection to Vietnam veterans, as though they are all my lost brothers. And when I meet men who are the age my brother would be, should be, and hear them brag about how they were too smart or too rich to fight in Vietnam, I feel only sadness for their lack of compassion."
Jenny’s troubles extend to the new Vietnamese inhabitants of Minnesota. “The Hmong have settled in the Twin Cities in large numbers. They set up craft booths and people buy their products. I am uncomfortable with this. I have heard the vets talk about the Hmong and how they couldn’t tell who was the enemy and who was their ally. There was a lot of deceptions and I am left with the irrational feeling that these are the people who killed my brother.” She also has developed an intense empathy for young boys, as did her mother. “I feel a very strong affection for boys. Deep inside knowing that the draft could be recalled…When I see young men in army uniforms, I just want to give them a hug and tell them to be safe…I worry about the short time we have with each other and everyone seems more precious.”
The entire McInerny family have a deep-laid scar in their past. Fortunately, all of them have learned to grow and heal. Society however, has not been so lucky. There are many people still bitter and regretful about American involvement in Vietnam and even more so for the many lives we lost there. Society must learn to heal, but never to forget.
“For if we forget them, they will have died twice.”
Note:
I found this document among papers I had collected regarding Roger Jr. It apparently is a typed version of a newspaper article written about Roger, my parents and siblings. I do not know who the author is, nor if the type written account is an accurate reflection of the original article. Judging from references in the article, the original article appears to have been written in 1997. I have made minor spelling, punctuation and paragraph spacing corrections. Thank you. Paul D. McInerny, June 8, 2011
Private First Class Roger J. McInerny, Jr. and his company were hard at work securing a fire support base in the area of Tay Ninh, Vietnam, when they suddenly came under heavy rocket, mortar and ground attack. He immediately moved to the perimeter of the base, where he fired until his weapon malfunctioned, though he was within feet of impending explosion. After his weapon failure, Roger proceeded to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat until he was mortally wounded.
Roger J. McInerny, Jr., lovingly called “Rog” by his family, was a nineteen-year-old boy. He had just graduated from a Catholic high school and was attending junior college. He teased and bickered with his five younger siblings, (oldest to youngest) Paul, Jenny, Vivi, Maurice and Joe. He worked hard to make his parents, Roger and Luella, proud of him. He was your average American young man. This young man lost his life fighting for his country, and for democracy, far from home in the Vietnam War.
There are many stories like his, because the average American soldier was a nineteen-year-old, middle class boy. The way Rog’s family reacted to his death was diversified to each member of the group. Their different reactions provide an enlightening reflection of the overall effects on American society.
Vietnam is often described as a “working class war.” One of its main source of criticism is that many families lost their sons and brothers to a conflict that they hardly understood. Luella, Rog’s mother, exemplified this principle. “I hadn’t a clue as to what was going on. Housewives were involved in trying to make a pound of burger feed eight people. I was a homemaker with six kids to take care of and the war was ‘over there.’ Who even thought of it?”
With three brothers involved in the military, and two sons fast approaching the age of 18, Roger Sr., who had a more vast knowledge of current world events, paid much attention to the war. “The way I saw it was that we were in Vietnam to prevent communism for taking over South Vietnam as they had tried to do in 1950 South Korea.”
Vivi, Rog’s second sister, looks back on the “working class war” label bitterly. “I had heard my brother, my family and everyone like us, dismissed as chumps and suckers, dumb enough to die.”
The younger children, such as Joe, the youngest, were completely confused as to why they had sacrificed a brother. “Initially, I didn’t understand at all what the war was about. In fact, I didn’t understand what the Army was. When Rog went into the Army, I imagined it was like when Maurice (second youngest child) and I played army. I thought he joined up, got a uniform and a gun, and started shooting at people.”
The same basic results would be found of anyone in these positions in 1960s/1970s society. Mothers and homemakers were concerned with feeding the family, the father was concerned with politics and reading the evening paper, and children grasped at their quickly disappearing innocence, enjoying as much of their youth as they could in the shadow of a war.
Though understanding of the conflict was limited to the father in the family, a sense of honor and patriotic duty were abound in the McInerny home. “I was and am very proud that (Paul) and…Roger volunteered for service in 1969…[He] and [Rog] were a part of our national history,” remarks Roger Sr.
Luella commented that, “all of the boys in [Roger Sr.’s] family were in the service, and were very strong about patriotic duty.” Roger Sr. recounts a conversation with Rog. “Roger had told me that one of his professors said that poor blacks were bearing the brunt of the war, and Roger wanted to do his share. [He] had a sense of honor and duty.”
Vivi has mixed feelings about Rog’s patriotism. She describes him as, “a boy – all of nineteen-years-old who held onto traditional beliefs of honor and duty to his country a little longer than was fashionable. Certainly, too long.”
Though this type of patriotism was abundant in Midwestern communities like that of Richfield, Minnesota, and in families with strong military backgrounds, boys Roger’s age in other parts, and with different family belief systems were not so quick to enlist.
Both parents agree that religion played a large role in coping with their loss. Luella first states, “I guess it didn’t change my religious practices other than to make me, of course, include [Rog] in my daily prayers, and to pray more for the kids all here that this would never happen again,” she then adds, “I guess it did make me more religious now when I think of it.” Roger Sr. concurs with; “Our Catholic faith and family love were very essential to our coping with that terrible ordeal in April 1970. I’m thankful we had that faith and love.”
The event played a major role in the formation of the younger children’s beliefs, also. Jenny, the third child, recalls, “When I saw my parents remain strong in their beliefs despite the most devastating thing that could happen to a parent, I think it caused me to become stronger in my beliefs.”
She also recalls an incident with Maurice upon the delivery of the bad news. “He said he didn’t understand why we were all crying because Rog was in heaven now, and shouldn’t we all be happy? Mom smiled and said, “from the mouth of babes.” She smiled and told us Maurice was right.” Luella reaffirmed Maurice’s faith by explaining to him that she did believe Rog was in heaven, but she had to cry because she would miss him terribly.
This type of terrible trauma affected many families in America wartime. In every religion, faith was being tested, patience and understanding were being stretched to their utmost limits. This created tension within every type of family.
One of the frequent effects of a loss in a war is the loss of trust in the government. Luella clearly states, “ After Roger’s death, I have never trusted the government again. I feel they all lie just to make things sound good.” Not only has she lost trust in the government, but she also seems to have developed an acute disgust for it. "I now feel very sad when baby boys are born as I just think of them as cannon fodder for the old coots in Washington who decide to fight a war. It is okay with them because they don’t send their own kids, but only someone’s else’s.”
The younger members of the generation, like Joe, see the era as their first, and rather distasteful introduction to politics and the U.S. government. “I essentially came of age understanding that our president was a bad person, kind of like an evil king who had to be overthrown.” Constant protests, such as the infamous Kent State University incident, attest to this widely shared belief. Youth from all over the nation began to develop a distaste and distrust for their government.
Family life was also subject to a drastic change during the ordeal of dealing with Rog’s untimely death. Luella remembers the change in attitudes at home. “Rog’s death changed the family in that [Roger Sr.] had a hard time with disciplining the younger ones ever again. I had to try to be the firm hand in the family and I was not good at it.”
Jenny recalls her change toward her parents and toward her children now. “Having seen my parents in such pain, I tried never to hurt them at all. I hate to yell at my own kids – remembering that something could happen to them and those would be the last words they heard from me.”
Joe was younger, but still had the same idea. "It was the most traumatic change for me, having seen my parents go through so much sadness. I just didn’t want them to feel sad anymore.” This type of awful event often affects the way the next generation of children is brought up, thus having profound, but indirect effect on the new members of American society.
Even now, over twenty years after the United States fought many losing battles and twenty-seven years after the death of Rog, the McInerny family is still affected by the war and their loss in many ways. Roger Sr. writes, “It was a terrible shock to lose a son – it still hurts. Even after all these years there are frequent reminders of him throughout the house and neighborhood.” On an optimistic note he adds, “I never feel the need to blame anyone for his dying a hero’s death. At the time, it seemed that all our efforts had been in vain. Now, twenty years later, the Berlin Wall is down, Germany is united, communism has been rejected in Russia and in Eastern Europe, and we now have an ambassador in Vietnam and commerce with China. Perhaps what we did in Korea, Vietnam Libya and Grenada were all important factors in the ending of the Cold War and for the first time in fifty years, a major war isn’t a dominant concern for our world.”
Luella’s constant reminders of the war don’t give her much consolation. “I find I can’t watch war shows or the film clips of the war or any of the enactments at the various military places around. It is too close to what really happens.”
Vivi [a writer for the Oregonian Newspaper – added by Paul D. McInerny 6/8/2011] receives a steady stream of reminders of her brother from men now who would be the same age. “I feel a strange connection to Vietnam veterans, as though they are all my lost brothers. And when I meet men who are the age my brother would be, should be, and hear them brag about how they were too smart or too rich to fight in Vietnam, I feel only sadness for their lack of compassion."
Jenny’s troubles extend to the new Vietnamese inhabitants of Minnesota. “The Hmong have settled in the Twin Cities in large numbers. They set up craft booths and people buy their products. I am uncomfortable with this. I have heard the vets talk about the Hmong and how they couldn’t tell who was the enemy and who was their ally. There was a lot of deceptions and I am left with the irrational feeling that these are the people who killed my brother.” She also has developed an intense empathy for young boys, as did her mother. “I feel a very strong affection for boys. Deep inside knowing that the draft could be recalled…When I see young men in army uniforms, I just want to give them a hug and tell them to be safe…I worry about the short time we have with each other and everyone seems more precious.”
The entire McInerny family have a deep-laid scar in their past. Fortunately, all of them have learned to grow and heal. Society however, has not been so lucky. There are many people still bitter and regretful about American involvement in Vietnam and even more so for the many lives we lost there. Society must learn to heal, but never to forget.
“For if we forget them, they will have died twice.”
Soldier Boy
Soldier Boy
By Vivian McInerny
The Oregonian
November 11, 1988
Memories of an Innocent Time - Soldier Boy
His Family’s Life Changed Forever on the Sunny Spring Day They Learned He Died
Rog was my big brother. I cheered his Pony League pitches. I rode shotgun in his Chevy. I swiped his skates to glide across a frozen Wilson Pond. And I cried ‘til I felt my soul was going to turn inside out the day we learned he would not be coming home from Vietnam.
Last week I met a man who is the same age my brother would be, should be, and I listened in stunned silence as he bragged about the fact that he had not served in the armed forces. No one with any education, any money, any brains at all, he said, went to Vietnam.
I was horrified.
His observation was not new to me. People had been describing Vietnam as a working class war for many years. But they used to say that with compassion in their voices. They used to say it with a certain sense of sadness about the pegholes society puts us in. But this man’s attitude was new to me. This was the first time I had heard my brother, my family and everyone like us, dismissed as chumps and suckers; dumb enough to die.
Rog was killed April 1, 1970. The pain of that date. My brother was no hero, but neither was he a fool. He was a sweet suburban boy, an altar boy, a paper boy—a boy—all of 19 years old who held onto traditional beliefs of honor and duty to his country a little longer than was fashionable. Certainly, too long.
Rog was not drafted. He joined the Army. He joined not with rugged Rambo illusions, but with the gentle opinion that it was the right thing to do. Classes at the community college weren’t working out. It was tough studying and pulling railroad ties in the summer to pay for schooling, especially since he wasn’t even sure what it was he wanted to learn. A couple years in the service would give him time to find a focus. Besides, there’d be the GI Bill at the end of it all to pay for his education, just as it had for his father and for his father’s brothers. I don’t think it ever occurred to Rog—or anyone else in the family—that he might not get a chance to use that bill.
Rog came home on leave before shipping out to Vietnam. His dark hair was cut in an unfamiliar crop. The uniform made him appear strangely formal. But he still teased his five younger siblings with familiar bad jokes.
I remember him sitting on the sofa with our Grandpa poring over maps of Asia. Our home in Minneapolis was small and always crowded with us six kids, friends, and ongoing visits from extended family, but the two of them had carved out a quiet corner in the chaos.
With one finger, Rog followed a thin, black outline of Vietnam. He located his base camp between the wrinkled folds of the map and pointed it out to Grandpa who, always stubborn, found some point to argue.
Grandpa adjusted his glasses. He drew from his pipe. He complained that the map wasn’t right and said this “Vietnam thing” was sure nothing like the First World War he fought in Europe.
Peeking over the top of the map, Rog saw his little sister. He moved his eyebrows up and down like a Saturday morning cartoon character and broke into a broad smile.
A few weeks later Rog’s life ended in a faraway country fighting for a cause he couldn’t possibly understand.
We learned of his death the following afternoon.
Ah, but that morning, that precious, last morning of innocence. The sun was out. The sky was blue. Winter’s blanket of snow had retreated to the shadows and though it managed to hold its ground at night when temperatures and darkness dropped, it was obvious spring soon would triumph.
The combination of sunlight and school bells that Friday afternoon was like a champagne cocktail bubbling straight to my 13-year-old head. I was giddy. I was giggly. I leaped from the school bus. I splashed through melted snow puddles. I challenged my two little brothers to a race for home, confident, even after giving them a generous head start, that I easily would beat them. As I ran, the hard edges of our neighborhood blurred. My short, shallow breaths blended with the sound of the wind rushing past my ears. My toes seemed to touch ground only now and again as a polite gesture to those mere mortals ruled by the laws of gravity, because on this particular spring Friday high, I swore, I could fly.
Maybe it was the time of life. Or maybe it was the time in history. But I think there was never a more optimistic moment than those split seconds spent speeding toward a suburban home in middle America on that spring day.
“I won,” I shouted as I jumped onto the back steps. “I won.”
With one shoulder against the hard wood door, I pushed, shoved and rushed into the kitchen, my two younger brothers tumbling in after me.
Our dad caught us. His eyes were red-rimmed. Our mom and older sister stood behind him holding each other.
“I have sad news,” he said. “Rogie was killed.”
Nothing would ever be the same again.
Almost 20 years later and I still feel the tears when I flip through old family photos of those times. I feel a strange connection to Vietnam veterans, as though they are all my lost brothers. And when I meet men who are the age my brother would be, should be, and hear them brag about how they were too smart or too rich to fight in Vietnam, I feel only sadness for their lack of compassion.
Because I simply remember a more innocent time. I remember when my family was middle America, when we were the people Norman Rockwell painted, when we were the spirit of a country that still believed in itself. And way back then, we weren’t considered corny.
My brother’s Purple Heart hangs in a glass case on a wall in my parents’ home. But I have a different sort of Purple Heart. It was not earned on a battlefront, but granted at the home front. It is not proudly pinned to a uniformed chest, but sadly worn on a civilian sleeve. It is the bruised heart of one who lost her big brother in Vietnam.
By Vivian McInerny
The Oregonian
November 11, 1988
Memories of an Innocent Time - Soldier Boy
His Family’s Life Changed Forever on the Sunny Spring Day They Learned He Died
Rog was my big brother. I cheered his Pony League pitches. I rode shotgun in his Chevy. I swiped his skates to glide across a frozen Wilson Pond. And I cried ‘til I felt my soul was going to turn inside out the day we learned he would not be coming home from Vietnam.
Last week I met a man who is the same age my brother would be, should be, and I listened in stunned silence as he bragged about the fact that he had not served in the armed forces. No one with any education, any money, any brains at all, he said, went to Vietnam.
I was horrified.
His observation was not new to me. People had been describing Vietnam as a working class war for many years. But they used to say that with compassion in their voices. They used to say it with a certain sense of sadness about the pegholes society puts us in. But this man’s attitude was new to me. This was the first time I had heard my brother, my family and everyone like us, dismissed as chumps and suckers; dumb enough to die.
Rog was killed April 1, 1970. The pain of that date. My brother was no hero, but neither was he a fool. He was a sweet suburban boy, an altar boy, a paper boy—a boy—all of 19 years old who held onto traditional beliefs of honor and duty to his country a little longer than was fashionable. Certainly, too long.
Rog was not drafted. He joined the Army. He joined not with rugged Rambo illusions, but with the gentle opinion that it was the right thing to do. Classes at the community college weren’t working out. It was tough studying and pulling railroad ties in the summer to pay for schooling, especially since he wasn’t even sure what it was he wanted to learn. A couple years in the service would give him time to find a focus. Besides, there’d be the GI Bill at the end of it all to pay for his education, just as it had for his father and for his father’s brothers. I don’t think it ever occurred to Rog—or anyone else in the family—that he might not get a chance to use that bill.
Rog came home on leave before shipping out to Vietnam. His dark hair was cut in an unfamiliar crop. The uniform made him appear strangely formal. But he still teased his five younger siblings with familiar bad jokes.
I remember him sitting on the sofa with our Grandpa poring over maps of Asia. Our home in Minneapolis was small and always crowded with us six kids, friends, and ongoing visits from extended family, but the two of them had carved out a quiet corner in the chaos.
With one finger, Rog followed a thin, black outline of Vietnam. He located his base camp between the wrinkled folds of the map and pointed it out to Grandpa who, always stubborn, found some point to argue.
Grandpa adjusted his glasses. He drew from his pipe. He complained that the map wasn’t right and said this “Vietnam thing” was sure nothing like the First World War he fought in Europe.
Peeking over the top of the map, Rog saw his little sister. He moved his eyebrows up and down like a Saturday morning cartoon character and broke into a broad smile.
A few weeks later Rog’s life ended in a faraway country fighting for a cause he couldn’t possibly understand.
We learned of his death the following afternoon.
Ah, but that morning, that precious, last morning of innocence. The sun was out. The sky was blue. Winter’s blanket of snow had retreated to the shadows and though it managed to hold its ground at night when temperatures and darkness dropped, it was obvious spring soon would triumph.
The combination of sunlight and school bells that Friday afternoon was like a champagne cocktail bubbling straight to my 13-year-old head. I was giddy. I was giggly. I leaped from the school bus. I splashed through melted snow puddles. I challenged my two little brothers to a race for home, confident, even after giving them a generous head start, that I easily would beat them. As I ran, the hard edges of our neighborhood blurred. My short, shallow breaths blended with the sound of the wind rushing past my ears. My toes seemed to touch ground only now and again as a polite gesture to those mere mortals ruled by the laws of gravity, because on this particular spring Friday high, I swore, I could fly.
Maybe it was the time of life. Or maybe it was the time in history. But I think there was never a more optimistic moment than those split seconds spent speeding toward a suburban home in middle America on that spring day.
“I won,” I shouted as I jumped onto the back steps. “I won.”
With one shoulder against the hard wood door, I pushed, shoved and rushed into the kitchen, my two younger brothers tumbling in after me.
Our dad caught us. His eyes were red-rimmed. Our mom and older sister stood behind him holding each other.
“I have sad news,” he said. “Rogie was killed.”
Nothing would ever be the same again.
Almost 20 years later and I still feel the tears when I flip through old family photos of those times. I feel a strange connection to Vietnam veterans, as though they are all my lost brothers. And when I meet men who are the age my brother would be, should be, and hear them brag about how they were too smart or too rich to fight in Vietnam, I feel only sadness for their lack of compassion.
Because I simply remember a more innocent time. I remember when my family was middle America, when we were the people Norman Rockwell painted, when we were the spirit of a country that still believed in itself. And way back then, we weren’t considered corny.
My brother’s Purple Heart hangs in a glass case on a wall in my parents’ home. But I have a different sort of Purple Heart. It was not earned on a battlefront, but granted at the home front. It is not proudly pinned to a uniformed chest, but sadly worn on a civilian sleeve. It is the bruised heart of one who lost her big brother in Vietnam.
A Search For Peace
A SEARCH FOR PEACE
By Vivian McInerny
The Oregonian
Source: THE OREGONIAN
Monday, November 10, 2003
Edition: SUNRISE, Section: LIVING, Page D01
Summary: For the sister of a slain Vietnam soldier, grieving never ends, but a message brings a healing response
The phone rang one Saturday morning. My daughter was watching cartoons, so I took the cordless into the hall. A man introduced himself. I expected him to launch into a rote sales pitch for a new long-distance service or credit card company, but the voice on the other end paused, as though awaiting recognition.
”Denny McCarty,” he repeated.
The name still meant nothing to me.
”I knew your brother,” he said.
They were bunkmates. They trained together. They went to Vietnam together.
They came home separately.
Unable to think of any useful words, I nodded, and in that stretched moment of silence between us became keenly aware of the colored shadows of cartoons casting random patterns across the bare, white walls.
My brother Roger James McInerny was killed in Vietnam on April 1, 1970. He was 19, the oldest of six kids in a lively, noisy Irish Catholic family in Minneapolis. That was the day when things once familiar felt strange, when previously important things became trivial, when the sum total of everything I knew about the world equaled absolutely nothing at all. I was 13.
Today in Iraq, the weapons are different, but the emotional shrapnel is the same. Hundreds of families have suffered the shock of losing a loved one and, for them, the task of grieving has just begun. It never ends.
Sorrow is a strange emotion. Some people describe it as pain. Others describe it as numbing. Sometimes I feel it is the purgatory of ricocheting between those two extremes, caught in a quiet chaos.
For a 13-year-old in 1970, sorrow was also mixed up in the chaos of the times. The war that took my brother was ripping apart the United States. Generations were separated, not just by age but also by perspective. The traditions of parents seemed hollow to their kids. The revolution of kids seemed pointless to their parents. I was old enough to question the ways of the world but too young to do anything about them. So I mostly sat, dazed, in front of a flickering television screen, taking in the phony sets and canned laughter of “Gilligan’s Island” and the real footage of soldiers crying on the news. Both seemed worlds away.
My brother’s room in the basement, untouched since his death, became my refuge. I would retreat downstairs and play his Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix tapes full blast.
I wish I could say my brother’s death spurred me to become a political activist or a community volunteer. Instead, I spent five years on a path of rebellious self-destruction and three more bumming around the globe until I found some peace, and a livelihood, in Portland.
It was easy, in the business of everyday life, to push aside sorrow. You never forget. It’s there. But instead of drowning in it, you learn to stay afloat.
In spring 2000, I began surfing the Web for information on Vietnam. I wanted to write a newspaper story. At least, that’s what I told myself.
I reread my brother’s letters to get the names of companies, units and platoons. I was convinced no one would remember Roger—my brother was in Vietnam less than a month when he was killed—but I wanted to gain some understanding of what it was like for him there. I posted a single message, hoping to communicate with anyone who had served near the Cambodian border around the same time as my brother.
I felt as if I were tossing a bottled message into a vast cyber sea.
More than two years later, Denny McCarty found it.
He signed on to the Internet for the first time at his home in Elgin, Minn., and almost immediately came across my note. The e-mail address I’d left was no longer valid. McCarty, however, managed to get my phone number and was itching to dial, but it was still early morning in Minnesota and two hours earlier on the West Coast.
”I’ve been sitting here waiting for it to be 9 o’clock in Oregon so I could call,” McCarty said when he finally phoned. “I figure I’ve been waiting 30 years for this.”
He and my brother met in training in Alabama, two Minnesota boys looking for someone familiar. My brother was killed in the first, and only, heavy action their company encountered.
”I spent 12 months in the field and never saw anything like that first battle again,” McCarty said. “We lost 50-something guys that night. Out of the 16 guys Roger and I went in with, only three came home.” McCarty returned to the United States one year later and a lifetime older.
”I was a basket case,” he said.
He got a job in a John Deere factory. He married, had a couple of kids, got divorced. He never talked about Vietnam.
”But most nights I woke up screaming Roger’s name,” he said.
McCarty never attended a veterans group. He didn’t go to therapy. He didn’t join a 12-step program. But about 15 years ago, he met with another Vietnam veteran in town for coffee. They talked. They felt better. They talked some more. They’ve been meeting weekly ever since.
”But some things you only need to say once,” McCarty said.
Whenever McCarty visited the Twin Cities, he’d search the Minneapolis phone books to find Roger’s parents, relieved each time he failed.
”I didn’t know if they’d want to talk to me,” he said. “I didn’t know what I’d say.” Years slipped by, and McCarty began to think maybe too much time had passed. No one would remember Roger. No one would be left to care. He was both relieved and nervous to learn otherwise.
”This is something I should have done years ago,” he said.
I didn’t tell most of my family about McCarty. Earlier this year, I flew to Minneapolis but said nothing of my plans to meet him later that week. I knew they would ask why, and I didn’t have a clear answer. A friend suggested that maybe I hoped to get to know my brother through McCarty’s reminiscing. But I had my own memories.
He was the brother who taught me how to skip stones on the Mississippi River. He showed me how to throw a football when the trees in the front yard glowed brilliant yellow in the autumn sun. Once, when I cried because I’d broken a favorite kaleidoscope, my brother took it apart to show me how pieces of colored glass and mirrors made the mysterious patterns. I carried those bits of stained glass around until I lost them through a hole in my pocket, leaving a trail of rainbow colors behind me.
Each member of my family has dealt, or not dealt, with Roger’s death in his or her own way, choosing the memories carefully.
In the wisdom and arrogance of my middle years, I thought that I had finished grieving. I reasoned that time had long ago sutured the gaping wound left by my brother’s death.
Yet, some 30-odd years later, there was still something that provoked me to seek out McCarty.
On a drive through southern Minnesota, the land stretches flat as far as the eye can see. The lines on the highway roll beneath the car at a hypnotic pace. What should have been a relaxing car ride had me in a silent panic.
McCarty and I had talked several times by phone. We’d exchanged e-mails. But I started worrying that I hadn’t checked out the details enough. What if he was some crazed vet living in a tent in the woods? What if his home was a half-buried bus filled with war memorabilia?
I turned on the radio. The talk was about the price of cattle and wheat. I looked at the directions McCarty had given: “Drive about five miles to the three-mile mark.” It wasn’t too late to make a U-turn. But I didn’t. Eventually, I came to a quiet cul-de-sac with several modest homes surrounded by woodlands.
McCarty met me at the front door and introduced me to his wife. She left us alone to talk. We pulled chairs up to the kitchen table.
”What do you want to know?” he asked.
”I’m not sure,” I said nervously. This is not the way reporters typically begin interviews, but I was being honest.
McCarty told me the story he had told already on the phone.
”We were guarding a fire base about the size of two football fields,” he began.
It was nothing but dirt and dust and ammunition. About 125 young soldiers waited, tense and edgy all day and into the starless night. At 1 a.m., the firing started. Bullets and bombs stirred a choking cloud of dust.
”You couldn’t see two feet in front of you,” McCarty said.
The fighting lasted until dawn, when U.S. planes flew over and bombed what remained. As the sun rose on a new day, more than half the guys were gone: Fifty or more were dead; another 30 or so were injured and air-lifted out. The rest were left trying to make sense of what had happened.
McCarty sought out his five friends. He found two alive.
”I unzipped 35 body bags looking for your brother,” McCarty said, his voice breaking. “I never found him.”
My brother was missing in action for one day. McCarty was being treated for his own injuries when they found Roger and shipped him home.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. McInerny,
I extend my most profound sympathy to you on the recent loss of your son, Private First Class Roger J. McInerny Jr. who died in the service of his country on April 1, 1970. On the morning of April 1, Roger and his Company were securing Fire Support Base Illingworth in the vicinity of Tay Ninh, Republic of Vietnam, when Roger was mortally wounded at approximately 4:30 A.M. It may afford you some comfort to know that death came quickly and he was not subject to any unnecessary suffering.
Respectfully,
George K. Hobson
CPT, Infantry
Commanding Officer
Some people told us we should feel angry at the government for sending him to war. Everyone said that, with time, we would get over it, as though grief were a bump in the road. But the loss of my brother was more like a forced detour on a family drive, a winding, rugged road through strange territories that led everywhere but home.
There are thousands of families going through the same thing now in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan—all over the world. When the battles, bombs and terrorist acts are forgotten and their reasons for being—right, wrong or misguided—have faded from popular memory, the rippling effects continue, not for a while, but forever. Maybe 30 years down the road you hang on to your kids a little longer than you might have otherwise. Maybe your kids’ kids will tell the story of their great-uncle who left a hole in the heart of their family.
I worried that wanting to meet McCarty fed a morbid curiosity, that I might be wallowing in past sadness, stirring up forgotten feelings and subjecting my family and myself to “unnecessary suffering.” I worried that I was courting chaos.
But sitting at his kitchen table, listening to the stories of a tough young soldier who became a good man, a man my brother never had a chance to be, I knew this was the right thing to do. I felt as if I were reassembling that broken kaleidoscope of my childhood. Fragmented bits of life, like pieces of colored glass, make no sense without reflection. Reflection allows us to see the ever-changing patterns, slightly different with every turn.
I sought out McCarty without an idea of what I wanted. But when I asked him what he hoped to get out of our meeting, he was clear.
”I want you to know that your brother was not alone. He had friends,” McCarty said. “I want you to know that I think about him every day. I think about them all.”
By Vivian McInerny
The Oregonian
Source: THE OREGONIAN
Monday, November 10, 2003
Edition: SUNRISE, Section: LIVING, Page D01
Summary: For the sister of a slain Vietnam soldier, grieving never ends, but a message brings a healing response
The phone rang one Saturday morning. My daughter was watching cartoons, so I took the cordless into the hall. A man introduced himself. I expected him to launch into a rote sales pitch for a new long-distance service or credit card company, but the voice on the other end paused, as though awaiting recognition.
”Denny McCarty,” he repeated.
The name still meant nothing to me.
”I knew your brother,” he said.
They were bunkmates. They trained together. They went to Vietnam together.
They came home separately.
Unable to think of any useful words, I nodded, and in that stretched moment of silence between us became keenly aware of the colored shadows of cartoons casting random patterns across the bare, white walls.
My brother Roger James McInerny was killed in Vietnam on April 1, 1970. He was 19, the oldest of six kids in a lively, noisy Irish Catholic family in Minneapolis. That was the day when things once familiar felt strange, when previously important things became trivial, when the sum total of everything I knew about the world equaled absolutely nothing at all. I was 13.
Today in Iraq, the weapons are different, but the emotional shrapnel is the same. Hundreds of families have suffered the shock of losing a loved one and, for them, the task of grieving has just begun. It never ends.
Sorrow is a strange emotion. Some people describe it as pain. Others describe it as numbing. Sometimes I feel it is the purgatory of ricocheting between those two extremes, caught in a quiet chaos.
For a 13-year-old in 1970, sorrow was also mixed up in the chaos of the times. The war that took my brother was ripping apart the United States. Generations were separated, not just by age but also by perspective. The traditions of parents seemed hollow to their kids. The revolution of kids seemed pointless to their parents. I was old enough to question the ways of the world but too young to do anything about them. So I mostly sat, dazed, in front of a flickering television screen, taking in the phony sets and canned laughter of “Gilligan’s Island” and the real footage of soldiers crying on the news. Both seemed worlds away.
My brother’s room in the basement, untouched since his death, became my refuge. I would retreat downstairs and play his Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix tapes full blast.
I wish I could say my brother’s death spurred me to become a political activist or a community volunteer. Instead, I spent five years on a path of rebellious self-destruction and three more bumming around the globe until I found some peace, and a livelihood, in Portland.
It was easy, in the business of everyday life, to push aside sorrow. You never forget. It’s there. But instead of drowning in it, you learn to stay afloat.
In spring 2000, I began surfing the Web for information on Vietnam. I wanted to write a newspaper story. At least, that’s what I told myself.
I reread my brother’s letters to get the names of companies, units and platoons. I was convinced no one would remember Roger—my brother was in Vietnam less than a month when he was killed—but I wanted to gain some understanding of what it was like for him there. I posted a single message, hoping to communicate with anyone who had served near the Cambodian border around the same time as my brother.
I felt as if I were tossing a bottled message into a vast cyber sea.
More than two years later, Denny McCarty found it.
He signed on to the Internet for the first time at his home in Elgin, Minn., and almost immediately came across my note. The e-mail address I’d left was no longer valid. McCarty, however, managed to get my phone number and was itching to dial, but it was still early morning in Minnesota and two hours earlier on the West Coast.
”I’ve been sitting here waiting for it to be 9 o’clock in Oregon so I could call,” McCarty said when he finally phoned. “I figure I’ve been waiting 30 years for this.”
He and my brother met in training in Alabama, two Minnesota boys looking for someone familiar. My brother was killed in the first, and only, heavy action their company encountered.
”I spent 12 months in the field and never saw anything like that first battle again,” McCarty said. “We lost 50-something guys that night. Out of the 16 guys Roger and I went in with, only three came home.” McCarty returned to the United States one year later and a lifetime older.
”I was a basket case,” he said.
He got a job in a John Deere factory. He married, had a couple of kids, got divorced. He never talked about Vietnam.
”But most nights I woke up screaming Roger’s name,” he said.
McCarty never attended a veterans group. He didn’t go to therapy. He didn’t join a 12-step program. But about 15 years ago, he met with another Vietnam veteran in town for coffee. They talked. They felt better. They talked some more. They’ve been meeting weekly ever since.
”But some things you only need to say once,” McCarty said.
Whenever McCarty visited the Twin Cities, he’d search the Minneapolis phone books to find Roger’s parents, relieved each time he failed.
”I didn’t know if they’d want to talk to me,” he said. “I didn’t know what I’d say.” Years slipped by, and McCarty began to think maybe too much time had passed. No one would remember Roger. No one would be left to care. He was both relieved and nervous to learn otherwise.
”This is something I should have done years ago,” he said.
I didn’t tell most of my family about McCarty. Earlier this year, I flew to Minneapolis but said nothing of my plans to meet him later that week. I knew they would ask why, and I didn’t have a clear answer. A friend suggested that maybe I hoped to get to know my brother through McCarty’s reminiscing. But I had my own memories.
He was the brother who taught me how to skip stones on the Mississippi River. He showed me how to throw a football when the trees in the front yard glowed brilliant yellow in the autumn sun. Once, when I cried because I’d broken a favorite kaleidoscope, my brother took it apart to show me how pieces of colored glass and mirrors made the mysterious patterns. I carried those bits of stained glass around until I lost them through a hole in my pocket, leaving a trail of rainbow colors behind me.
Each member of my family has dealt, or not dealt, with Roger’s death in his or her own way, choosing the memories carefully.
In the wisdom and arrogance of my middle years, I thought that I had finished grieving. I reasoned that time had long ago sutured the gaping wound left by my brother’s death.
Yet, some 30-odd years later, there was still something that provoked me to seek out McCarty.
On a drive through southern Minnesota, the land stretches flat as far as the eye can see. The lines on the highway roll beneath the car at a hypnotic pace. What should have been a relaxing car ride had me in a silent panic.
McCarty and I had talked several times by phone. We’d exchanged e-mails. But I started worrying that I hadn’t checked out the details enough. What if he was some crazed vet living in a tent in the woods? What if his home was a half-buried bus filled with war memorabilia?
I turned on the radio. The talk was about the price of cattle and wheat. I looked at the directions McCarty had given: “Drive about five miles to the three-mile mark.” It wasn’t too late to make a U-turn. But I didn’t. Eventually, I came to a quiet cul-de-sac with several modest homes surrounded by woodlands.
McCarty met me at the front door and introduced me to his wife. She left us alone to talk. We pulled chairs up to the kitchen table.
”What do you want to know?” he asked.
”I’m not sure,” I said nervously. This is not the way reporters typically begin interviews, but I was being honest.
McCarty told me the story he had told already on the phone.
”We were guarding a fire base about the size of two football fields,” he began.
It was nothing but dirt and dust and ammunition. About 125 young soldiers waited, tense and edgy all day and into the starless night. At 1 a.m., the firing started. Bullets and bombs stirred a choking cloud of dust.
”You couldn’t see two feet in front of you,” McCarty said.
The fighting lasted until dawn, when U.S. planes flew over and bombed what remained. As the sun rose on a new day, more than half the guys were gone: Fifty or more were dead; another 30 or so were injured and air-lifted out. The rest were left trying to make sense of what had happened.
McCarty sought out his five friends. He found two alive.
”I unzipped 35 body bags looking for your brother,” McCarty said, his voice breaking. “I never found him.”
My brother was missing in action for one day. McCarty was being treated for his own injuries when they found Roger and shipped him home.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. McInerny,
I extend my most profound sympathy to you on the recent loss of your son, Private First Class Roger J. McInerny Jr. who died in the service of his country on April 1, 1970. On the morning of April 1, Roger and his Company were securing Fire Support Base Illingworth in the vicinity of Tay Ninh, Republic of Vietnam, when Roger was mortally wounded at approximately 4:30 A.M. It may afford you some comfort to know that death came quickly and he was not subject to any unnecessary suffering.
Respectfully,
George K. Hobson
CPT, Infantry
Commanding Officer
Some people told us we should feel angry at the government for sending him to war. Everyone said that, with time, we would get over it, as though grief were a bump in the road. But the loss of my brother was more like a forced detour on a family drive, a winding, rugged road through strange territories that led everywhere but home.
There are thousands of families going through the same thing now in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan—all over the world. When the battles, bombs and terrorist acts are forgotten and their reasons for being—right, wrong or misguided—have faded from popular memory, the rippling effects continue, not for a while, but forever. Maybe 30 years down the road you hang on to your kids a little longer than you might have otherwise. Maybe your kids’ kids will tell the story of their great-uncle who left a hole in the heart of their family.
I worried that wanting to meet McCarty fed a morbid curiosity, that I might be wallowing in past sadness, stirring up forgotten feelings and subjecting my family and myself to “unnecessary suffering.” I worried that I was courting chaos.
But sitting at his kitchen table, listening to the stories of a tough young soldier who became a good man, a man my brother never had a chance to be, I knew this was the right thing to do. I felt as if I were reassembling that broken kaleidoscope of my childhood. Fragmented bits of life, like pieces of colored glass, make no sense without reflection. Reflection allows us to see the ever-changing patterns, slightly different with every turn.
I sought out McCarty without an idea of what I wanted. But when I asked him what he hoped to get out of our meeting, he was clear.
”I want you to know that your brother was not alone. He had friends,” McCarty said. “I want you to know that I think about him every day. I think about them all.”
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