Loon - Jack McLean [94]
“Connecticut. Ethel Walker,” she answered. Ethel Walker was an all-girl prep school outside of Hartford. She did not ask about me, so I stumbled forth anyway.
“I’m from here—well, near here—Brookline. I went to Andover.” This was going nowhere. I felt as though I were in a battle with neither a rifle nor training. I was devoid of all social skills. This was tough.
“Andover?” She lit up suddenly. “Did you know Freddy Witherspoon? He went to Andover too. I met him last summer on the Cape.”
“Well, no. I mean, well, his name sounds familiar. He would have been a sophomore when I graduated.” Now what? I thought. Might as well come out with it. “I actually graduated from Andover two years ago. I’ve been serving in the United States Marine Corps for the past two years. I just got back from Vietnam.”
“Oh.”
That was it. “Oh.”
No “How great it must be to be home.”
No “Thank you for your service.”
No “You’re a fucking baby killer.”
No “I’ve always wanted to do it with a marine.”
No nothing.
Just “Oh.”
With that, she rose and headed up the steps into the building. The conversation, such as it was, was over. I had learned a valuable lesson. Few, if any, people at Harvard cared about military service—particularly Vietnam service. From that point on, for the next four years, and well beyond, I barely mentioned it.
30
IN NOVEMBER WE RETURNED TO ELIZABETH, NEW Jersey, for the Thanksgiving celebration with Grandma and Grandpa. After Grandpa completed the recitation of his annual poem, he asked the entire family to hold hands and stand in a circle with me in the center. He was proud of what I had accomplished and was relieved that I was home safe. Upon his command, all sang three verses of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” I felt self-conscious at first but drew increasing strength by looking at Grandpa. He openly cried as he sang. I had never seen anyone shed an actual tear over my service.
This was my homecoming parade. It was the only formal recognition I received for my service from any quarter.
By the end of 1968, there was nothing at all pleasing about being identified as a veteran of the Vietnam War—even among family. We veterans had become the physical symbols of our nation’s gross military misfortune. Our returning status was the polar opposite to that of our fathers, a brief twenty-three years before, who had returned from Europe and the Pacific to universal adulation and appreciation.
It was relatively easy for me to push Vietnam out of my mind—school started, I had books to read, papers to write, and I began to very awkwardly socialize with friends and girls. There was nothing in Brookline or Cambridge to trigger even the vaguest memory of my previous year—no military bases, no marines, no jeeps, no jets, no incoming artillery, not even any short hair. Most important, perhaps, it was hard to even find anybody who cared that I or any other American serviceman had served his country in harm’s way. If I didn’t bring up the subject, the subject didn’t come up.
I didn’t bring up the subject.
As long as I could stay away from the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, Vietnam existed only as the object of increasingly passionate protest rallies on and around American college campuses.
I could not, however, push Sid MacLeod out of my mind.
Day and night his memory haunted me—as it does to this day.
Sid.
I just didn’t know what the hell to do.
I found his old address and wrote a clumsy note to his mother and father. I didn’t know what to say. Here I was, alive and safely in college—exactly where he had been three years before when he’d gotten the bright idea to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. What made it a conundrum was that, like me, he’d enlisted voluntarily. Unlike me, however, he had really wanted to serve in Vietnam, and now he was dead.
Dammit.
McLean, VA
December 2, 1968 (Friday)
Letter from Lillie and Sid MacLeod
Dear Jack,
We wanted you to know how much we appreciated your letter. I fully intended to write sooner but kept putting it off; I still find