When Truth Dies in Battle

Hermiston, Ore. — Amid the confusing debate over John Kerry's Vietnam record, one thing is clear: war - particularly the trauma of war - corrodes memory.

My father was killed in Vietnam in 1966, when I was 9. There were two official Army reports regarding his death. One said he was killed by friendly fire. The other claimed he was struck down by enemy fire. Newspaper accounts in the local newspapers (we were living in Tennessee) said my father, a career soldier, a staff sergeant with nearly 20 years of experience, was operating the howitzer that killed him. Then there was a nasty rumor that he had been decapitated.

Several years ago, I set out to see if I could figure out what really happened. I traveled all over the United States and to Vietnam. I gathered documents and conducted interviews. In a remote Kentucky town, I met my father's commanding officer. In Nebraska, I found his gunner. In New Jersey, I discovered the man who had issued the radio call for medical evacuation. In Georgia, I found a private who had been awakened by my father's screams as he bled to death. "It sounded like a wildcat," he recalled. And just when I'd given up on tracking him, the medic who had identified my father's body called me.

Each of these men remembers the events of July 24, 1966 differently. They all agree that not long after 5 a.m. a mortar round exploded in a muddy spot, nobody remembers exactly where, in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam's Central Highlands. My father, his commanding officer and a medic were asleep in the same tent; their cots only a few feet apart. All three sustained injuries. The commanding officer was hit with hot shrapnel. "It looked like I'd run through a briarpatch," he said. The medic took a round in his buttocks. The daily log lists the last victim, my father, as "third man down." Bad weather delayed his evacuation. He died long before the chopper arrived.

From then on, though, the stories get convoluted. The commanding officer insisted the mortar round was incoming; so did the sergeant who was outside operating the howitzer for their battery that morning and said he heard the round come in.

But my father's gunner has always insisted that the round came from friendly fire. According to him, the sergeant was conducting routine harassing and interdictory fire that morning. One of the shells misfired and exploded in camp, near my father's tent. This version is supported by several of the men who were in the battery that day.

Rather than clarify matters, the autopsy report created more confusion. It stated that my father had a "possible GSW from back to abdomen." In others words, one former Army mortician explained, "Your father was shot in the back with an M-16." A small wound like that, the mortician insisted, could not have been mistaken for mortar shrapnel. It had to have come from a gunshot at close range. The commanding officer, however, maintained that the wound was the result of flying shrapnel.

I'm not sure I understand the events that led up to my father's death any better today than I did when the young lieutenant in the Army jeep pulled up in front of our home at Slaughter's Trailer Court in Rogersville, Tenn. and started my mother crying. Still, my search wasn't in vain. I learned that my father was a good soldier, well-loved and respected by those who fought alongside him.

"There's nobody I'd have rather have gone to war with," said Gary Catlett, my father's driver, whom I tracked down in California. "He was so confident. He had experience. He was the kind of guy that could walk through a minefield and have mines exploding all around him and he'd still be calm. He knew how to keep morale up. We respected him."

So, then, what about John Kerry and the Swift boat crew? Enough already. There are some things we'll never know. But there are also some things that are beyond dispute - even in the chaos of war. Mr. Kerry went. He served. Lucky for him, he got to come home and raise his daughters.


Karen Spears Zacharias is the author of the forthcoming "Hero Mama."
NY Times