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Winter Soldier "Detroit Bill"

By Horace Coleman

It was the early 70s. I think I'd been out of Nam for about four years, out of the service for a little more than five. Smoke was still coming out of my ears.

Trouble Child (TC), an undergraduate at the university where I was teaching, had gotten some money together to bring a guest speaker to campus. Some Nam vet who had this film with him about something called the Winter Soldier Investigation.

I went to the showing and saw a version of Detroit Bill that seemed about 30 pounds lighter, talking like a wildly gesturing marionette whose puppeteer was on speed.

Bill spent the night at TC's off campus digs. I went there the morning after the film had been shown. TC was in his mini-kitchen putting together breakfast. Bill was up a steep and narrow flight of stairs, asleep in the bedroom.

I was in the little living room when Bill came slowly down, clinging to the banister like it was a life line. He was wearing a sleeveless underwear shirt. I could see the sling rig strapping his very artificial arm to his body. I could tell by his awkward thumping gait that the leg on the same side as his hook hand was also gone, high up.

Before he started telling how he had gotten his ticket punched, Nam was in the room and completely out of the closet in the back of my mind that never closed tightly. Some things don't fit into a closet or "stay in the field."

Bill was a sure enough adrenaline junkie. He told me about the HALO (High Altitude, Low Opening) jumps on oxygen that his team used to make from this specially modified spook bird. They'd go up North, cross the DMZ, do their thing and di di mau.

Except for that last mission.

Every damn thing went wrong. They got hit shortly after they'd landed and never reached their objective. Bill thought he'd been blinded. Until he'd put his hand on his head and pushed his scalp out of his face. He wore a .50 caliber shell on a chain around his neck, as a reminder—like he needed one. He'd been hit with that and .30s too, he said.

Talking about what it all meant, he said "What do I tell my son when I strap my arm on in the morning!?"

I didn't say "It don't mean nothing!", I said "Tell him the truth. Call it like you see it. Say what you think. Slip it out of your mind and to your lips."

So, when these students from this charter high school in LA started e-mailing me or calling asking for an a phone interview because "I have to do a paper for my English teacher / my history teacher" and they had to interview a war vet, I let it slip.

I'd tell one person that one of my most memorable memories was walking past the shipping coffins stacked three stories high outside the mortuary at Tan Son Nhut and thinking they looked like oversized cigarette cases. I didn't mention getting sniped at in Saigon.

"Did you write home often?" some would ask and I'd say about every 10 days, keeping the home fires stoked. Then tell them about the two airmen I'd worked with whose wives waited until just before they came home to write them that they were pregnant by some one else.

I'd explain that in the 1960s you could be 18 and get drafted but couldn't vote. Or, you could be black, of voting age, couldn't vote in your home state and get drafted.

I'd tell some else that President Bush had strings pulled to get him into the National Guard and keep him out of Nam–and didn't show up for all his Guard duty. Then I'd mention how Vice President Cheney used educational draft deferments to duck out of Nam. I'd say most draft age men didn't go to Nam. Neither did most of the active duty military. And send them some documentation for that.

I might tell some one else that the draft was eliminated because too many Nam draftees raised hell. An all volunteer army and no draft meant less dissent. It also means fewer troops–who spend multiple tours in the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones.

Some people I'd refer to another Nam vet, Sgt. Ronn Cantu's sister Lisa or to the LA chapter of` IVAW. I might say something about how the Army had a habit of calling PTSD a troop's "pre-existing condition."

Don't ask. I'll tell. Who knows? Some one might actually learn something. Or think a little. I know; that's un-American. But if you don't, there won't be a military or a country worth a damn. Just more unnecessary wars. More Detroit Bills–trying to get as high as they'd once been. And regretting it.