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Notes From the Boonies

By Paul Wisovaty

My two best Nam buddies were Al Bokor and Rusty Hammond. Al lives in a small town in Michigan, and Rusty lives in California. By one of those flukes of nature, Rusty has a sister who lives in Al's hometown. When he and I spoke by phone several months ago, I noted that that was a nice coincidence, so that when he goes to see his sister, he gets to see Al. His response was, "No, Wiz, when I go to see Al I get to see my sister." No disrespect to Rusty's sister, but vets will understand that prioritization.

I may have failed to note that I had not seen these guys for over forty years. The following is an only slightly embellished account of our August reunion. Vietnam vets will find nothing in it which is the least bit surprising, which raises the obvious question, "Why bother?" Please bear with me.

Borrowing Al's phrase from 1968, we liberated several bravos over the course of seven or eight hours. (Is that just cav jargon?) Again, nothing surprising followed. "You stupid son-of-a-bitch, that dumb-ass sergeant's name wasn't Melendez, it was O'Fallon. How could you confuse those guys?" Or, "Come on, that didn't happen in Phu Bai. We didn't get there till three months later. It was while we were still at Dong Ha." You get the picture. But most of it did flow, as in "Remember when Six sent our platoon the wrong way out of Fire Support Base Apple? I can't believe nobody got wasted on that one." And there were the more positive memories. "Chico was a great guy. I looked him up about twenty years ago, and we had a great time. I hope he's still doing OK." And (of course) "Remember when we lost the commo lieutenant and his jeep driver when they hit a mine? I'll never forget Taps in the field the next morning. Really heavy, man."

OK, you get the points. Our lovely wives Sue and Angie, and Rusty's lady Alla, put up with all of this, even when things got — by civilian standards — a little weird. But the really cool part about the whole thing was this. I had not laid eyes on these guys since LBJ was president. And I swear to Jesus, every single moment of the reunion was like we had seen each other a week ago. There was none of that "So how you been?" "Fine. How about you?" "OK." "Anything new?" "Not really." If it had been that way, I would have been extremely disappointed. And I would have blamed myself for letting that happen. So here is the point of this column.

This whole story is only slightly aimed at Nam vets. It is primarily aimed at our IVAW brothers and sisters. The message: do not let forty years go by before you do this. I used to keep in somewhat regular touch with my best buddy from commo AIT. We exchanged letters and occasionally spoke by phone for several years, and each communication ended with, "We have to get together sometime." Then one day I got a call from his widow. I hope that these stories may have made this column worth the reading.

Paul Wisovaty is a member of VVAW. He lives in Tuscola, Illinois, where he works as a probation officer. He was in Vietnam with the US Army 9th Division in 1968.