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Five Names on a Granite Slab

By Tom Farley (reviewer)

Five Names on a Granite Slab
by Charles Nothe
(self published, 2021)

Every town, every neighborhood in any city, should have a writer like Charles Nothe. In the last pages of his book, he says his only regret is in not writing this book sooner, and with that, there's an obvious warning: if you know someone who didn't return and have a desire to mark the memory of life cut down far too early, then know the time is running out to write something. It doesn't have to be a book, maybe just an article or a short piece for a newspaper.

Two men died in Quang Tri Province and my private memory of the place goes back to winter of 1969 when I spent a few weeks there and remember leaving on a convoy during a mortar attack and thinking the people down here, (as opposed to Da Nang or Hue) are extremely angry at the US and I wondered if something happened that I hadn't heard about. The My Lai incident occurred in 1968, but it wasn't reported until 1969. Alan Berry was an Army medic who stepped on a booby trap, and Peter Nash was a Marine, only eighteen years old, like too many men on the Wall.

Michael Scanlon, also a Marine, was awarded the Silver Star after he held back several North Vietnamese soldiers, and when they threw a grenade at him, he fell on it to absorb the explosion. Scanlon received the most medals, and people who knew him weren't surprised, since he was five feet tall in socks and determined to try harder than anyone else. This was evident in his becoming a Recon. Captain Ken Berube was the oldest vet on his list, who died at age 23, when the recon plane he was piloting was shot down near Chu Lai. His body was listed as MIA for a short time, and later, they acknowledged his death was body never recovered (BNR). I've done some research on MIAs and know the number was greater than it ever should have been. A big percentage went down over water and should have been listed as KIA, but were labeled BNR, like Ken Berube.

This book features six veterans, each with a story of their life. Like the Wall in DC, names had to be added later, as with many memorials. Sgt. Carl Rattee was cut down in the Battle of Phan Thiet after Tet in 1968. Yes, reading this book gave me the Blues, but then the thought occurs to any vet, we have a reminder to be grateful and smile, for we made it when others weren't so lucky. If you ever feel you need a reminder of why you're opposed to war lately, make it personal by taking a name from the 58,000 on the Wall and say you're anti-war because of him.

Timothy Farley was with the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam from November 1967 to October 1969.