A Veteran Remembered
Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 11:44 am
A Veteran Remembered
By Jack Estes
Wall Street Journal, November 1995
Saturday is Veterans Day. In Oregon at this time of the year the wind blows down hard and cold from the Columbia River Gorge, bringing rain. Leaves turn golden colors of red and orange that only God can design, and the air is washed clear and smells so clean. Time seems to slow during the fall. Days are shorter, summer is dying, the earth is settling in for winter. Flags fly and some folks pause and reflect on what Veterans Day really means.
Every fall it is the same. A time of change. Last fall my mother, who was a veteran, died. This fall it was Jack Cargile.
Jack was a hero who died in an accident on a little farm in a small town in Missouri most people never heard of. He wasn’t a slam-dunk, homerun hitting, superstar kind of hero. He was quiet, worked on a road crew and drove a snow plow in the winter.
Jack and I were in Vietnam together. We lived in a tiny village outside of Da Nang with a squad of Marines, some villagers and a gaggle of Vietnamese kids. Our job was to protect the village from the Communist soldiers who roamed the mountains nearby. During the day, we would patrol the area, administer first aid to children or maybe build a foot-bridge or schoolhouse. At night, we would fight.
I had been “in country†longer than Jack when he came to our squad. He was a handsome, dark-haired, mustachioed young man – a leader – kind and gentle with a quick smile. We nicknamed him “Happy.â€
One night we were sent to a small hill overlooking a graveyard and a wide expanse of rice paddies. There were 10 Marines that night, a Navy corpsman and a collection of Vietnamese village soldiers armed with antiquated weapons. Most of us were asleep in a row of shacks that covered the hill. Jack was on guard with the machine gun when we were attacked. Rockets, mortars and small arms were cutting us to pieces. Young Marines with head wounds and sucking chest wounds were dying as Jack manned the machine gun keeping us alive. Helicopter gunships swooped down firing and raking the enemy with broken lines of red tracers, but the enemy kept coming and Jack kept firing, even when he was wounded. In the morning there were three Marines left living and a hill full of dead. None of us took time to cry, and eventually I was sent home without Jack.
For 25 years I tried to find him, searching old files and reaching disconnected phone numbers. Finally, I traced his number through a cousin of a cousin and spoke to him on the phone. He sounded sad, drained and tired, and of course older. I wanted him to tell me that the nightmare we shared really did happen. I needed his validation. Over the last year, we exchanged letters and phone calls and planned on seeing each other in the spring, but one night not long ago his wife called to tell me Jack had died.
“The tractor flipped on him as he was goin’ down the hill,†she said. “My boy saw it happen.â€
Vietnam had worked its way into Jack’s soul. The wound was deep and cost him jobs and marriages and unrelenting nightmares. However, he was turning his life around. “He was seeing the doctor regular in Bates City. It was helping him to talk,†his wife told me.
I never got to see the change in Jack or touch him again, but I have a letter to prove to myself that what we shared was real.
From now on, as fall fades to winter and winter moves to spring, I will remember Jack differently. I won’t picture him behind a machine gun with guys dying next to him. Rather, I’ll see him on a snow plow or on a tractor in the fall, just before Veterans Day – when the leaves have changed and the earth has settled in for winter.
(Mr. Estes is an Oregon-based writer and co-founder of the Fallen Warriors Foundation, a nonprofit organization helping others deal with the pain of war.)
By Jack Estes
Wall Street Journal, November 1995
Saturday is Veterans Day. In Oregon at this time of the year the wind blows down hard and cold from the Columbia River Gorge, bringing rain. Leaves turn golden colors of red and orange that only God can design, and the air is washed clear and smells so clean. Time seems to slow during the fall. Days are shorter, summer is dying, the earth is settling in for winter. Flags fly and some folks pause and reflect on what Veterans Day really means.
Every fall it is the same. A time of change. Last fall my mother, who was a veteran, died. This fall it was Jack Cargile.
Jack was a hero who died in an accident on a little farm in a small town in Missouri most people never heard of. He wasn’t a slam-dunk, homerun hitting, superstar kind of hero. He was quiet, worked on a road crew and drove a snow plow in the winter.
Jack and I were in Vietnam together. We lived in a tiny village outside of Da Nang with a squad of Marines, some villagers and a gaggle of Vietnamese kids. Our job was to protect the village from the Communist soldiers who roamed the mountains nearby. During the day, we would patrol the area, administer first aid to children or maybe build a foot-bridge or schoolhouse. At night, we would fight.
I had been “in country†longer than Jack when he came to our squad. He was a handsome, dark-haired, mustachioed young man – a leader – kind and gentle with a quick smile. We nicknamed him “Happy.â€
One night we were sent to a small hill overlooking a graveyard and a wide expanse of rice paddies. There were 10 Marines that night, a Navy corpsman and a collection of Vietnamese village soldiers armed with antiquated weapons. Most of us were asleep in a row of shacks that covered the hill. Jack was on guard with the machine gun when we were attacked. Rockets, mortars and small arms were cutting us to pieces. Young Marines with head wounds and sucking chest wounds were dying as Jack manned the machine gun keeping us alive. Helicopter gunships swooped down firing and raking the enemy with broken lines of red tracers, but the enemy kept coming and Jack kept firing, even when he was wounded. In the morning there were three Marines left living and a hill full of dead. None of us took time to cry, and eventually I was sent home without Jack.
For 25 years I tried to find him, searching old files and reaching disconnected phone numbers. Finally, I traced his number through a cousin of a cousin and spoke to him on the phone. He sounded sad, drained and tired, and of course older. I wanted him to tell me that the nightmare we shared really did happen. I needed his validation. Over the last year, we exchanged letters and phone calls and planned on seeing each other in the spring, but one night not long ago his wife called to tell me Jack had died.
“The tractor flipped on him as he was goin’ down the hill,†she said. “My boy saw it happen.â€
Vietnam had worked its way into Jack’s soul. The wound was deep and cost him jobs and marriages and unrelenting nightmares. However, he was turning his life around. “He was seeing the doctor regular in Bates City. It was helping him to talk,†his wife told me.
I never got to see the change in Jack or touch him again, but I have a letter to prove to myself that what we shared was real.
From now on, as fall fades to winter and winter moves to spring, I will remember Jack differently. I won’t picture him behind a machine gun with guys dying next to him. Rather, I’ll see him on a snow plow or on a tractor in the fall, just before Veterans Day – when the leaves have changed and the earth has settled in for winter.
(Mr. Estes is an Oregon-based writer and co-founder of the Fallen Warriors Foundation, a nonprofit organization helping others deal with the pain of war.)