Posted: Friday, 06 November 2009 10:35AM
All "Vietnam Jim" Could Do Was Wait
Steve Corbett Reporting
Friday, November 06, 2009
As of 7 p.m. last night, “Vietnam Jim” still hadn’t heard from the Sarge.
For so many months he had been her biggest supporter, guiding her through her time in the Iraqi desert with funny emails and gestures of support from a combat vet who knew the score.
After all, Julia was his little girl.
But the photos she sent back to him in Wilkes-Barre made it clear that she was still the Sarge.
Stretched out on her belly and grinning past soft locks of dark hair that hung lazily over her eyes, she sighted in one of the biggest machine guns a soldier can carry. Her expression made it clear that she is a warrior, somebody her men and women can depend on when push comes to shove and all hell breaks loose.
All hell broke loose yesterday at Ft. Hood, Texas.
Sgt. Julia had just got back to the United States on Monday, settling in at Ft. Hood to wind down and begin the slow process of readjustment and her eventual return to what her dad called “the world” when he got home back in the old days.
Yesterday, the sound of gunfire broke any illusion of safety in our world in the good old U.S.A.
Thirteen people – 12 soldiers and one civilian – died when an Army major opened fire early yesterday afternoon. The gunman wounded 29 others. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, was shot by a police officer and remains hospitalized this morning in stable condition.
Vietnam Jim quickly emailed me during yesterday’s show and attached the brief memo he received from a Ft. Hood official who made no specific mention of the Sarge. The Army press officer, in a poorly worded and poorly spelled bulletin addressed to family members, stated that little specific information was available about the shooting or their loved ones and that more details would be forthcoming.
That was pretty much it.
Vietnam Jim said that all he had to go on was television and “Corbett.”
I did my best to cull rapidly changing and often conflicting details from newspapers and news organizations world-wide. But the information often only added to the confusion. I regularly pointed out that we must wait and see what develops and should not take any particular story or report as completely factual.
The telephone lines lit up in the WILK News Radio studio with calls from people whose loved ones are stationed at Ft. Hood. One man in Nanticoke said his son had text messaged his mother to tell her he was all right. A woman from Moscow said her son-in-law had called his wife to tell her he was OK and that the sound of gunfire had made him and his buddies think the base was under attack.
All Vietnam Jim could do was wait. Not one to sit still and meditate, Vietnam Jim is quick to lash out when he thinks an email strike is warranted. He has fired off red-hot emails to me in the past. But this time something was different. This time, he had no say in the matter. All he could do was wait and worry about the Sarge.
Over the past few months, Vietnam Jim has sent me photographs of Julia as she did her time in hell, as he had done his time amid the smoke and fire of war. He sent me the newspaper clippings about her promotion and even some of the emails she sent home. I’m not sure how she’ll feel knowing her old man was so proud of her that he had to alert some stranger in the press to her accomplishments. But I imagine she’ll understand.
Still, I can see her squaring off over her dear old dad as he sits at the kitchen table grinning. He recently sent me a picture of himself at the table, wearing a baseball cap with a barroom logo and shamrocks emblazoned across the front as he dug into a plate of greasy chicken wings. I can see her giving him orders that he better shape up and “zip it, mister.”
In my mind I can hear the laughter and feel the love. I thought a lot about Vietnam Jim and the Sarge last night as the horrible news from Ft. Hood continued to unfold.
Time has put a lot of distance between Vietnam Jim’s war and the 21st Century war of his daughter. But certain common factors remain. Death can come at anytime to our troops anywhere. Leadership means constant vigilance. No place is safe in these wicked times. But safety can be increased. Security can be improved. More and better help and treatment can be offered. Leadership sometimes simply means reducing the odds that people die.
I hope Vietnam Jim heard from Julia last night.
I’ll try to get him on the phone later today. We’ve never talked but I feel like I know him. The same goes for the Sarge, who I consider my soldier in the war. I care about them both.
I want everything to be all right.
For some soldiers and their families, though, it’s too late for that.
For them, the end is here.
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