Journal, Diary, & Blogging / Journies
It seems that I have been on somewhat of a spiritual journey of late, guided by an gnawing in my gut and with no true understanding of the purpose. My journey started this past weekend with a trip that I’ve been wanting to take since I was a child, a pilgrimage of sorts to a place that most I know have never heard of: Andersonville, GA. It is not an easy place to get to and not a place that one really stumbles upon by accident. It lies off the highway south of Macon, miles into the rolling Georgia countryside amid a sea of peach orchards and pecan trees. The road to its gates is long and winds slowly, undulating through small towns and burgs that are represented on the state map by dots no bigger than a dust mite. And now that I have found it and spent an afternoon strolling across its landscape, I’m proud and yet afraid that I will carry its red clay dust upon my mind for as long as I can remember.
Andersonville was the most notorious of the Civil War POW camps and I first learned of it as a child flipping through the glossy pages of my father’s illustrated history books. The horrors depicted in the sepia toned photographs, men living like animals beneath the open Georgia sky, and survivors, no more than living skeletons, have haunted me for years. As much as I wanted to see the place where so much suffering took place, to pay my respects to those that lived and died there, I knew the trip would not be an easy one. Little did I know, walking the grounds of that place would be one of the most moving experiences of my life.
Located upon the grounds of the National Park at Andersonville is the National American POW Museum. It pays tribute to all American POW’s from the Revolutionary War through Operation Iraqi Freedom. The tour of the museum began with a 27-minute film compiled from interviews of POW’s from WWII through the Gulf War. Their stories of capture and survival burrowed under my skin and filled me with a strange emotion that emanated from some place I had no name for, someplace that lay too deep for tears. I later realized that the emotion was a concoction of gratitude and pride. I was grateful for what those men and women sacrificed and endured and I was proud because in their stories I recognized the same strength that I recognized in my father who, himself, gave 30 years to the United States Marine Corps.
Children of Marines often complain of the distance between them and their military parents. They complain of coldness, stoicism and secrecy and its taken me 30 years to realize why my father was the way he was. Walking through the exhibits of that museum helped me finally understand. Soldiers, warriors, are designed and built to steel themselves to emotion. They are built to deny the harsh reality of what it means to be a soldier. They are built to deny fear and embrace death. That’s how they go to work. That’s how they deploy. That’s how they fight. That’s how they die. That’s how they’re imprisoned. That’s how they do their duty.
Moved by what I saw in Andersonville and as a tribute to my father and those who served with him, I decided to purchase a POW bracelet. I spent most of Tuesday in the effort. POW/MIA bracelets are metal cuffs that bear the name of a soldier or civilian who was taken prisoner or declared missing in action during a military conflict. The purpose is to wear the bracelet until the person or their remains are returned home. I have seen people wearing these bracelets my entire life. However, I had no idea that when a person purchased such a bracelet, they had to choose the soldier whose name would be engraved upon it. Narrowing thousands of names down to one was a bitter task. How does one choose one soldier to honor? After struggling with the thought, I decided that the soldier I would chose would fit the following criteria: he would be a Vietnam vet, he would be a Marine, he would have been declared captured or MIA during the year I was born (1975) and he would be from a place that I felt some connection to.
Scouring the endless names of men captured or missing in Vietnam was gut-wrenching. There were so many of them, it was hard to keep in mind that each name represented a person with a family, a place, a life. After several hours, I finally chose a name: PFC Gary L. Hall, 2 Battalion, 9 Marines, 3 Marine Division of Covington, KY, declared MIA on May 15, 1975 – a little more than a month before I was born.
With the name chosen and the bracelet ordered, I began to wonder who this person, Gary L. Hall, really was. The date seemed to stand out, listed over and over next to the names of many soldiers who appeared in the POW/MIA database. There must have been some sort of battle that had taken place that day. Curious, I decided to research it. I logged onto Google and entered the date. As information began to pop up on the screen, I saw a different date listed in all the various entries: April 30, 1975. Unfamiliar with that date, I read on and realized that was the date that the last of the troops were pulled out of Saigon and the Vietnam conflict officially ended. If that was the case, how was it that such a large number of men were listed as casualties more than two weeks later? I dug a little more and finally discovered what happened on May 15 and how PFC Gary Lee Hall became a part of the POW/MIA database.
On May 12, 1975, an American merchant ship, the Mayaguez, was captured off the coast of Cambodia and its crew was taken captive. On May 15, President Ford ordered the deployment of troops to the island, Koh Tang, in the Gulf of Siam, where it was believed that the crew of the Mayaguez was being held. Their mission was to reclaim the ship and rescue the crew. It was a combined effort that included the Navy, Marines and the Air Force in their first ever helicopter assault operation. It looked like an easy task, but, due to faulty intelligence, what ensued was nothing short of a nightmare.
After a 14-hours of close fighting against a reinforced battalion of Cambodian Naval Infantry, most of the Marines involved in the assault were extracted off of the island. During the final evacuation, the machine gun squad consisting of PFC Gary L. Hall, PVT Danny G. Marshall and LCPL Joseph N. Hargrove, was responsible for protecting the perimeter. In the darkness and confusion of those final few moments of battle, the three machine gunners were left on the island. LCPL Hargrove, the oldest of the three by five years, was celebrating his 24th birthday. No one ever returned for them.
Today you can find the names of all three men on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. And in six weeks you’ll be able to find the name of 18 year old PFC Gary L. Hall, 2 Battalion, 9 Marines, 3 Marine Division of Covington, KY on my wrist. And that’s where it will stay till he or his remains are returned to the United States and his family who, after 30 years, are still desperately waiting for answers.
April 30 will mark the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam Conflict. May 15 will mark the 30th anniversary of the day that PFC Hall was declared MIA. June 19 will mark my 30th birthday. What does all of this mean? Mostly nothing more than coincidence and a greater understanding of the sacrifices made by my father and his comrades. But somehow I know deep in my bones that all of this is leading somewhere, leading to some greater understanding of my childhood and the man that raised me.
As for PFC Gary L. Hall, perhaps we passed each other on the road that runs between heaven and earth – heaven, his final destination and earth where my journey still continues….
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
You have done a great job of writing. A story like this is an inspiration, because hope lives by each of us believing in the goodwill surrounding others. I admire the love you have for your father, and know that he loves you. I recently heard a recording artist named “Seal” say, “that we grow by our relationships, the ones we love helping us to grow the most.” As you grow, you will understand more of yourself, and that will show you more every day of the love your father has for you. You must give him a lot to love and be proud of, just by being yourself. Take Good Care, B_HD.
- add/view comments (0)
This is a very compelling and interesting piece, well written with a strong, clear voice. It is easy to read, the facts are presented clearly and concisely, and the fate of the three marines on the island is put across in such a way as to be heartbreaking without over stating the facts and making it all overly melodramatic.
The thing I do feel missing from this are your emotions. I don’t think they were represented very clearly. We hear you tell us that visiting Andersonville was a moving experience and that you felt gratitude and pride and experienced deep feelings but we don’t really feel it. Nor do we fully comprehend what compells the narator (you), who seem so shut off from their own emotions in their writing, to purchase one of these bracelets. then again, this could all be intentional, with you wanting to put the emphasis on the tradgedy of what happened to these men and how many of them are still yet MIA.
I found the opening paragraph to be a little long winded and towards the end of it I was beginning to skim read. It got interesting again quickly with the start of the second paragraph. In pieces as short as this, given the attention span of your average article reader, it is iportant to keep them gripped all the way through. Perhaps it could be trimmed down a little, do we really need to know/care what the drive there was like?
Other than this it was a winner in my book. the ending is strong, my interest (after the first paragraph) was held all the way through and I felt touched and shocked by the story of these poor men and their unknown fate.
Showing 1 - 2 of 2
Review item
Add to faves
GENERAL
REVIEW QUEUE
Ratings & Rankings
