February 4, 2000
February 4, 2000
by Nancy Nichols Jagelka
Pentagram staff writer
The Vietnam Memorial contains 58,00 names of the Vietnam War's casualties and is visited by over two million people each year. The In Memory Project is proposing a three by three foot plaque within the memorial site commemorating post-war casualties. Estimates of post -war casualties range from an additional 58,000 up to 500,000. (Photo by Nancy Nichols Jagelka) |
It was Memorial Day in 1986 when I first met Vietnam Veteran Pat Monahan and his veteran friends on board the Intrepid aircraft carrier docked in New York harbor. Photographing for a self-initiated documentary on Vietnam Veterans and the Healing Process, I captured images of the trio and made three new friends as well.
On July 4th of that same year, we all traveled to Washington, D.C. for a welcome home concert for Vietnam Veterans. Monahan, as we all did, rejoiced in the celebration of the concert. Afterward, he took us all on a spirited tour of Arlington Cemetery where he had been stationed as an MP.
As we all huffed and puffed our way through the cemetery, Monahan, tirelessly walked the paths, pointing out landmarks, markers, anything of reference that he could remember from his tour of duty. It was a trip that held more meaning than we would understand at the time.
"After we drove down, he really became sick," said Bob Young, of Naval Special Operations and a Vietnam Veteran, who was one of the trio of vets that made the trip with me. "But at Arlington, he became alive. He became animated about everything. It was his last hurrah."
Years later, we still talk of what came over Monahan that day -- how he found the energy to walk the cemetery, while we suffered in the heat. I didn't know it at the time, but he had been battling a parasite that he had picked up during a tour in Vietnam in the 1960's. Monahan served as a sergeant with a mortar platoon.
"They initially thought it was TB," Young said. "But then they [the doctors] said it was some strange parasite in his lung that got active."
Although he sought experimental treatment at the VA, he was reduced from a once strapping 6 feet 2 inches soldier, to an invalid strapped to an oxygen tank. He had also been battling service-related stress and alcoholism. He died in 1994 at the age of 50. Had I not met Pat and his friends years ago, his story would lie among the untold aftermath of the war, not in the pages of a printed publication.
When it was dedicated in 1982, the Vietnam Memorial unleashed a flurry of interest in acknowledging various aspects of the Vietnam War. Dedicated to the 58,000 men and women who died during the Vietnam War, the memorial helped pave the way for acknowledging the service of our veterans in all wars.
But tallying up the aftermath in service related deaths and disabilities is a different story, and to date, one not given proper review and recognition. Attempting to understand the aftermath is a complex procedure that necessitates implementing scientific tools for research and designating a population available for study. It also involves reviewing the rules of military warfare, and the roots of the veteran experience in the society he departed from and then returned to.
For example, chemicals such as Agent Orange used during Vietnam or Depleted Uranium dispersed during the Gulf War have been linked to various illnesses in military personnel. The rate of suicide and stress related disorders in returning Vietnam Veterans, continues to be studied in comparison to the impact of other conflicts.
The diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder found its roots in studies of returning Vietnam Veterans. Counseling services were instituted to address the problem. This change came about through means such as the construction of the Vietnam Memorial which acknowledged and validate the veterans' experience.
The In Memory Plaque project, based in Fredericksburg, Va., hopes to generate this same awareness. The project is proposing a ground level bronze three-foot-by-three foot memorial plaque within the Vietnam Memorial site that would commemorate servicemen and women who died postwar from service related illnesses.
"I hope that people will come to it and bring their children," said project founder Ruth Coder Fitzgerald, who lost her Vietnam Veteran brother to non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 1992 at the age of 49. "It's a place to tell them about the war and the people who died."
For Fitzgerald and families who currently have loved ones in the military, it's also a place to address their concerns regarding the physical or mental illnesses that their sons, daughters, husbands or wives might come home with after serving their country.
"It's important for America to recognize that the war is much larger than the statistic of 58,000 who died during the war," said Diane Evans, founder and president of the Vietnam Women's Memorial.
"We need to look at the social conditions-, the aftermath, that created a climate for deaths by [methods such as] suicide. These people died as a result of war, and the statistics are lying. The issue needs to be opened up for a deeper and more considerate and conscious discussion on those issues. Can that be bad?"
With many of the real causes of these aftermath deaths undocumented on death certificates, statistics of these deaths range anywhere from 58, 000 to half a million and are still too difficult to tally.
The plaque the project seeks approval for is generic in name and number, but the issue of adding this memorial to the Vietnam Memorial is much more personal and national.
The proposal has fueled a larger debate about how many memorials are necessary to recognize every group that participated in the war. But for the members of the In Memory Project, the plaque has become a call to arms as well as a permanent marker to recognize their losses.
Mike Fluck, Gulf War veteran and the son of a Vietnam veteran who committed suicide in 1976, is on the Advisory Board of the In Memory project. He became involved through a veteran of his father's 173rd Airborne brigade. Fluck's father served as a Special Forces communication expert and rifleman along the Laotian border in 1966-1967, and did not talk to anyone about the war except for his son.
The silence effected communication within the Fluck family. His mother was unable to articulate the problems with his father, and Fluck, as the oldest of the three children felt distant from his younger brother and sister.
In 1993, the Friends of the Vietnam Memorial began acknowledging postwar deaths with a ceremony at the Wall on Memorial and Veteran's days. Fluck inducted his father in a 1994 ceremony and then was asked to deliver a speech for the ceremony in 1995. That same year the In Memory Memorial plaque project was inaugurated independent of the In Memory ceremonies.
Participation in the project as well as with his father's 173rd Brigade Society has given him an outlet that he didn't have growing up to speak about and remember his father. He found a personal and military camaraderie of fellowship that has provided second and third hand information on what his father experienced. He also realized that he was not alone or at fault in the circumstances surrounding his father's death.
"The In Memory ceremony allowed my family to talk about my father's death," said Fluck. "It put my mind at ease and I felt vindicated [about what had happened]."
In addition to Fluck and founder Ruth Coder Fitzgerald, the fledgling board of the In Memory Project encompasses a range of experiences and affiliations. Their stories reflect the reality of the aftermath of the war and many unanswered questions.
Victoria Nicely lost her son John R. Brejla at the age of 42 in 1993 due to lung, liver and PTSD related problems. Brejla served as a tank commander in the 25th Armored Division with the Tropical Lightening Platoon in Cambodia.
"His lungs refused to inflate," said Nicely. "The doctors never saw anything like it and they wouldn't tell me anything else.
"I sent a healthy young man with dreams and hopes [to Vietnam]," she said. "They sent me back someone who was going to die."
Nicely's frustrations are evident in our conversation and with due cause. She currently receives a five-dollar-a-month disability check from the VA and she said she is still very angry in many ways.
"It's not like losing your husband or your father," she said. "You lose a part of yourself."
Fellow board member Nelson Hughes is currently battling a relapse from the same cancer that took the life of Ruth Fitzgerald's brother John Coder. Hughes served in 1968-1969 with the Navy on a flagship guided missile destroyer that was repeatedly exposed to shelling along the Vietnam coast. Hughes is scheduled for a bone marrow transplant on Valentine's Day.
His illness propelled him to research the cause of the non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, join the In Memory project, and overall step out into a more proactive role involving the issues surrounding this service.
"I wasn't a joiner before," Hughes said. "But now I feel the need to express myself."
"We die every day," Hughes said in a letter, "and the lives of these people do matter and they do tell the remainder of the story. I hope that the sacrifice made by these people is not forgotten."
Members and leaders of the veteran community have a variety of views on the necessity of adding the plaque to the Vietnam Wall's landscape. Supporters include the National Congress of American Indians, AMVETS and The Korean War Veterans Association among others.
Although In Memory ceremonies continue to take place at the Wall, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial fund has not been quick to join the fight.
Concerned that the Vietnam Memorial site could be overrun with memorials acknowledging each and every sector of the Vietnam experience, president of the fund Jan Scruggs wrote the following in a Washington Post editorial:
"We have no objection to a plaque, if normal design-review procedures are followed and if the legislation permanently halts all future efforts to legislate additions to the memorial."
Others see the significance of allowing another voice from the Vietnam era to be heard.
"I believe in the process," Diane Evans said, "and of the people deciding what needs to be added. Memorials are controversial and are an opportunity for people to express their feelings. They're not just to be viewed, but to educate.
"When we wanted to build the Vietnam Women's Memorial near the Vietnam Memorial," added Evans, " they said it [the Vietnam Wall] was perfect the way it was. "But according to whom? Who shapes memory? Memorials are a way to talk about it [an issue] and bring it to light."
Still others are concerned about the underlying issues surrounding the causes of war-related illnesses as well as veteran after care and see the plaque as a mere drop in the bucket towards meeting the veteran's needs.
"Personally, I'd like to see the energy put toward legislation to force the VA to conduct mortality studies as to the cause and effects of why the veterans die so young," said Wayne Smith, President of the Black Patriots Foundation, an organization that is seeking to place a memorial on the mall dedicated to African American participation in the Revolutionary War.
"The issue is much too complex to [address] in a plaque. We should be helping families and alerting those at risk. The military has the responsibility to care for those who served their duty and it's up to the survivors to make sure the government is accountable.
"We have improvement in weapons systems," he added, "but in terms of people and preserving life, who is addressing the survivors?"
H.R. 3293 and S. 1921 legislations supporting the addition to the Vietnam Memorial site are currently gathering support in the Senate and House of Representatives. They are sponsored by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.) and Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell. (R-Colo.).
The In Memory Project and the issue of a plaque for postwar Vietnam deaths may initiate additional research on the subject of the methods and effects of warfare, and our post war treatment of veterans in general. For now and for the family members involved in the organization, it's a place to remember loved ones with a permanent place.
Certainly, as Vietnam Veterans continue to die at an alarming rate, postwar veteran survivors and their stories will fade if more isn't done to document their cause of death and history of service. At the same time a new generation of survivors is rising in numbers, so are the questions about their loved ones illnesses in the postwar years.
Communication is key at this time. The daily battle for life fought by veterans such as board member Hughes, exemplifies how crucial the timing is to collect research and compile information for further study. Getting the word out is a way to collect this information and the job of organizations such as In Memory.
"He was never angry about his disabilities," wrote Victoria Nicely of her son.
"He always said that he wanted to do his part for his country. I would tell people that if they have a [veteran] husband, father or son who is ill, write to anyone who will listen. Keep it in the forefront. Let's not forget them."
Years after our friend died, veteran Bob Young and I try to piece together the details of Monahan's illness and service record. We still have questions about his death and seek specifics about his service. Perhaps there is information within Monahan's family, or his military or death certificate records.
It's more likely though that Monahan, despite his dedication to service, is one of the estimated tens or hundreds of thousands of lives and deaths that are currently unaccounted for.
Without accurate statistics or official acknowledgement, implementing changes to remedy the underlying causes of these war-related deaths cannot be fully realized. In addition, accountability for treatment and due veteran benefits is impossible without the proper information. This lack of information will also continue to serve as an obstacle towards educating future generations of military and civilians alike.
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