Mary J. Lohnes, Writer – College of Southern Maryland
In war, promotion is easy; conquer and destroy while avoiding the bullets, the bombs and the treacherous terrain. At home, there are no promotions or awards for navigating through the landmines of war. It is a journey of memories, a battle of “Wandering Souls.” College of Southern Maryland professor and author Wayne Karlin’s newest book “Wandering Souls,” reflects on the struggle of veteran Homer Steedly Jr. to find peace for himself and the family of Hoang Ngoc Dam, a man he killed in Viet Nam.
Wayne Karlin is the author of ten books including “Wandering Souls,” “Marble Mountain,” “War Movies” “The 
Wished-For Country,” “Prisoners” and “Rumors and Stones.” He has been the recipient of numerous awards including five State of Maryland Awards for fiction, two National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships, the e Paterson Prize for fiction and an Excellence in the Arts Award from the Vietnam Veterans of America. His work has appeared in numerous media forms including journals, newspapers and movies. Karlin, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, including a tour in Vietnam in 1966-1967 as a helicopter gunner, has taught at the CSM for more than 20 years.
Homer Steedly, Jr. started his Vietnam combat service as a second lieutenant leading the 1st Platoon of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. In October 1969, after a series of promotions and reenlistment, Steedly assumed command of Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division.
On March 19, 1969, Steedly turned a bend in a trail in the Pleiku Province and came face to face with a North Vietnamese soldier. Armed, they stared at each other for a split-second, before Steedly shot first, killing the 24-year-old medic Hoang Ngoc Dam.
Searching the body, Steedly found several small notebooks and papers which he took and sent home to his mother in North Carolina. For thirty-five years, Steedly’s memories and Dam’s papers stayed hidden until his mom returned them to him. Karlin, a friend of Steedly helped him locate Dam’s family.
As part of CSM’s Connections Literary Series, Karlin will read from his new book “Wandering Souls,” which tells the story of Steedly and Dam’s fateful meeting, the returning of Dam’s documents and Steedly’s return to Viet Nam to meet the family of the man he killed. The reading will begin at 7:30 p.m., March 5, at CSM’s Leonardtown Campus, Building A, Auditorium.
In preparation for CSM’s Connections program, Karlin and Steedly discussed memory, confronting your past and how to help veterans work their way through the healing process.
CSM: Wayne, you once asked fellow writer Tim O’Brien why he continues to write about Viet Nam and it’s effects, and his response was “it validates my memory.” Why do you keep returning to Viet Nam as subject matter?
Karlin: For one thing, because war and its aftermath provide a writer with intense situations which dramatize basic human dilemmas. For another, the mind-sets and kind of decisions that got us into the Vietnam war, the particular situations of that war and the kind of damages it caused, are all are being repeated; and finally, when you are a writer, and when part of your own experience stemmed from an experience which was seminal and self-defining for your generation and your country, I believe there is a responsibility to write about it.
CSM: Wayne, as I was reading I was very touched by your concern and caring for Homer, esp. when you brought him back to meet Dam’s family. Were there times when you almost abandoned writing this book?
Karlin: Many times, particularly after I brought the documents back–without Homer–and then he decided we should go back and he should meet the family. It seemed he had come to peace with many things after he saw (through film and my description) how much the document return had meant to and helped the family come to their own peace, and I was constantly afraid that actually meeting them, and then going back to the former battlefields, would undo that healing. As it turned out, my fears were unrealized.
CSM: You have worked on this project for more than five years, after all this time what is the thing that surprised you the most and why?
Karlin: The grace and courage of Homer in his effort to face the past, to carry its weight and make something good come from it, and the grace and courage of the Hoang family and a Vietnamese village, so willing to take into their hearts a former enemy and bring the war to an end.
CSM: Wayne, you appear in the second half of the book and periodically in the beginning. As a fellow vet, how hard was it for you in the first half of the book to not include your own experiences of Viet Nam?
Karlin: I wanted the book to be primarily the story of Homer and Dam–the American G.I. and the North Vietnamese soldier he killed, and I wanted as much as possible to stay out of the story. I only intrude into the second part of the book because I had to become part of the story, when I returned the documents Homer had taken from Dam’s body to the Hoang family and when I went to meet and travel with them and Homer. At that point, some of my own experiences were relevant.
Steedly: I think there is a lot of personal story there for Wayne as well. I think my return to Viet Nam affected him almost as deeply as it did me. It was a healing experience. We all have demons to put to rest.
CSM: Wayne, in the book, you respond to Dr. Jonathan Shay’s theory that what keeps some soldiers from committing atrocities is “moral luck” by arguing that “What you do depends on not where you are but on what you bring with you to that place.” Could you discuss this idea further?
Karlin: Shay contended that under the “right” pressures, anyone would commit an atrocity. Yet we see that even in the worst incidents, such as the My Lai massacre, there were soldiers in the exact same environment, under the same pressures, who resisted participation. If we accept that something in their background helped them to do so, we can ask what kind of training and pre-conditioning might be cultivated systematically. If we accept such behavior as inevitable for everyone, then there is nothing we can do about it.
CSM: In this same passage Karlin writes, “What you do depends not on where you are but on what you bring with you to that place.” Homer, what did you bring with you when you returned to Viet Nam that allowed you to confront your past and meet with Dam’s family?
Steedly: The sense of doing the right thing more than anything else. There is a family that didn’t know what had happened to one of their family members. It was only right that I go back and explain as much as I could about it.
CSM: Wayne, time and memory play a large role in this book and you even include a discussion with the Vietnamese writer Bao Ninh who describes early Viet Nam war literature as being “the ghost of war.” Do you feel like the passing of time allows for greater truths to be told or do you feel like time is a hindrance to memory and truth?
Karlin: Time, of course, is the great enemy of memory. But on the other hand it can allow for contemplation of meaning. Homer had forgotten many details of his service; it was a survival mechanism–he’d even put out of his mind the fact he had sent home to his mother the documents he’d taken off Dam’s body. But the reality was that all of it had just stayed buried, and still affected him deeply. When he saw the documents again, after 35 years, as when he saw some of the battlefield where he fought, it all came back vividly, was all just waiting beneath a thin membrane of memory.
CSM: Homer, when you returned home, you didn’t talk about the war because you were afraid people wouldn’t believe you or would discount your experiences. What would you say to our current returning vets about your years of silence?
Steedly: They should find other vets, not necessarily even from the same war, but find other vets because those are the people you can talk to. You can’t talk to civilians about combat. You just can’t’. It horrifies them to even think that you did those kinds of things and are now walking around loose. It doesn’t work. You need to find someone you can talk to without having to couch your words, or hold back your thoughts or tame up your language. Another vet can read between the lines, knows what you are talking about and has had the same feelings you’ve had or are having. I recently went to the 4th Infantry Division Reunion in St. Louis and met with 150 or so vets from the Viet Nam war and within five minutes you are talking openly and in detail about things you haven’t spoken of in 40 years. You feel comfortable because you don’t have to explain yourself or justify yourself. They know where you have been and that is what these vets need so I encourage them to go to the Veteran’s Administration and vet centers and talk with people who have been in your shoes and talk your language and don’t do what I did and wait 40 years to do it.
Also, I do think that of all the tragedies, the biggest tragedy of war is not the affect it has had on the vets, tragic as that is, but the effect it has had on their friends, families and spouses because when these vets came back they were different and it affects everyone around them. Any woman who stayed with a man who has lived through combat, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and all it brings deserve a medal.
CSM: Wayne, as we see the number of Iraq and Afghanistan veteran suicides increasing, how can a story like this change the public and the military’s response to those who are afflicted? How would you like to see this disease dealt with?
Karlin: Like Homer just said, when he came back from the war, he tried to talk to people about it, but soon found that no one wanted to listen, either because they were indifferent–felt it had nothing to do with them, or because he disturbed the more comfortable images they wanted to have. Because of this, the experience always remains inside, creates in oneself the feeling of being a pariah, outside the community–one can’t come home. In his case, as in many, it led to self-destructive, suicidal behavior. When Homer and I went to Vietnam last year, we helped the Hoang family find, disinter, bring to light, commemorate, and then rebury in peace the remains of the man Homer killed. That process–not literally of course, but in essence and pattern, is what an individual, and a country, has to do to bring men and women home from war. The community has to be willing to listen, to share the experience and be changed by it–and even to make something positive come out of it–in order for the soldier to truly come home.
CSM: Homer, how do you think families and the public can help returning soldiers?
Steedly: Good question, not sure I know the answer. Talk with another vet. Of course, when you come back that is the last thing you want to do. You want to return to a normal life. I think the military does a better job of encouraging vets to attend counseling which is a good idea because you aren’t going to do it voluntarily. It is too fresh and painful for you to want to go there. But at some point they really do need to talk about and touch their emotions. I was afraid of my emotions. I had so much anger and rage in me that I was afraid that if someone said something wrong to me I might go and kill someone. When I first came back, I never had a weapon far away and I had a real fortunate incident where I realized that my combat instincts might lead me to kill someone, but stopped in time and realized the danger.
Try to understand that it is scary coming back. You are coming back from a place with no rules and you are coming home to a place of rules. My solution for PTSD was that I became a workaholic. I worked six of seven days a week, twelve-fourteen-sixteen hours a day. I loved working with computers, was good at it and didn’t mind working like a maniac but that is how I dealt with it. I was so busy I didn’t have time to think about Vietnam. I think that is how a lot of veterans handle it.
Sooner or later, it has to be dealt with because the littlest of things can bring it back. I thought I was perfectly normal; just a shy farm boy living 30 miles out-of-town in the country in a trailer by myself, who didn’t make eye contact or talk to anyone. I thought I was coping well but now I know I had all the classic symptoms of PTSD. Of course, if someone had talked me into seeking counseling I might have gone once or twice to be polite but that would have been the end of it.
My healing has been quite dramatic and I am now in touch with hundreds of vets via email and phone. It has gotten to the point where I feel like I am back in a leadership role, back helping my troops.
When I returned to Viet Nam and talked with two North Vietnamese vets I had fought with in battle (against one another). I learned that they see themselves as freedom fighters fighting against a corrupt government. They have no animosity toward me or other soldiers now even though at the time they saw us as a foreign invader. They understand that my country sent me over there and that soldiers do what they have to in combat. It’s something to return forty years later, trade rice wine and opposing views of the same battles with your former enemy.
CSM: Homer, how do you describe your return to Viet Nam to fellow veterans who may be too scared or filled with anger to return?
Steedly: I come across two types of veterans; some are in tune with what I did and applaud me for it and yet there are others who still see the Vietnamese as an evil hoard, as inhumane killers and monsters and that is the way they have to see them because if they didn’t they can’t live with the things they did. They can live with it as long as they believe that those people deserved to die. Think about this, I was a Christian and seriously believed in the tenant that ‘thou shall not kill’ and suddenly I was half-way around the world in a situation where people were trying to kill me. In order to survive, I had to kill. When I came back to the states, I was a killer out on the street but no one knew it. War changes you forever. It is a break in your sense of reality and it is hard to get back from that.
CSM: Homer, how does working on your website (http://www.swampfox.info/) and sharing your war experiences help the healing process?
Steedly: On the website, I try to give enough personal experience to give people a feel for combat but I try to concentrate on the stories of day-to-day military life. I try to give the veterans a forum to help them tell their story, many of whom are still deeply suffering from PTSD, having flashbacks, nightmares etc. I don’t think most people realize how few Americans actually went to Viet Nam. I want people to understand how futile and irrational and horrible war is but at the same time see what incredibly brave and courageous and good-hearted people were on both sides of that war.
I try to focus the stories on the camaraderie and big snakes anecdotes we all experienced. The day-to-day stuff they don’t remember because when you come back from combat and you try to think about that time, the memories that come back immediately and that overwhelm you are the horrors, the terrors and tragedies because they are the most deeply engrained. Most vets get flashbacks and then try to back away from remembering. You don’t want to think about it anymore. So I try to focus on the good times and we did share good times and amazing experiences together. Good bonding experiences. When vets read those, then they are encouraged to share and this is what they need to do, they need to work slowly through the times. They need to remember the good friends they had. You know the bonds we made over there are stronger than most of us experience in our lifetimes, with the exception of maybe your spouse or your parents. You trust your fellow soldier implicitly. If you turn your back, you know that the man behind you will give his life if necessary. Those kinds of bonds are hard to explain. I like to tell them that if they will meet with other vets they will feel that bonding and sense of belonging again. I think veterans miss that feeling because we lost that bonding, we returned to the world but we didn’t belong here either; we weren’t the same people who left. We walk among you but we are different.
My hope and dream is to live long enough that the last war will be something that old people remember and young people think is something quaint they study in history class. There are better ways of solving problems; war creates more problems than it solves. Think of all of the incredible people who have died in war on both sides and imagine what they could have contributed to the world if only they had been able to live. What a waste.
© College of Southern Maryland, 2010
Mary J. Lohnes 