Finding Pete: Rediscovering the Brother I Lost in Vietnam

SIX: Mr. Tall American

85 S I X Mr. Tall American It was a new year, 1964, and a new president occupied the White House. In his State of the Union address on January 8, Lyndon Johnson urged members of Congress to carry forward the plans and programs of John Kennedy, “not because of our sorrow or sympathy, but because they are right.” In the same speech, he declared the War on Poverty. Three days later, a fifteen-year-old figure skater named Peggy Fleming won a place on the U.S. Olympic team. On January 8, the musical Hello, Dolly! opened at the St. James Theater, starring Carol Channing. Another 2,843 performances would follow, breaking the existing record for a Broadway run. In Vietnam, Pete had spent Christmas with the ivs team at the villa in Dalat. It didn’t “seem much like the season” to him, and he wished he could be home with the family. Still, he urged us not to try anything rash like telephoning. “Please don’t,” he stressed. “For one thing, you wouldn’t be able to reach Phan Rang. For another, we might go to Nha Trang or Dalat. And thirdly, it costs about $75.” He didn’t say why, but he was discouraged. His recent letters had offered clues, however. The education chief was lazy, the former province chief was in jail after the Diem coup, a schoolteacher in the next town had committed suicide, and his stationmate Chuck’s mind was “just one big rusty nail,” he had vented to 86 | FINDING PETE Cis. He told Sue, “I get so mad at the people I work with and live with sometimes that I’d like to have someone to come back to, to forget it with.” On Christmas Eve, his spirits lifted a bit when the group drew names and opened presents. The following day, fueled by eggnog laced with alcohol, Pete and several of his teammates decided to go paddleboating on a lake. He described what happened next in a letter to Margo Bradley: Forty-five minutes later, my drunken paddleboating partner and I had been rammed by another playful paddleboat crew. The port pontoon took on a few gallons and we sank. . . . Having had some training in drinking and having developed a modest capacity in the days of my youth at Wesleyan, I was still untouched and commenced fishing for my soggy boatmate, at which time the boat owner was fast bearing down upon us with a wrathful look in his eyes. There followed a very complicated social situation, what with all the handshaking and social amenities taking place in French. My comrades had taken to the reeds along the shore and hoisted the groggy one over the gunwale in six feet of water. Looking back on it all, one is inclined to ask himself, searchingly of course, if these things happen only to certain people. . . . Altogether, it was a very jarring holiday. No snow, one or two accidents . All the people I care about so far away. New Year’s Day found Pete nursing a hangover after a party back in Phan Rang at the American military compound. His mood had lifted and his sense of humor had returned. “Thank God for coffee,” he wrote. “It has been a hot, sweaty, dusty, thirsty holiday in Phan Rang.” For Christmas, Margo had sent some books, but they had not arrived yet. He hoped her package looked as unlike a bomb as possible and thanked her in advance for the gift: “Believe it or not, the only one of Mark Twain’s works I have is a well-worn Tom Sawyer. Having already lost a few things in the mail, there is the possibility that never the Twain shall meet.” For the twenty-eight months Pete lived in Vietnam, minus a few weeks when he came home on leave or took vacations in Bangkok and Hong Kong, he corresponded mostly with my immediate family, our closest relatives, and two Mr. Tall American | 87 women, Sue and Margo. He had dated both of them in college. While he was away in Vietnam, Sue was completing her nursing studies in Connecticut and Margo graduated from college and was working in Manhattan. Decades later, both Sue and Margo would offer me their letters from Pete. Even after I read them, I could only guess what his true feelings had been. It was clear that...