I Still Remember You, Duncan

I Still Remember You, Duncan

“Why have all the pieces joined together to create such a cruel fate?”

-Origin unknown

1965

The memory has persisted for sixty-two years. This is remarkable because I never even met him. Duncan, was just the guy who sat in the last row of my high school Spanish class, noticeable because he was always smiling or laughing, or at times struggling to stay awake. I envied him at the time because he was able to stay up late enough to watch the Steve Allen Late Night Show.

Duncan was the prototype of the class clown without even trying. Even the dour Senora Guzman couldn’t stop laughing at his pained efforts to translate. We all used our Spanish names (Pedro here) in class, but without a Spanish equivalent for Duncan, Senora Guzman labeled him with something akin to silly or goofy. I wish I could remember that name.

Spanish class was the only time I ever saw Duncan. He hung out with the “hoods”, the Danny Zuko crowd of the times, didn’t graduate, and I never saw him after the spring of ‘63. But I think of him often, especially on Memorial Day and today, Veterans Day.

One final introductory thought- life isn’t fair.

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Summer of ‘63

The carefree days of youth in the summer. I got a job with the city Forestry Department cleaning up the mess after the regulars took down one of the majestic elm trees that had lined the streets of well-kept neighborhoods for as long as anyone could remember. None were spared the wrath of the dreaded elm bark beetle as Dutch elm disease spread throughout the city.

I met a girl that summer. Jeannie was cute as a button and as sweet as a cardinal’s song in the early evening. Our first date was an afternoon at the County Zoo. She laughed at my frugality- the zoo was free back then, I parked a half mile away to avoid the parking fee, and I brought my own snacks and soda.

I saw Jeannie most every night that summer. We mostly did nothing at all besides just being together. A boy’s first love is all he needs.

Once or twice a week, I’d go to Central’s baseball games at Lincoln Park to see my best friend Jim-Jim pitch. He was good, a lefty who went on to play for Ol’ Miss. I played football and ran track, but I still regret that I wasn’t good enough to play baseball in high school as that was the premier sport in the community. ( I considered it a successful at bat if I didn’t get hit by the pitch.)

We were upper middle class. My father worked in an office, my mother was a stay-at-home mom, and my three older brothers and I had a nice, comfortable existence.

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Duncan was averse to all things academic. His Junior year would be his last. He kept the newspaper boy (sorry to offend, but that’s who they were back then) job that he had since he was twelve. He was at the paper shack every afternoon at 3:30 to fold the papers into a shape suitable for throwing, stuff the papers into his bag, and head out to make his deliveries to his sixty-seven customers, an enviable sized route. On Sundays he’d be at the shack by 5:00 AM to make his Sunday morning Journal deliveries.

He lived with his dad in a modest home near the city’s industrial center. His dad worked second shift at a foundry and came home every night covered with soot and smelling like he was on fire. Duncan, the youngest of three boys, was free to determine his after school and summer evening activities, and not surprisingly, this sometimes led to undesirable consequences. There were occasional run ins with the law, “minor” transgressions such as fights, underage drinking, retail theft, and a cascade of driving violations in his ‘52 Chevy that he paid for himself.

Duncan kept delivering papers that summer and rarely gave any thought to what he’d do for the rest of his life. He slept in, worked on his car, delivered papers, hung out with his buddies at the Windup bowling alley most evenings, drank beer at Lincoln Park, and was close to smoking cigarettes nonstop, a nasty habit passed down from the older boys at the newspaper shack.

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Eight thousand miles away, the National Liberation Front was continuing its efforts to topple the government in South Vietnam. The NFL’s military wing, the “Viet Cong”, was engaged in fearsome guerilla warfare aimed at taking down South Vietnam’s President, Ngo Dinh Nhu.

Thousands of young men and boys work on the farms in North Vietnam.

The United States only had “advisers and support personnel” in South Vietnam but still somehow managed to suffer one hundred and twenty-two in-combat fatalities in 1963.

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Almost eight hundred miles away, President Kennedy conferred with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy about the developments in South Vietnam. The “domino theory” - if Vietnam fell to communist rule, other countries would follow- prevailed, and the number of U.S. personnel in South Vietnam was increased from seven hundred to sixteen thousand.

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Fall of ‘63 to Fall of ‘64

Fun. Aside from the occasional stress of exams and the terror of asking Janet K. to go to Homecoming with me, it was all fun.

Our football team had its first winning record in five years. The games, the camaraderie, the school dances every Friday night after a game (with a real band... not so good, but real), created those lasting memories we all talk about in our later years.

Jeannie went to a different high school, and soon my attention shifted to the young lovelies I would see every day. It wouldn’t be the only time I misunderstood “love”.

I was disappointed in the summer of ‘64 when I was moved from the tree crew to garbage pickup. I’d walk behind the huge orange hauler dumping all things disgusting out of a heavy metal trash can into the back of the truck. Anyone thinking of dropping out of school should spend a few hot summer days on that crew. It would be a great motivator to keep your grades up.

I did well in school, and with the support of my family, I had plenty of options in life.

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Bittersweet patronage- Duncan's dad landed him a job at the foundry. He had the first shift... up at six and in front of the raging blast furnace by seven... working in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees and breathing air that contained more soot than oxygen. He’d take lengthy showers when he got home, needing extra time to work the soot out of his ears and nostrils. It was a miserable situation, the only positive being a heightened appreciation for his dad’s efforts.

He was too tired to do much of anything after a grueling ten-hour shift and working every other Saturday. He had little time for his friends and never made it to the Windup lanes. Without a high school diploma and a dad struggling to just hold it all together financially, he had few options. In September of 1964, just five days after his seventeenth birthday, even with the dark clouds of war gathering on the horizon, Duncan enlisted in the Army.

Seventeen. With parental consent a person could enlist in the Army at seventeen. Seventeen, not a full-fledged adult by any measure. Seventeen, standing at the door of a future most dreamed of- marriage, children, and a nice home.

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Ho Chi Ming ordered increased support for the Viet Cong’s revolution in the south. Regular troops were dispatched into South Vietnam and worked directly with the Viet Cong. Its navy patrolled the coastline, and in August of 1964, fired upon the USS destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Thousands of young men and boys leave their farms and join the North Vietnamese Army.

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In response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Congress granted authority to the President to increase its military actions in Southeast Asia. By the end of 1964, twenty-three thousand three hundred and ten young Americans had left their homes and were now in South Vietnam.

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Fall of ‘64 to Summer of ‘65

My junior year in high school. Our football team improved to seven and two, one game off the pace to take the conference title. I still lusted after Janet K., but I finally realized that dream was just that, a dream.

We still had the dances after every Friday night game, football and basketball. After the dance, my group headed out to the Big Boy restaurant and loaded up with hamburgers and chocolate malts. It was darn near Happy Days.

I fell in love again... twice. I guess I was still learning.

My folks got me a car, a run-down ‘58 Plymouth convertible. It had the big fins at the back, and we called it the Batmobile. I swear it was about 100’ long. Speaking of that, Batman TV was done in two parts. My buddy Bruce and I caught every episode, Part One at my house and Part Two at Bruce’s. Silly, funny stuff... that's what my friends and I were up those days.

I started thinking about college. My older brother told me there was no better lot in life than that of a college student, so I was all in. High school was fun; college, he said, would be fun on steroids.

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Duncan got shipped to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri for basic training- no Batman on TV, no chocolate malts, no dances, no beer, no cigarettes, and they wouldn’t let him bring his beloved car. Waking to the piercing sound of a bugle at 5:00 AM was a shock to his system. Eight weeks of physical and combat training- running, obstacle courses, tear gas exposure, hand-to-hand combat, and marksmanship with an M14 rifle was supposed to ready him or what would follow. It didn’t. Nothing could have.

He would become an “Infantry Indirect Fire Infantryman”, a position that would involve scouting missions with a mortar unit and operating a two-way radio. The Army handbook didn’t mention that he’d be right out front, confronting the enemy in close quarters with a diminished life expectancy.

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The Viet Cong increased its attacks across South Vietnam. In a single attack, twenty-two U.S. soldiers were killed in their sleeping quarters. With rebel successes and increased instability in the government, ninety thousand South Vietnamese soldiers deserted.

Thousands of North Vietnamese young men and boys receive military training, including marksmanship with a rifle.

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General Westmoreland realized South Vietnam was losing the war and requested additional troops. President Johnson authorized deployment of an additional one hundred twenty-five thousand troops to Vietnam. He also directed the Air Force to begin Operation Rolling Thunder to bomb sites in North Vietnam.

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August – November 1965

We made another run down to Wrigley Field to catch a Cubs game. The real draw was having a few beers in the bleachers. Back then, if you were old enough to hold a cup, you’d get served.

My bachelor Uncle took me and my cousin Paul up to a cottage on a lake in Northern Wisconsin for the last two weeks of August. Life was as good as it gets- nothing to do but fish, swim, and hike through the woods. My Uncle even cleaned the fish and did all the cooking. It really was the best of times.

It would be my last year at Central. All the good things kept on coming- the goofing off in the hallways, the dastardly pranks, the dances, a girlfriend, and the nights at Big Boy. Our football team even tied for the conference championship.

I turned eighteen that summer. I didn’t feel an instant metamorphosis into an adult. It seems unlikely that the artificial legal standard of adulthood automatically transforms one from a child to a man or woman. Most are granted some time to grow into it, to develop a sense of maturity and responsibility. With few exceptions, the eighteen-year-olds I knew needed a little extra time.

I started applying for admission to college. Like I said, I had lots of options which suggested a nice future awaited me.

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Duncan arrived in Vietnam on August 16, 1965, less than a year after he enlisted and said goodbye to family and friends. It wasn’t long before he’d be carrying heavy equipment through an insect infested jungle in 100-degree heat and sleeping in the mud.

The Air Mobile Division was a new concept. Troops could be moved in and out of an area by helicopter. One such location was the Ia Drang Valley in the central high lands. Duncan would be with the troops that landed in the Ia Drang Valley, the site of the first major engagement of U.S. troops and North Vietnamese soldiers and the battle depicted in the movie "We Were Soldiers."

The first helicopters touched down in Ia Drang at around 10:30 AM on November 15, 1965, unaware there were two thousand seven hundred North Vietnamese soldiers in the area. Two hours later, the U.S. soldiers were under intense attack. Greatly outnumbered and fearing the encampment would be overrun, the U.S. commander urgently called for reinforcements which could only be brought in by helicopter.

Duncan was surrounded by explosions, men being ripped apart, bullets flying through the air, and the desperate cries of dying men. Artillery and airstrikes pounded the enemy, but the strikes were challenging as the North Vietnamese soldiers drew so close to the U.S. perimeter. The life and death struggle often involved brutal hand-to-hand combat.

The battle waged on into the next day. Rifle fire, machine gun fire, mortars, explosions, hand grenades, and hand–to-hand combat. Duncan considered it nothing short of a miracle that he survived the first two days.

The North Vietnamese began withdrawing on the third day, and the fighting subsided, but there was still one piece of metal, only inches in length, fired from the rifle in the hands of a young man who had left his family farm just a year ago, that needed to be accounted for. It only needed to travel a short distance before striking Duncan in the head. He died instantly, falling to the ground eight thousand miles from home. He was eighteen.

Two hundred and thirty-four young Americans were killed at Ia Drang Valley over those three days. Duncan was the last.

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I was in my English class when the announcement came over the P.A.

“Former Central High School student Duncan K. was killed in action in Vietnam. Please take moment to remember Duncan.”

A moment? I’ve had a lifetime.

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