Friday, May 30, 2014

Gaspe' Quebec / Canadian Connection

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  Eldon Tozer’s niece, Sandra Thompson, sent this “Letter to the Editor” to the The Gaspe’ Spec, and I thought that it would be of interest to those have read the book or who knew Eldon Tozer during his life.   The letter was published on March 5, 2014.   The newspaper’s office is located in New Carlisle, Quebec.

Letter to the Editor:

My uncle Eldon Tozer of Cullen’s Brook served in the U.S. Navy from 1956 until November 1969. On November 20th, 1969 he was killed while serving on a River Patrol Boat in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.  A funeral service was held in Bonaventure with internment in the Riverside Cemetery in Cullen’s Brook.

Four years ago, Rolland Kidder from Ashville, New York USA contacted my mother Frances Tozer.  He told her that he would like to make a trip to Cullen’s Brook to visit Eldon’s grave and to interview her.

He wanted to write a book about his trip back to Vietnam—and about Eldon and two other men who lost their lives in Vietnam.  He also interviewed two of Eldon’s daughters who live in Michigan.  It was a very emotional time for everyone.

The book—“Backtracking in Brown Water,”  by Rolland E. Kidder is available in hardcover and paperback editions at Amazon.com.  Mr. Kidder journeyed back to the rivers and canals of South Vietnam.  He recounts life aboard Patrol Boats in the heart of the Mekong Delta and interviewed the families of three of his friends lost in the fighting back in 1969.

Mr. Kidder was appointed to the American Battle Monuments Commission by both President Bill Clinton and President Obama, and was a member of the original World War II Memorial Site and Design Committee.

Mr. Kidder is a Navy Vietnam War Veteran who served as a Patrol Boat Officer with River Division 535 in 1969-70. 

We feel very honoured to have Mr. Kidder visit our area and include our loved one in his book.  Eldon’s memory will live on.

A blog was created about the book.  It can be found on the internet at: http://rollandkidder.blogspot.com.”

Sandra Thompson
Flatlands, New Brunswick

Saturday, May 24, 2014

WWII Memorial 10th Anniversary Celebration


It was a fabulous event on a gorgeous day in Washington, DC!

Below is a photo of the Members of the American Battle Monuments Commission’s World War II Memorial Site and Design Committee at the Memorial’s construction site in 2001, and again today (May 24, 2014) at the 10th anniversary celebration.  This is the first time the group has been together in a long while, and it was a very special moment.   


From left to right: 
Frank Moore, Dr. Helen Fagin, Ambassador Haydn Williams, Friedrich St. Florian (memorial designer), Rolland E. Kidder, Brigadier General Pat Foote, USA (Ret.).


Saturday, May 17, 2014

Book Review : David Daly

An Insightful Chronicle of Mekong Delta Operations

By 
This review is from Amazon: Backtracking in Brown Water: Retracing Life on Mekong Delta River Patrols 
(Kindle Edition)
5.0 out of 5 stars 

What happens when Rolland Kidder (a former N.Y. state farm boy, theological seminary graduate, U.S. Naval Patrol Boat River (PBR) officer, N.Y. State Assemblyman, oil and gas executive ) writes about the lives and deaths of three of his military friends? I believe the result is a story told with the insight of a “weathered thinker.” We learn how young military leaders take care of their troops. We, also, find the long term impact of the deaths on the families. The daily Mekong Delta events reinforce the author’s observation that “war is no way to solve our problems.” Kidder’s story provides meaning and honor to the fallen men’s lives and deaths. I found the book rewarding and insightful. This book has the substance and perspective of a caring historian.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

I Was Just There Last Night

Submitted by Bill Sayers, 9th ID 3rd/60th 

This story came to me anonymously via e-mail, the author, a fellow Vietnam Veteran. After reading his story, I felt compelled to share this with you. If you didn't participate in the Vietnam War, this will give you some insight into how our minds work. He writes: A couple of years ago someone asked me if I still thought about Vietnam. I nearly laughed in their face. How do you stop thinking about it? Every day for the past forty years, I wake up with it- I go to bed with it. This was my response:

"Yeah, I think about it. I can't stop thinking about it. I never will. But, I've also learned to live with it. I'm comfortable with the memories. I've learned to stop trying to forget and learned to embrace it. It just doesn't scare me anymore."

A lot of my "brothers" haven't been so lucky. For them the memories are too painful, their sense of loss too great. My sister told me of a friend she has whose husband was in the Nam. She asks this guy when he was there. Here's what he said, "Just last night." It took my sister a while to figure out what he was talking about. Just Last Night. Yeah, I was in the Nam. When? Just last night, before I went to sleep, on my way to work this morning, and over my lunch hour. Yeah, I was there

My sister says I'm not the same brother who went to Vietnam. My wife says I won't let people get close to me, not even her. They are probably both right. Ask a vet about making friends in Nam. It was risky. Why? Because we were in the business of death, and death was with us all the time. It wasn't the death of, "If I die before I wake." This was the real thing. The kind boys scream for their mothers. The kind that lingers in your mind and becomes more real each time you cheat it. You don't want to make a lot of friends when the possibility of dying is that real, that close. When you do, friends become a liability.

A guy named Bob Flanigan was my friend. Bob Flanigan is dead. I put him in a body bag one sunny day, April 29, 1969. We'd been talking, only a few minutes before he was shot, about what we were going to do when we got back to the world. Now, this was a guy who had come in country the same time as me. A guy who was loveable and generous. He had blue eyes and sandy blond hair. When he talked, it was with a soft drawl. I loved this guy like the brother I never had. But, I screwed up. I got too close to him. I broke one of the unwritten rules of war.  DON'T GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO DIE. You hear vets use the term "buddy" when they refer to a guy they spent the war with. "Me and this buddy of mine."

Friend sounds too intimate, doesn't it? "Friend" calls up images of being close. If he's a friend, then you are going to be hurt if he dies, and war hurts enough without adding to the pain. Get close; get hurt. It's as simple as that. In war you learn to keep people at that distance my wife talks about. You become good at it, that forty years after the war, you still do it without thinking. You won't allow yourself to be vulnerable again.

My wife knows two people who can get into the soft spots inside me-my daughters. I know it bothers her that they can do this. It's not that I don't love my wife. I do. She's put up with a lot from me. She'll tell you that when she signed for better or worse, she had no idea there was going to be so much of the latter. But with my daughters it's different. My girls are mine. They'll always be my kids. Not marriage, not distance, not even death can change that. They are something on this earth that can never be taken away from me. I belong to them. Nothing can change that. I can have an ex-wife; but my girls can never have an ex-father. There's the difference. I can still see the faces, though they all seem to have the same eyes. When I think of us, I always see a line of "dirty grunts" sitting on a paddy dike. We're caught in the first gray silver between darkness and light. That first moment when we know we've survived another night, and the business of staying alive for one more day is about to begin. There was so much hope in that brief space of time. It's what we used to pray for. "One more day, God. One more day."

And I can hear our conversations as if they'd only just been spoken I still hear the way we sounded. The hard cynical jokes, our morbid senses of humor. We were scared to death of dying, and tried our best not to show it.

I recall the smells, too. Like the way cordite hangs on the air after a fire-fight. Or the pungent odor of rice paddy mud. So different from the black dirt of Iowa. The mud of Nam smells ancient, somehow. Like it's always been there. And I'll never forget the way blood smells, sticky and drying on my hands. I spent a long night that way once. The memory isn't going anywhere.

I remember how the night jungle appears almost dreamlike as pilot of a Cessna buzzes overhead, dropping parachute flares until morning. That artificial sun would flicker and make shadows run through the jungle. It was worse than not being able to see what was out there sometimes. I remember once looking at the man next to me as a flare floated overhead. The shadows around his eyes were so deep that it looked like his eyes were gone. I reached over and touched him on the arm; without looking at me he touched my hand. "I know man. I know." That's what he said. It was a human moment. Two guys a long way from home and scared to death.

God, I loved those guys. I hurt every time one of them died. We all did. Despite our posturing. Despite our desire to stay disconnected, we couldn't help ourselves. I know why Tim O' Brien writes his stories. I know what gives Bruce Weigle the words to create poems so honest I cry at their horrible beauty. It's love. Love for those guys we shared the experience with.

We did our jobs like good soldiers, and we tried our best not to become as hard as our surroundings. You want to know what is frightening. It's a nineteen-year-old-boy who's had a sip of that power over life and death that war gives you. It's a boy who, despite all the things he's been taught, knows that he likes it. It's a nineteen-year-old who's just lost a friend, and is angry and scared and, determined that, "some*@#*s gonna pay". To this day, the thought of that boy can wake me from a sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling.

As I write this, I have a picture in front of me. It's of two young men. On their laps are tablets. One is smoking a cigarette. Both stare without expression at the camera. They're writing letters. Staying in touch with places they rather be. Places and people they hope to see again. The picture shares space in a frame with one of my wife. She doesn't mind. She knows she's been included in special company. She knows I'll always love those guys who shared that part of my life, a part she never can. And she understands how I feel about the ones I know are out there yet. The ones who still answer the question, "When were you in Vietnam?"

"Hey, man. I was there just last night."

So was I. How about the rest of you vets-hits home doesn't it!

Share this article with others so they understand why many of today's veteran's behave the way they do be it Vietnam or other conflicts, this is a common thread shared by all.


AUTHORS NOTE:  This statement was sent to me by Mike Paluda who was a friend of Bob Olson and who is quoted in the chapter titled “Warrior.” It is from a soldier who served in the 9th Infantry Division which operated in the Mekong Delta.
Mike stays in touch with a lot of Army guys from the Vietnam War, and I thought that these thoughtful and powerful comments should be passed on.

Rolland Kidder 



Sunday, May 11, 2014

A Letter from Mike Morris, GMG 3


AUTHOR'S NOTE:  In Chapter 17, Mike Morris vividly remembers how Chief Tozer died. For his courageous action that night, we put Mike’s name in for the Silver Star. It was an honor earned and awarded. Mike is now retired from a life-long job as a fireman in Portland, Oregon.

Prior to publishing the book, I sent my recollections of that night to Mike for his review. He made some important comments and filled in the details on what happened on PBR #725 after it was hit on the Vinh Te Canal. His comments on the published book are set forth below. 
ROLLAND KIDDER

Book Review: Backtracking in Brown Water


In 1966 I joined the U.S. Navy.  After stints on an ammunition ship and fleet oiler, I was assigned to a PBR (patrol boat river) Division in Viet Nam.  On November 20, 1969, while on ambush on the Vinh Te Canal in the Delta region, my boat was hit by three B-40 rockets and automatic weapons gun fire.  Eldon Tozer (patrol officer) was killed.  Two Vietnamese and three U.S. sailors, including me, were seriously wounded.  After the attack, I was the only one able to drive the boat back to base camp and, because of this, I wasn't able to help any of the wounded.  After being hospitalized for several weeks, I returned to the patrol boat division and was back on the canal.  My tour finished six months later, and I left the Navy as a gunner's mate 3rd class.

I returned to my home, Portland, Oregon, and resumed civilian life.  In 1974, I joined the Portland Fire Bureau, and served for 39 years on the line as a fireman.  Now retired, I enjoy a wonderful life with my wife, four children, and two grandchildren. 

Rolly Kidder's book brought back a lot of memories for me –some I thought I had tucked away deep into the recesses of my mind.  Most of the time, I know I have a good handle on my years in the Navy.  I did the job I was assigned, and did it to the best of my ability.  Once in awhile, though, a memory will surface in a bad dream that wakes me at night.

Thank you,  Rolly, for not only writing about your experiences, but following up with the families whose lives were so profoundly affected by the events described in your book.  I recommend this book to all who are interested in our war and the U.S. Navy.

Mike Morris
GMG 3 (Gunner's Mate Guns Petty Officer 3rd Class)
River Division 535
September 1966-June 1970.


Thursday, May 8, 2014

Lunch at the Mekong Restaurant

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  When people ask me to try and sum up what the book is about,  I usually refer them to Mike Connolly’s statement which is printed, in part, on the back cover.   Mike was our tactical commander on the Vinh Te Canal in 1969, and he also became a friend.   However, I had not spoken with him since the war… until I got involved in writing this book.

I knew that to complete the story about Jim Rost, I needed to seek Mike out.   I found him living in Lynchburg, VA and arranged to meet him one day in Richmond for lunch.  Much of what we talked about that day is now in chapter 11, “Engineer.”  The place that Mike suggested we meet couldn’t have had a better name—it served Vietnamese food and was called “The Mekong Restaurant.”

I hope that his comments in the book and in this review, help the reader better understand what my goals and aspirations were when I undertook the writing of it.

Rolland Kidder


A Review of Backtracking in Brown Water  
In Backtracking, Rolly Kidder has delivered a brilliant chronicle of a part of the Vietnam conflict with which many may not be familiar. His own tour of duty on the rivers of Vietnam brought him in contact with two sailors and one soldier who would lose their lives there. Forty years later, he revisited Vietnam and began to track down the families of the three men, and evaluate the impact of the loss on those families.
For anyone who served in the Delta, this account will evoke a full spectrum of memories. For those who did not serve there, it presents a superb study of the many facets of the Army and Navy activity in 1969 and 1970. Using his journal entries of the period and interviews with fellow combatants, he builds a compelling picture of what was happening in the Vietnam Delta. His follow-up visit to Vietnam forty years later is deftly presented without taint – neither remorse nor bias. 
Kidder’s recounting of his visits with the families of the three servicemen is a poignant reminder of the continuing grief, as well as pride, extant amongst many and is a fitting memorial to the Army and Riverine heroes and an honor to those who mourn them.
Captain M.B. Connolly, USN (retired)   
Commander, River Assault Division 132 / River Assault Squadron 13, 1969-70