Editor’s Note: Every time I hear the word “veteran,” there is one particular person that comes to mind. Every time.
I didn’t get to know Gary Books until after I’d come to the News-Banner in 1997 and then after he retired from Fort Wayne Newspapers. Not sure what year that was. He told me once that the had offered me a job when he was working for Nixon Newspapers, based in Peru. I was the ad manager for the Decatur paper at the time. I’d forgotten about it, but after some prodding, the conversation at a state press association meeting finally rang a bell. So technically, we had met before.
Longtime Blufftonites will recall that Gary was the News-Banner’s sports editor from 1970 to 1977. The Bluffton native and 1964 Lancaster grad had studied journalism at Indiana University before being drafted.
He served in Vietnam, That’s an understatement. He was a Ranger. He earned four Purple Hearts. The aftereffects of those combat injuries would stay with him for the rest of his life, most noticeably by his pronounced limp. Although I do not think it was ever certified, I am convinced his premature death at the age of 61 in 2006 was the result of his exposure to Agent Orange.
But I do not recall him ever complaining.
I was blessed to then work with him for about five or six years towards the end of his life. It was a part-time gig for him. He sold some ads and wrote some stories and columns for us. He was simply a good guy. A guy who valiantly served his country. He put his life at risk. He was “the” veteran.
He wrote this essay and poem very early in his News-Banner career. The memories were obviously quite fresh. We published this as part of a Veterans Day salute sometime after his passing. A month or so ago, a reader brought by a copy and suggested we might re-print it for Veterans Day this year. Excellent idea. Thank you, Mike Sutton.
— Mark Miller
The Bunker
After the platoon had been out in the field for several days and returned to our support base for a shower, hot food and rest, some of us who had been in South Vietnam for a while wold gather around a bunker that was in the middle of our platoon’s defensive area.
We’d talk about the girl back home, strawberry pie, our families and our dreams for the future. We’d also talk about the war.
A soldier new to South Vietnam always would join us; you could tell he was new because his hair still would be cut short — a requirement of the training camps back in the States.
The new guy would usually listen intently as we talked about the war and our experiences, hoping to learn something that might save is his.
In the poem that follows, the new guy at the bunker on this night stunned the rest of us by expressing his thoughts. What you’re about to read is true, the words have been shuffled and changed a little so they rhyme.
The Bunker
We used to sit around the bunker at night
And we’d often talk about an earlier fight.
And Always a new guy would join us there,
We could tell he was new by his close-cropped hair.
One night, a new guy said to me, as he began with a flinch
“You know yesterday, Sarge, I came within an inch
of losin’ my life.
I raised my head up and a bullet grazed my steel pot
And they started comin’ in and for a second I froze and forgot
All the hand-to-hand combat I’d been taught.
I wanted to get up and I almost ran
But instead I stood and fought the best that I can.
And you know yesterday, Sarge, I killed my first man.”
The rest of us in the bunker that night had been in South Vietnam a long time. We’d all gone through the same thing as the new guy, but had just never been able to talk about it. And so it struck us as kind of strange, actually kind of funny, that a new guy could. So, we all just laughed about that.
And he said, “Sarge, you remember Larry Wright,
The one who got his foot shot off?
When he got home he wrote someone here
That his wife had run off
With some other guy, I guess he had two feet.
And you remember Ronnie Lipscomb, that day in the mud?
He tripped that booby trap and man,
I’ve never seen so much blood.
I didn’t know, I thought he was dyin’
So I turned and started to walk away
So he wouldn’t see me cryin’.
I looked at him and I just couldn’t take it no more
And I wanted to go out and kill every man, woman,
child and every slant-eyed whore
in that God-forsaken land.
He reached both hands up in the air,
and you know, Sarge, I’m just a dumb clod,
But never before had I ever heard
Anyone prayin’ like that, to God.”
The rest if us in the bunker that night had been in South Vietnam a long time. When Larry and Ron got hurt, we were bothered by it, too. But we’d just never been able to talk about it. So it struck us as kind of strange, actually kind of funny, that a new guy could. So we all just laughed about that.
Now that I’m home and safe and sound
And don’t have to worry about any more rounds
Come whistling over my head,
I think about Johnny Mike, and little Georgia-born Ed
Crazy ol’ Tex, and Sergeant Beetle Bailey Fred.
I’d like to say they made it home all right too, but I can’t,
‘Cause you see, they’re all dead.
I’m the only one left from the bunker that night
And even though I’ve tried with all my might,
I just can’t laugh about that.
Gary Books
February 1970
