Nam Memory: Angie Caldwell

“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.” ~Everett Hale

My Nam Memory: The Lesson
by Angie Caldwell

I know there are far more important stories out there, but I was touched by the article I read about the young bride/widow and I felt a need to reach out and share my own story. After reading the article yesterday, I thought I would share my own "Nam" memory.

In 1966, I was a 17 year-old girl living in Guam. My father was a CMSgt stationed at Anderson Air Force Base, Guam. This base was the home for all the B-52's that daily flew bombing missions. Every day was filled with the noise of these big birds revving up their engines and then the take-offs and then of course their return later. My father was a Flight Line Chief and living with these war time big birds was something we never questioned, it was a part of our life. I was a carefree teenager living on a tropical island and although I lived on an island that was heavily involved with the business of war, for some reason it just didn't affect my life. Teenagers are so self-absorbed.

One night I, and a few of my friends, got busted by the military police for trying to sneak back on base after curfew. Needless to say, the CMSgt father didn't appreciate getting called away from his post to come pick up his wayward teenage daughter. We four teenage kids were sitting in the military police office when my dad came in. He told us that since we were so eager to stay up late at night, he had something we could do. So for the next six weeks, at least four nights a week, around midnight, we reported to my father at the flight line/air terminal.

The big freight planes, C-140/141's would come in. Some would land full of young soldiers returning from Nam and they would come into the terminal to buy sodas, candy, or stretch their legs while the big planes refueled before taking off again to land at a base in northern California. Many of these planes were medical flights and oh, so many of the men couldn't get off the planes. I say men, hell, many of them were just boys barely older than me. A whole lot of them couldn't get off the plane so we would go on the plane, taking them sodas, helping some hold a cigarette because they were missing hands/arms/etc. We wrote postcards, we held their hands, we talked, we did whatever we could to make their journey a little easier.

When I left Guam the summer of 1967, I went to San Francisco. It was the so-called Summer of Love. While the other hippie chicks were distancing themselves from the young soldiers roaming the city, this hippie chick was spending many of her days and a lot of her nights at Letterman General Hosptial with young boys who had stumbled into becoming men. They were changed. Some had limbs missing, some with wounds you couldn't see, but you knew by looking at them, they were forever changed. I wrote postcards home to mothers, wives, girlfriends. I held hands with young women who came to see their loved ones and found boys/men they didn't know anymore or didn't recognize. So many tears, it wasn't just the young returning soldiers that were wounded, so were the families.

My father was never accused of being a wise man. He was a career military man doing his job. I am 61 years old now, and I think how shallow I must have appeared to my father. He served as a tailgunner in the Navy during WWII. He served with the Army/Air Force and when that split up, he went Air Force. He served during Korea and then again the Viet Nam conflict. I never realized what his 30 years of service really meant til I got much older. And I realized at a much older age that his punishment for this shallow, self-absorbed teenage girl affected me profoundly. His wisdom of taking these military brats and showing them what was happening....well how can I say it? It was and still is the most important thing I have ever done. My few hours spent in the middle of the night on a tiny island on the other side of the world shaped me, molded me, and made me realize how expensive my free lifestyle was. The time I spent in the hospital wards at Letterman General was humbling. These young boys made such huge sacrifices, and even their families sacrificed.

I hold these things close in my heart, and can still in a moment's thought, think of a face, a shared laugh, a letter written, and I can weep. It never goes away. My heart will always be tender from that time invested in boys/young men. I was just a girl, but I'm an old cowgirl now and I can honestly say that my life was forever colored by those experiences heaped on me by an honest to goodness military man, my father.

Viet Nam -- I can't even say the words without my heart twisting a bit.

Angie Caldwell