After 46 Years...a Trip Back in Time, Part 1

AFTER 46 YEARS….a Memoir of Youth and a War

by Glenn N. Holliman

August 1968, I was drafted into the U.S. Army at the reception station in Montgomery, Alabama.  Basic training was in Ft. Benning, Georgia, and later advanced training at Ft. Dix, New Jersey and Ft. Hamilton, New York.  The USA was in an uproar that year, two assassinations, a police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago and disturbances in most of American's central cities.

Reaction to the civil rights movement and increasing militant opposition to the Viet Nam War ate away at the social and legal fabric of the county.  Upon graduation from college, that spring, my draft board in Gadsden, Alabama called my number, and I was on my way to a war of which I did not approve...but I went. 

March 2015, 46 years later I went back to Viet Nam...here is the memoir, day by day of that trip. 

Day 1, March 5, 2015 

I am on board an American Airlines flight from Chicago to Tokyo.  Grace, my daughter and mother of two of my grandchildren, is with me.  We are en route to Hanoi, Viet Nam, traveling with my cousins, Karen and Jim Holliman.  Jim is a physician, going to speak to a medical conference in Ha Long. Karen and Jim reside in Pennsylvania as do I. Grace is from  Virginia.

 Grace with her daughters' traveling stuffed chicken en route over the Pacific.  The chicken proved to be a light hearted companion who added some whimsy to the trip of almost two weeks.

For me this is a return to my youth, a visit to a country where I served with the 1^st Infantry, 3^rd Brigade, in Lai Khe, 40 miles northwest of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.  From January 31, 1969 to January 30, 1970, as a 22 year old, I spent a year in an ill-gotten, tragic war.

 Now I am 68 years of age, heavy from a life time of good food, and listening carefully to Father Time number off my days.  Once I was a skinny fellow who left his young wife named Lynn and graduate school, drafted in August 1968, and a few months later joining another 548,000 American in a fruitless, unnecessary war. Now my career is over, my children have given me grandchildren; this is a trip of remembrance of recalling a stressful period of my life.   

Right, the barracks and drill sergeant and yours truly, the young private E-2 at Ft. Benning, Georgia, October 1968.  The barracks were World War II vintage at Sand Hill.  When I went back with my two children almost twenty years later, they were gone, replaced by red brick barracks.

I have not been back to Viet Nam and now it is time.   How will I feel seeing the Vietnamese, visiting their war museums, seeing my old base camp?   

 Sometimes I get emotional thinking of that time in my life, almost every day of that year 1969 embedded in my brain. Sometimes when I talk about it, I feel tears welling up.  An old man should not feel so attached to only such a small part of one’s life.  But I do, and I suspect millions of veterans share my feelings.

 Home for Christmas 1968 at the Nashville, Tennessee airport, met by my family and mother, now the late Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015).  Mother was only 45 years of age; I thought at the time she was ancient!

 

 Want to know about the late turbulent 1960s in America?  Nixonland by Rick Perlstein is an excellent, comprehensive review of the chaos and conflicting feelings and views of the day.  A good read, it will make one think today is all wine and roses in the USA.  

Next posting, more the war of my generation and my trip back to Asia.
 Have questions about Holliman family history? You are invited to join the Hollyman Email List at Hollyman-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com and the Hollyman Family Facebook Page located on Facebook at "Hollyman Family". Post your questions and perhaps one of the dozens Holyman cousins on the list will have an answer. For more information contact Tina Peddie at desabla1@yahoo.com, the list and Facebook manager for Hollyman (and all our various spellings!).

There is also a massive Ancestry.com Holyman and Associated Families Tree available for review.  For an invitation to this collection of over 20,000 individuals, please write glennhistory@gmail.com.  

Also one will find additional Holliman history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ .

I also have a collection of associated family manuscripts and research collected by the late Walt Holliman, Cecil Holliman and Rhodes Holliman.  Happy to send these materials by email and to insure their research is available.  The surnames: Alexander, Baldwin, Barham, Bass, Beall, Blakeney,  Baker, Bond, Bostick, Brewer, Bryan, Bryant, Bullock, Calvert, Carter, Champion, Chew,Cofer, Cole, Crafford, Crockett, Curtis, Dale, Daniel, Davidson, Davies, De Mallpas, Douglas, Duckett, Edwards, Edgerton, Emerson, Fitzhugh, Fowlehurst, Fox, Gains, Garrison, Gonson, Graves, Gray, Guyton, Guins, Hall, Hamby, Hawkins,Hendrix, Hill, Hogg, Holliman, Holt, Howard, Jackson, Jones, Judkins, Love, Lucas, Maget, Mansfield, Manwaring, McBee, McComas, McCurdy, McNewsome, Nicholson, Norsworthy, Noyall, O'dell, Oliver, Pearce, Peerce, Pettigrew, Petway, Pitman, Plow, Plyler, Porten, Prather, Petite, Ridgely, Riggan, Roberts, Smith, Spencer, Sprigg, Standley, Stanyard, Swan, Strother, Thompson, Thornton, Thrope, Trelawney, Turpin, Underhill, Underwood, Wallace, Walters, Weedon, Whitherspoon, Whitten,Williams,Wilmot,Wilson, Whitaker and Yerby.  These are mainly Alabama families and their ancestors from the Carolinas and Virginia. Materials vary from one page to 200. - GNH at glennhistory@gmail.com.