After 46 Years...a Trip Back in Time, Part 3

by Glenn N. Holliman

My memoir of Vietnam and a return almost half a century later continues.   
                    

March 6, 2015 Tokyo…Day 2            

                      

"My daughter, Grace, and cousins Jim and Karen Holliman,  flew over Siberia last night, crossing the International Date line and entering Russia.  A bit different than in 1969 when the Cold War was on.  This flight was late leaving Chicago, and we were late landing in Norita, the airport 25 miles from Tokyo.  So we missed our connection to Hanoi. 

 Just as well.  After 13 hours, time to stretch, shower and have a good Chinese meal courtesy of American Airlines.       

    Grace in a Japanese garden.                                         

The room is, well, early airport, hot water but Asian low beds and no temperature control.  But free wi fi, the way we connect in the 21^st Century!  Last time I was here, I mailed the family post cards!

Japanese last night at American Airlines very sweet, well organized.  We have a bare glimpse at the Japanese traffic congestion and culture from the shuttle bus.

Woke at 3:15 am after six hours sleep (napped often on the flight over) so body clock trying to right itself.  Grace was ready to get up, and doing exercises.  She is a physical fitness guru.  A bit different traveling with family this time, no forbidding thoughts of homesickness and war.

So time for breakfast.  The adventure continues with blue toast and black coffee.

 

Breakfast was wonderful…excellent coffee, with western or Asian choices of food…squid pickled (skipped second helping), brown rice drenched with peanut oil and tiny slender mushrooms. 

Later a walk in a neighboring chapel garden and a photo of pansies. I am wearing my yellow 'bumble bee' water proof jacket.                

 

My grand daughter, Holly's traveling whimsy chicken posed in a tree.

                                                                    

Shuttle to airport and check in on Viet Nam airlines….a 320 Airbus.  Service and food excellent; free wine in economy.  Amazing service; so unlike U.S. cattle cars.

  Already this trip is ‘freeing’ me from some frozen feelings, a thaw I suspect.  The world has moved on dramatically since 1969 but some of me has stayed locked in a time vault.  A new generation has grown up, and the American war is ancient history.  So be it, but so sad for those who died for so little.  Generations born since 1965 have no memory of how bitterly divided the nation was over the Vietnam War.

Handed a copy of the Viet Nam News upon boarding; all in English!  And read like a normal newspaper; lots of western news, mainly US foreign policies and economic reports.  This was our former enemy, turned capitalist?  Irony of ironies."

Flash back to late 1968, barracks mate Neil Norton at Ft. Hamilton, New York where I was stationed after a month at Ft. Dix from November 1968 to late January 1969.

Below: the then U.S. Army Chaplain's school at Ft. Hamilton, New York where I trained as a chaplain's assistant, located near the then new Verrazano Bridge connecting Brooklyn to Staten Island.   As senior citizens, my wife and I have sailed under the Bridge on the Queen Mary 2, and I always gaze to the west viewing the fort and think of those days.

Left, Felix Greene's 1966 book, Vietnam in Photographs and Text  which I have had for almost half a century.  It was probably the first major publication to carry photographs of the effects of U.S. military action in Vietnam.  It was in March 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing of North Vietnam.  Later that spring the first Marines landed, and shortly there after the U.S. Army including my future division, the First Infantry.

Greene's work was the first to question and oppose the effort that would continue until 1973.  The photographs captured the early destructiveness and ugliness of the conflict and began to produce a narrative very different than the Administration  was conveying to the public.

Next post of my trip back in time, Hanoi, our enemy capital in the 1960s.

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 30

by Glenn N. Holliman

News from the Home Front during World War II, Spring 1943

March and April 1943 were months of stress and change for the Irondale, Alabama family of Ulyss (1884-1965) and Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955). Their 5th of seven children, Bishop (b 1919), had been in the Navy for 1 1/2 years. 

The youngest son, Ralph (b 1924), and son-in-law, Walter Cornelius (1922-2007), were both drafted into Uncle Sam's growing armies that spring. There was illness in the families of Charles (1907 - 1999) and Loudelle Holliman Ferrell (1914-1998) and Euhal (1912-1989) and Edna Holliman (1916-1992) that March. Melton, the first born son (1908 - 1958), suffered a serious automobile accident.  

Right, a 1920s photograph of three sisters - Vista Caine Grump (1898-1986), Maude Caine Cook (1893- 1940) and Pearl, all daughters of William Lee (1862- 1937) and Lula Caine (1861-1957). The three grew up in Fayette, Alabama and moved with their families to Irondale during World War I.

Let the letters from 1943 'paint a picture' for us.

First a frantic letter from Pearl to son Bishop that March 1943.  Bishop was in Navy radio school in Maine. I copy verbatim from my precious and deeply religious grandmother, who had only an 8th grade education from a rural school in Fayette County, Alabama. In the 1890s, schools often only met for 5 to 6 months a year.

"So many things happening.  I stay in a dose (daze) most all the time.  last week the Ferrells was so bad off, I thought every day, I would have to go up there, and the weather was so cold, I just could not go off and leave Dad by his self, and no one here to keep a fire in the house for him. 

An on top of all that Vena (Holliman Daly) was sick, and will be for nine mo.  don't let it shock you to death, I am trying not to be surprised at anything."  

Left, Melton in the early 1930s in an unwrecked automobile!

"And about 1 o'clock this morning the bottom fell out.  The Telephone woke me up and when I answered Melton answered me.  he had had a reck in Marianna Fla.  got his car torned up.  and he was hurt pretty bad.  A miracle that he is a live.  

Ida (his wife) was in Central Park so I had to get her on the phone she left on the 8 o'clock train this morning.  So I called Mobile while a go and he had been ex-rayed, he had 3 ribs broken, his shoulder knocked out of place said he thought the fumes of Gas knocked him out. and he left the road and turned over. tore the top off his car and some Soldiers found him and got him out. he rode the bus to Mobile be fore he called up or had a Dr. but he thinks he will be all right in a week or so.

I am so thankful that he is ?. Also I had a card from Loudelle and they are all better.  so I do have something to praise the Lord for to nite.  Also had a letter from Edna Sat. She said they had been sick, but was better.  she wanted your add."

A 'translation' for younger generations - Melton was a salesman for a pharmaceutical company, traveling daily from his home and wife, Ida Hughes Holliman, in Mobile, Alabama.  Married since 1932, the couple had no children and were trying to adopt.

Loudelle (b 1915) was married to The Rev. Charles Ferrell, a Methodist pastor in Jacksonville, Alabama at the time.  They had three children - Charles Halford, Carolyn and a new baby son, John Melton Ferrell, named after his uncle.

Edna was the wife of Euhal Holliman who worked in the grocery business in Gadsden, Alabama.  They had three children at the time - twin boys Jerry and Terry (b 1940) and a little girl, Ann (b 1943) pictured on the right.

Vena Holliman Daly (1909-1990)  lived next door to her parents in Irondale with her husband, Robert W. Daly, Sr. and their daughter, Mary Daly Herrin (b 1931).  Vena as expecting a child, Robert W. Daly, Jr., who would be born that October 1943.

Again from Pearl - "Well we pay income tax this week. also $40 for St. improvement, Bunts did not want to pay, because they never complete did their work, and was now they are going to the law and want us to but we are not so, I guess they will be hurt.

My chickens are doing fine.  I just lost 2 so far.  Your grandmas roomers left her last week. but she rented again yesterday. 

Melton and Ida have adopted a daughter!  And are they thrilled. 10 mo. old, and red headed.  We are crazy to see her.  She said she was the pride of Mobile. said people we're coming from ever where to see her.  You know the Holliman family is realy on the increase.  I told some of them, I thought I would join the Waac's or Waves one. as I would soon have a Army at home."

Below - Three cousins playing.   Back is Carolyn Ferrell (Tatum) (b 1938), and center is a very young Patti Holliman (Hairston) and the new Ferrell son, John (b 1942).

"Dad went to the store other yesterday.  Afternoon and they had plenty of meat, something they have not had in Irondale in 2 or 3 weeks, so he thought he would get a good steak.  Went up and ask for it, and did not have the points.  So he did not get any Steak.  Guess we will learn sometime. "

Below, Mary Daly (Herrin) and Walter Cornelius, her brother-in-law, who married Virginia, Mary's aunt in 1942.

And from Mary Daily (Herrin) (1931), the daughter of Robert and Vena Holliman Daly, we have these words from a humorous 12 year old:

"Guess what?  You have a new niece.  'Ida Patricia'.  Uncle Melton and Aunt Ida adopted her Saturday at Montgomery.  She is 10 months old with red hair.  All she has was one dress and 6 diapers.  They bought her 3 aprons in Montgomery but lost them before they got home.  They called us today and told us. So you see there's never a dull moment in the "Holliman" family.

Walter leaves for Kessler Field, Mississippi.  Virginia is going to stay with us.  Mr. Jiles Jones lost his mind.  They carried him to Brices (Bryce) Hospital yesterday.  The 6th of April I sent (free of charge) for three bottles of Jergens Lotions.  April 20th I received them.  They are about 2 inches high. We received the pictures you sent.  They are very good, all except the ones you are in (Ha! Ha!).  Mama H. bought a bond.  Why don't you send me some money and let me buy you some stamps and bonds." 

Translations?  Bryce was the mental hospital in Alabama.  The Bunts were neighbors.  In 1943 miraculously 3rd Avenue in Irondale was paved and sidewalks added, all in the midst of war shortages.  Bonds?  War bonds, of course.

Melton, recovered from his automobile accident, wrote a post card to Bishop on April 5, 1943 filled with good and not so good news. Below Patti sunbathing on a carpet; she the bright sunshine in her parents' lives! 

"I suppose Mother has written you about your new niece.  She is very sweet and we love her very much.  Too bad we got her just before I'm being drafted.  Had to fill out application for reclassification today.  Suppose I will be put in 1A. This letter will be short - we haven't had time to do anything since the baby came.  Love, Ida, Patsy and Melton."

Later in August, Melton, age 35, would be inducted into the U.S. Army and torn away from his wife of 11 years and their long awaited child, Patti.  His war would not end until the spring of 1945. After time in France with the medical corp in 1944, his health would never be the same.

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. 

After 46 Years...a Trip Back in Time, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

Day One, March 5, 2015 continued....

We have left Chicago....headed west on my emotional return to Asia.  My mind drifts back to the summer of 1968....the summer I joined the U.S. Army, the summer the family gathered in Alabama....and Vietnam loomed darkly in my mind.

Below, at the home of E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin in Irondale, Alabama, many of the siblings and my cousins gathered. Three years had passed since Ulyss Holliman had died; ten since Pearl Caine Holliman (Grandmother Holliman) had died of a heart attack at age 67.

Left, Robert and Vena Holliman Daly had built their 'white house' in 1946 and there Mary and Bob Daly, their children finished growing up.  A few months after the group photograph (see below), the house was sold and demolished.  A business park now occupies this space along Highway US 70.

The photograph to the left was made in 1946 of Vena and Robert in front of their new home.  Robert was manager of a bank in Woodlawn.  The home has three large bedrooms, a huge kitchen, two baths, a long combination living and dinning room and a screened in porch over an underground garage.  The 'lot' must have been at least two acres or so.

In the 1950s, their daughter, Mary and her husband, E.C. Herrin would build a second house on the property and begin raising four children: Clayton, Linda, Suzanne and David Herrin.  Robert died early of heart disease in 1959.  In the 1960s, Vena became a sorority mother at the Universities of Alabama and Mississippi, and the Herrins with their large family moved to the 'white house', a home my immediate family and cousins visited often through the years.

Our thanks to Susan Cornelius Williams for the color photograph of this reunion in July 1968.

Back row: Holly, George and Patti Holliman Hairston

Next row, left to right: Glenn and the girl cousins: Jean, Tommie, Alice, Linda, Becky, Kathy Holliman and Susan Cornelius

Next row, left to right: Euhal Holliman, Lynn Draper Holliman, Ralph and Motie Holliman, Vena Daly, Clayton Herrin, Loudelle Holliman Ferrell, Charles Ferrell and Bishop Holliman

Next row, left to right: Walter Cornelius, Virginia Cornelius, E.C. Herrin with David on his lap, Mary Daly Herrin, Suzanne Herrin on her Uncle Bob Daly's lap, his wife, Carol behind him, Carol Cornelius in front and her husband, Carl and behind her Gerry Holliman, Bishop's wife.

Our flight drones over Canada into a long day light....a day which began 4 am in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, travel with my second cousins, Dr. Jim and Karen Holliman and daughter (we spent the night at their house) to the airport, several inches of snow.  Several hours to Chicago; a 3 ½ hour layover and now a long day and night to Japan.

A few days later my daughter, Grace and her Dad, all of 68 years, no longer 22 as in the photo above, in Hanoi, Vietnam.

On the plane, Grace,  chats with her seatmate, a 40 year old Chinese lady, who looks 25, unhappily married to a Chinese husband in Florida, heading home to take a ‘break’.  The world has changed in half a century.  China was the proxy enemy in 1968, the reason America feared, wrongly we now know, the spread of Chinese communism through Asia. Unfortunately our national leaders in the 1960s were not historians; they did not recognize the ancient enmity between the two nations of China and Vietnam.

A few months after the family reunion photograph in Irondale, it was graduation from Basic Training, an ordeal experienced by millions since World War II.  Below, October 1968, I shake hands with a fellow platoon mate.  The M-14 rifles, helmets and gear are stacked and soon I am off from Ft. Benning, Columbus, Georgia to Fort Dix, New Jersey by train for advanced training.  

I am to be an Army clerk thanks to my ability to type 44 words a minute!

Below, another place and time, Jim and Karen Holliman who kindly arranged the trip to Vietnam where Jim was to speak at a medical conference.  This photograph taken 2014 at my home in Pennsylvania.

 Forty five years since I left Asia….we shall see….

Right, "We Were Soldiers Once and Young", published 1992 and later a major movie on Vietnam.  Sad, tragic reading of an American regiment almost wiped out in one of the first battles in 1965. From the book this quotation '...the first major battle of a conflict that would drag on for ten long years and come as near to destroying America as it did to destroying Vietnam'.

Next posting, more the war of my generation and my emotional 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. 

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.