A Christmas Story : On a Holiday of Peace, Pair Recall Another One--When War Hung Heavy Over Their Lives

God rest you, merry Innocents,

While innocence endures.

A sweeter Christmas than we to ours

May you bequeath to yours.

--Ogden Nash

On this eve of a sweeter Christmas, Steve Patterson and Linda Giese do not forget their legacy and lost innocence of Christmas, 1968.

They were in Vietnam.

She was a civilian, a nervous ambassador from San Mateo visiting an airborne company adopted by that city.

He was a lieutenant, a decorated, young, gung-ho platoon commander brought in from jungle operations to play reluctant escort.

Linda, raw from losing her brother to this war, faced rain-soaked, unshaven, drained, bloodied grunts. They stood in deference. They knew she was there with Christmas greetings and gratitude from at least one portion of the nation they could only presume they were fighting for.

“Their faces were younger than I’d imagined,” Linda said. Her moment remains fragile, something not easily offered a stranger. “But I caught a feeling of relationship with them, a sense of family. Then I saw that look in their eyes, the look of love, some shyness, loneliness and fear. I saw my brother. All of them looked like my brother.”

Steve remembers another moment later in Linda’s visit. His company held a Christmas Day memorial service for her dead brother. An upturned M-16 was crowned by a steel helmet. An empty pair of boots. Taps.

“Then the company, 130 men, these kids and Linda stood en masse and began singing ‘Silent Night,’ ” Steve said. He, too, dug delicately before sharing the memory. “It was a beautiful remembrance, but an enigma. Camp Eagle was no more than eight clicks (kilometers) from the fighting, and there we were singing ‘Silent Night.’ ”

Such a beginning, of course, is ripe for only one ending.

For Linda came home and Steve survived and he called when he landed in Oakland. The lady married her lieutenant. Linda and Steve Patterson have a young son . . . and they are indeed living happily ever after in Pacific Palisades.

Yet their time in Vietnam--even after almost two decades, despite the distractions of later years--will not go away.

The Christmas cards have been arriving, as they do every year, from former troopers of A Company, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry of the 101st Airborne. There have been telephone calls and a Thanksgiving meeting with Steve’s former platoon sergeant . . . and now a movie may be in the making, as yet uncast, but with its script written and financing being sought by independent producer Joseph Brazan.

This Christmas, the Pattersons must again remember that Christmas.

It all began in the heart and fears of Linda’s brother, Joe Artavia, then 19, who enlisted in the Army and volunteered for airborne training and for the war in Vietnam. He was sent there, to Phu Bai and the 101st Airborne.

In January, 1968, Joe, then a sergeant, wrote his sister. He spoke of the morale of the unit. It was being weakened, he said, by news of anti-war protests in the United States. But what if there was support from one community? What if his company could be adopted by San Mateo?

“It would bring the morale of the guys up as high as the clouds,” Artavia wrote. “Then, on special occasions like Christmas, they (could) send things to the company. It would be really great.”

Linda thought so. So did the San Mateo City Council.

On March 4, 1968, the council formally resolved to adopt the company.

On March 15, Artavia wrote his thanks to his mother and sister and enclosed a roster of A Company members.

On March 24, Artavia’s platoon was ambushed and a caring young man died.

Coincidentally, ironically, Lt. Patterson led the counterattack that rescued the remnants of Artavia’s unit. Patterson was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry. Artavia was given a posthumous Purple Heart and burial in Golden Gate National Cemetery.

“Joe’s death shook the city,” Linda said. “Their first adopted son, their Joe, was dead. It brought the war home to the entire city, but to a city that now saw itself as one family.”

United, strengthened, the people of San Mateo began giving fully. Letters and cards to their soldiers. Food parcels to their Screaming Eagles. Pen friendships to their adopted sons, one of which would eventually produce a marriage.

“I was putting a yearbook together for the men, speaking to the Lions, Elks and Kiwanis, organizing mail and packages from churches and schools,” Linda said. “It was like running a business . . . and taking up so much time it almost cost me my real job.”

Sometimes it was a sad business: “When packages would come back stamped ‘Deceased’ or ‘KIA’ (Killed in Action) or readdressed to some hospital.”

Mostly it was glad: “Especially when a little old lady, someone all alone in the world, would call and I could create a relationship for her until she would refer to the soldier as ‘my son.’ ”

On that Christmas of 1968, the citizens of San Mateo struck 140 personal medallions for their men. The city seal would be on one side. The reverse would be engraved with the name, rank and serial number of the soldier. But how to get them to Vietnam?

Linda Giese volunteered. A South San Francisco sorority came up with half the air fare. Linda borrowed the rest. Eighteen hours after leaving the peace of Northern California, she was in a war in South Vietnam.

She met Patterson, then the company as it was airlifted back to Camp Eagle after nine weeks of operations close to the Cambodian border. At their dances, their services and ceremonies, Linda learned.

Brought ‘the World’ to Them

“The men would refer to life back in the United States as ‘the world,’ ” Linda said. “So we (San Mateo and the adoption committee) took ‘the world’ to them, sending tapes we made by talking to people on the streets, sending photographs and living with them day by day . . . telling them, every day, that there was one city that cared.”

Steve Patterson returned to the United States in January, 1969. His war and military service were over.

Linda Giese had flown home a month earlier. Her war would not be over until A Company came home. And actually marched down 4th Avenue in San Mateo as a city paid tribute and a knot of warriors said thanks.

Then there would be the Memorial Room to dedicate, one floor of the San Mateo Public Library that would become a shrine to the 101st Airborne, the city’s adopted sons and one in particular--Sgt. Joe Artavia.

Long Engagement

Linda’s preoccupation lasted until 1976, and during that time it wasn’t always certain that she and Steve would last.

“We were engaged for eight years,” Steve said.

Some of the distance was created by Linda’s two children from an earlier marriage, a responsibility Patterson said he was not ready to bear. He had some readjustment problems. A few nightmares. Some discomfort with public opinions of the Vietnam War and changes in his own political thinking.

And he could not expunge the experience, the death he had seen, the wounds he had felt, as long as there was the constant reminder of Linda’s work.

‘It’s Over, It’s Done With’

“It wasn’t that I was in deep depressions and unable to handle bad memories of the war, nothing like that,” Steve said. “It was a case of me saying: ‘It’s over, it’s done with, let’s not keep on rehashing the experience.’ That’s the way I’m structured. I didn’t want the past always in front of me.”

He gave no ultimatum. She quietly monitored his moods.

“Had he walked out on me because of my work, had it ever come to that, I don’t know if I could have continued,” Linda said. “But I guess I had that much faith in our relationship. I was confident it would survive. So I continued.”

The release, for both, was the dedication of the Memorial Room at San Mateo Public Library. Then they married.

Good Home, Peaceful Life

Two years ago, the Pattersons moved to Pacific Palisades. She is in real estate with Fred Sands Realtors. He is senior vice president and director of sales for the American Group Financial Corp. They have Stephen Patterson III and a Mercedes and a good home and equilibrium.

Until movie maker Brazan and his exploration of their story wrenched open the past.

Linda had no objections to doing a movie. But Steve was opposed.

“We fought about it for two weeks,” he said. “We didn’t talk to each other for three days. Why should we do this thing? Why couldn’t we just put it behind us and leave it there.”

But they did talk.

Her Side, His Side

Linda heard Steve: “He told me: ‘You don’t know what it was like. . . . You don’t know that you could look into a man’s eyes and know that he knew he wouldn’t be coming home.’

“I knew then that for the movie to have value, it would have to dig in and see how they (Vietnam soldiers) feel. And I couldn’t do that without Stephen.”

Steve heard Linda. That his war had lasted only one year but that hers continued for seven. That her service had produced a bonding between a city and a group of men orphaned by an unpopular war.

And that maybe, she said, public knowledge of the appreciation and acceptance shown by San Mateo might lead to more honoring, more healing of Vietnam warriors.

One More Time to Give

It was agreed. They would assist with the movie. They would give of themselves one more time.

It has made Steve look back on his year: “I wouldn’t trade that year for anything. I came out a better person for the whole thing. It became a backbone. For if I did that, if I could command 40 people in a combat situation, then this, having 90 people working for you in a peaceful office, is a piece of cake.

“And that was the year I met my wife. What she did with the adoption was one of the most selfless things I’ve ever seen, a pure idyllic purpose.”

Were Linda’s years worth their pain?

‘I Can See the Men’

“Oh, yes. If I never did another thing in my life, there was this, the most rewarding thing I’ve ever felt. Now there are the reminders, the mountains around where we live, the hills, and I can see the men in my mind, humping up those hills.

“I hear the music of the ‘60s. . . . ‘He’s not heavy, he’s my brother’ . . . and I think of these men.”

She stared away. Many, many miles away.

Steve began talking. He told of a fighting army’s highest compliment, of dubbing a man “a good soldier.” He spoke of his long love for his wife and how he respected her as “a good soldier.”

Then his eyes filled and he cried.