‘I Just Don’t Want to Forget’

Some clock in the soul always reminds them that the anniversary has come again.

It was this month in 1965 when the men of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 163 appeared on the cover and in the pages of Life magazine in a famous, wrenching photo essay that helped awaken the nation to the reality of the Vietnam War.

There’s the handsome young helicopter crew chief, James Farley, shown with one hand on a jammed machine gun, the other seeming to hover powerlessly over a dying comrade. And the final frame, showing the anguished warrior breaking down unabashedly when the battle was over.

Something is different this year for the men who departed from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in late 1964 and flew the mission 34 years ago this week.

They felt an urgency to hold their first reunion in 21 years. They have started to fade away; the youngest are in their 50s. Now, their country is involved in another war in some obscure corner of the world. They also came to say goodbye to an old veteran, the air base where they trained and served before and after their time at war. El Toro is being retired and possibly turned into a commercial airport.

And beyond all that, Americans everywhere have seemed preoccupied with war this past year, what with the popularity of such films as “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Thin Red Line.”

Every year when March 31 approaches, Paul Gregoire of the 163 tenderly, ritualistically, leafs through the weary pages of the old Life magazine. “I just don’t want to forget. I have trouble seeing the people I knew on the cover of a magazine. But a lot of time has passed, oh, Lord, and I’ve done a lot of grieving.”

Reunions like the 163’s are becoming more common for Vietnam veterans as they confront their mortality and seek the company of those who know what it was like.

“You’re probably seeing an upswing in these reunions,” said Scott Campbell, director of public affairs for Vietnam Veterans of America. “People are hitting their mid-50s to mid-70s. A lot of these reunions are a catharsis, a cleansing of the soul. The only way you can do this is with other veterans who understand.”

On Wednesday night, men from the 163 came to toast and greet one another--some trim as the day they wore a uniform, others bursting over their belts--and swap ribald recollections and take snapshots of one another.

And some tarried, a catch in their voices, in talk of that day they flew into Viet Cong cross-fire carrying legendary photographer Larry Burrows, a courtly Briton who hated heights and who would later die in the war.

“It’s emotional for me--not a day passes I don’t think about it,” said Dale Eddy, 61, of Fort Worth, Texas, who was badly wounded in the fight. “That picture of Farley crying, it’s devastating . . . the tears in that are just really honest.”

As Eddy spoke quietly, expressing gratitude for his life, some of the others kept glancing up at a big screen television and somberly considered and debated the news that three American soldiers were missing in action near the Yugoslav border.

Yankee Papa 13

As on so many other days, the squadron was ferrying South Vietnamese infantrymen, this time to a spot about 20 miles from Da Nang.

Their UH-34D helicopters looked like fat, ugly, green insects. They were slow, vulnerable, noisy and vibrated like crazed washing machines. Crew members had to scream at one another to be heard.

But many of the 200 men in the unit respected the craft because it was resilient; it could take punishment. Some called it the Shuddering S---house, which may suggest a small measure of affection, if not intense familiarity.

Each helicopter had a call name. Burrows, Farley, three other crew members and nine allied soldiers were riding in Yankee Papa 13.

Viet Cong hiding along the tree line opened fire with machine guns when the helicopters arrived, and one of the craft went down. Two wounded crew members made their way to YP13 and were helped aboard. Farley’s pilot ordered him to go help the pilot of the stricken aircraft, and he dashed off through the tip-high elephant grass, followed by Burrows.

The injured pilot--Eddy--had a bullet hole in his neck. He wasn’t moving and Farley figured he was gone. As rounds struck all around, Farley and Burrows raced back to their helicopter.

The two other wounded Marines--Sgt. Billie Owens, who was shot in the shoulder, and 1st Lt. James Magel, who was hit under the right armpit--were in bad shape on the floor of Yankee Papa 13. As Burrows documented the desperation in black and white, Farley and another crew member, Pfc. Wayne Hoilien, worked feverishly to bandage their wounds.

Magel, only 25, died. Farley began swearing, then crying. Burrows captured the image of a distraught Farley standing over the body of Magel, a photo that Life magazine put on the cover of 7.4 million copies.

After they returned to base--all 17 choppers pocked with bullet holes--Farley, 21, despaired. He couldn’t rescue the downed pilot, who was later discovered alive and plucked out by another crew. His gun had frozen up. And Magel’s life had ebbed away at Farley’s feet.

Farley gave way to being human. Marines have it in their heads that they are supposed to suck it up. The callow lance corporal vented his emotions in a supply shack and, again, Burrows captured the moment.

For years Farley was embarrassed that he showed the world his tears.

“At that age,” said Farley, who is 55 and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area community of Castro Valley, “John Wayne was my hero. You never saw him do that.”

He still says he “could have done without” that last photo, but he’s learned to appreciate the tribute and testimony of Burrows’ gripping images.

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Veterans of the 163 are quick to mention that many other units got hit as badly and often much worse. The war produced 58,000 American dead and some ghastly carnage. But Life made this particular helicopter squadron among the most powerful images of the war and elevated Farley to symbol status.

Burrows had said he wanted his work to illustrate “the suffering, the sadness that war brings.”

“I concluded that what I was doing would penetrate the hearts of those at home who are simply too indifferent,” he said.

Burrows didn’t live to see peace in Vietnam, as he had so wished for. At the age of 44, six years after Life ran his piece “One Ride With Yankee Papa 13,” he was shot down on another helicopter mission in Laos.

Two years ago in his book “The Living and the Dead,” Paul Henrickson’s chapter about Farley and Yankee Papa 13 says Burrows’ photo essay “tries to tell what happened to an American helicopter squadron on a particular day, so early in a war, before America really knew it was in a war.”

“It was that moment,” Henrickson wrote, “in the larger context, when Vietnam was transforming itself from [the army of South Vietnam’s] conflict into the big Americanized war.”

Reunited by Funeral

That’s the long view of history. For those who served in the 163, as with most veterans, the reality that counts most is their brotherhood in a shared experience like none other.

Strangely, a funeral for a comrade is what helped bring the 163 back together. At the ceremony, Gregoire, 56, bumped into his old commanding officer, whom he still calls “skipper,” retired Col. Norman Ewers.

“Both of us said, ‘We got to get together before everybody dies,’ ” Gregoire recalled.

There was little time to plan. With the anniversary of the mission looming--and El Toro set for closure in early July--there wasn’t much likelihood of a big turnout.

About 25 veterans, plus spouses, attended the reunion. Some traveled a short distance because they settled locally. Ewers lives in Irvine and Gregoire lives in Orange. Ben Mann, a major with the unit in Vietnam, lives in Corona del Mar. Others made hasty trips from out of state.

This may be the last time Ewers, 75, sees so many of the men whom he led fearlessly.

As his squadron took heavy fire that day, Ewers exhorted them to “disregard the hits and continue to fire at your maximum rate. . . . If your aircraft is flyable, press on!”

When Gregoire, who was a junior lieutenant back then, reminds Ewers of his words, the commanding officer chokes up.

“I’m going to break up, I’m getting emotional,” Ewers said, taking off his glasses and dabbing his eyes. “Sorry.”

Mann describes him as “stern, but he was caring. . . . There’s never been a better squadron.” And Mann knows something about toughness. He exposed himself and his crew to enemy fire four times and used his helicopter as a shield while his men rescued Eddy and another crewman. Mann received the Navy Cross for that action.

Ewers feels intense pride in his old squadron, remarking that even his clerks and supply sergeants voluntarily took turns as door gunners on combat runs.

“That is one of my greatest points of pride,” Ewers said.

Memories Still Vivid

Even after all these years, some Marines are still uneasy and divided over the stark pictures that brought their suffering into American homes at a time when the country was just about to plunge headlong into the conflict.

“I disliked a lot of it, the pain it would bring. See that man dying?” said Ewers, peering at the magazine.

Mann, now 70, won’t look at the pictures. He remembers how much his kids had liked Magel, who had often visited their house, and how the dead Marine’s parents must have felt to view him crumpled and lifeless on the helicopter floor.

Mann sees him like that in his dreams.

“I don’t think [the photos] ever should have been published,” he said. Besides, he doesn’t need a magazine to remind him. “I slept four hours last night,” Mann said one day last week. “I flew that mission five times before I woke up. I’m a bad, bad dreamer.”

Some feel that Burrows stayed behind his camera and didn’t do enough to help save the wounded Marines.

Farley, who perhaps remembers it better than anyone, doesn’t blame the journalist, whom he had come to know and care about.

“There was nothing he could do,” Farley said.

From initial discomfort to eventual pride, Farley has come to a place of peace with the photos and their brutal honesty.

“A whole bunch of people in the world have no concept of what war is about,” he said.

Farley believes that in its timelessness and depiction of courage and truth, the photo essay belongs to Marines of all eras.

And so does helicopter squadron 163, which is now stationed at the Marine Corps’ Miramar air base near San Diego.

Before the assembled men of his old command, Ewers read the names of the dead, those killed in the war and those who have since passed on.

“I’d like to remember the people who can only be with us in spirit,” he said.

Then Gregoire read these words, written by another Marine: “Comrades gather because they long to be with the men who once acted their best, men who suffered and sacrificed, who were stripped raw, right down to their humanity.”

For the only time in the boisterous evening, the room drew silent.