A Lost Brother's Lost Words

A month later, Pete was barhopping in Saigon with an IVS teammate and learning about conditions so primitive in some Montagnard hamlets that even the relief organization CARE wouldn't enter. There were run-ins with a self-important Maj. Cook and complaints about his IVS housemate, an agriculture graduate from Tennessee whose specialties were chickens, pigs, and their attendant parasites and diseases. "They take a lethal-looking hypodermic and ram it in" the swine's tail end, he observed. "Needless to say, the pig will have a very self-conscious look about him after undergoing treatment."

Phan Rang, his home base, reminded him of the landscape of Oklahoma, where we'd moved during Pete's college years: "flat, dry, sandy, hot and scrubby looking." He liked riding on the tailgate of a Land Rover for the breeze and the view. He didn't say he was homesick, but he missed American desserts. "How do you make a pie crust, and what's the basic formula for making the filling using berries or fruits, or lemon meringue?" he asked. "All we have for dessert over here is fruit, fruit, fruit."

In November 1963, Pete bought a radio. One afternoon, he was listening to music and wrapping Christmas presents when suddenly the music stopped. Two IVSers walked in with news of a coup d'etat in Saigon. President Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu had been captured (and soon would be executed). Suddenly, machine guns were mounted on the local Army compound, and an American captain stopped by to recommend staying indoors and avoiding crowds. Later that month, while writing about his dengue fever, Pete interrupted himself. "My God. Just heard over the radio about President Kennedy's assassination . . . It makes me feel sick, as though it had been somebody in my own family."

By the end of 1963, Pete was mimeographing health pamphlets for hamlet science teachers, building smokehouses to dehydrate and preserve fish, and constructing rabbit cages so that villagers could raise and sell the animals to fund a schoolteacher's salary.

As 1964 began and "Hello, Dolly!" opened on Broadway, Pete wrote that the Viet Cong were distributing rat poison among villagers to kill Americans, and that he had acquired two nicknames, Mr. Tall American and Mr. Big Nose. His interpreter had overheard a group of old ladies talking about him. They wondered how Americans with such big noses managed to make love. When he arrived in a hamlet for the first time, the kids would "come out running and screaming; and then they take a second look and exclaim something to the effect, 'Hey, it's Mr. Big Nose.'"

He complained about the "supercilious" U.S. bureaucrats who were often dismissive of his projects. "They sit behind their desks and say, 'No, it'll never work.' I wish someone would pay me $8,000 a year for that." Later, he met some of the architects of U.S. policy in Vietnam. "Dean Rusk, Cabot Lodge, and Premier Khanh dropped in for some pep talks the other day," he wrote. "Quite a snow job on Rusk. He sure must be a tired, overweight, gullible old man."

The violence in Vietnam was getting worse. Pete made numerous references to Viet Cong killed nearby and his own close calls, but I couldn't believe how nonchalant he had seemed about his personal safety. In August of 1964, he wrote, "I was almost material for VC celebration the other day. Two men came to the house asking me to take a windmill out to their hamlet the following day. I'd heard there were VC in the province so I checked with MAC-V that evening and was warned to stay clear of that particular area. The next morning a reconnaissance plane spotted VC in the rocks along the road I would've taken. Phew."

Eight months later, after U.S. ground troops had arrived, there was fighting nearby at Pleiku, Qui Nhon and Danang. Pete hadn't heard about it and went out to see a hamlet teacher. The teacher looked shocked to see him. "My God," he exclaimed, "what are you doing out here?" Pete quickly returned to the safety of Phan Rang. "Then I went out to see yet another teacher," he continued, "but I never made it because the VC threw an ambush, and I got shot full of holes, and they killed me. Nope, just kidding."

In only one letter did Pete speak seriously and directly about his safety. On Aug. 25, 1964, he wrote to me: "You don't need to worry about my security over here. It sounds much worse in American newspapers than it is in my province. Our province here is quite peaceful, and the people are very friendly, even though we can see guerilla croplands on the mountain-sides at the end of our airstrip."

As the war escalated around him, he told funny stories about his IVS duties, including an assignment to distribute 850 garments sent to Vietnam by CARE. "We found an old castaway girdle that must have come from some mastodon of a DAR Old Guardian Society whip. Had a lot of fun with the hamlet chief joking about possible uses for the contraption." The chief finally decided to sew up the bottom and use it for a bag when he went to market.

While Pete's correspondence told me much I hadn't known, it also reminded me of my brother's droll sense of humor, intelligence and buoyancy. During the two days I read his letters, he felt alive to me again. I was most of the way through the stack when it suddenly hit me that the pile was getting smaller, and I was coming to the end. I sobbed at the realization that Pete would soon be dead.

I SAW MY BROTHER FOR WHAT WOULD BE THE LAST TIME when he came home from Vietnam on a two-month leave in May 1965. I remember his homecoming clearly. I was returning from school and saw him step outside onto the front porch. I dropped my armload of books on the grass so I could run to him and hug him with both arms. My father recorded the moment with an 8mm camera. A few frames later, Pete and I are standing side by side, his arm is around me, and he is looking down into my eyes, smiling.