5/30/23

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

In bed around 19, up at 6 on the dot from a vivid dream in which I was taking care of a very feeble Pope Francis on an outing with lots of people milling about, Francis wanting only to get out of his wheelchair and walk in a field and under a tree bearing nuts and an apple.  57℉, high of 73℉, W wind at 2 mph, 0 to 7 mph during the day, gusts up to 12 mph,  The sun rose at 5:15 and will set at 8:23, 15+7.

Traditional Memorial Day

The Vietnam Memorial Wall

From my memoir:  "At the beginning of May, the war became more personal to those of us who had come to Camp Schwab from the wing headquarters in DaNang.  We received news that our friend Bill “Moon” Mullen had been shot down over Laos.  The American government refused to admit that we were conducting operations in Laos but we all knew it.  The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran through Laos and our aircraft regularly bombed it.  On April 29th, 1966, Moon flew an A4E to a bombing mission in the most heavily defended area of the trail, the area around the Mia Gia Pass.  His plane was the last in the formation.  It was hit by anti-aircraft fire as he pulled away from the target.  The plane went down, but the other pilots picked up radio beeper signals from the ground where his plane went down.  The circling pilots radioed instructions to him, which he complied with, indicating he had ejected safely.  Soon, the radio on the ground was still active, but instructions from the air were not being followed.  It appeared Moon had died or lost consciousness or had been captured or killed.  He was never found.  It was never learned whether he had been captured or killed or died from injuries from the anti-aircraft fire or the ejection.  The 1973 Paris Treaty provided for the return of POWs held by the VC and by North Vietnam, but not those held by Laotian communists.    In 1994, I ran my fingers over his name on the Vietnam Wall in Washington.  He is still listed as among the ‘missing.’

Moon Mullen was well-liked and highly respected by all of us in the headquarters squadron in DaNang.  He regularly flew missions with his old A4 squadron based in Chu Lai though he was assigned to the Intelligence section of Wing headquarters.  Unlike some others, he never looked down his nose at those of us who were not aviators.  He was a captain and several years older than most of us.  He had just turned 31 when he was shot down; most of us were first lieutenants in our mid-20s.  When we could talk him into it, ‘by popular demand,’ Moon would stand up next to the bar or his table at the officers’ club and sing, always the same song – 

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

    From glen to glen, and down the mountainside.

The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling,

    It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,

    Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow,

It’s I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow,—

    Oh, Danny boy, O Danny boy, I love you so! 

But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,

    If I am dead, as dead I well may be,

Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying,

    And kneel and say an Avè there for me.

And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,

     And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,

For you will bend and tell me that you love me,

     And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me! 

When Moon sang Danny Boy, we all shut up.  The jukebox would be turned down or unplugged and the Righteous Brothers, Simon and Garfunkle and the Mamas and Papas would give way to Moon Mullen, a capella.

I suspect most, perhaps all of us thought Moon was probably dead; I did.  We may have even hoped that he was dead rather than living as a captive in a cave in a mountain in Laos or sick and abused in a jungle prison.  I don’t know what we thought because we did not talk about it.  We didn’t talk about it, but we all thought about it, about him.  We thought of him as we drank each night at the officers’ club.  We thought of him as we watched the gung ho grunts go through their training before heading south, some to die, some to lose limbs, some perhaps to be among the missing, most to return alive but messed up in their heads and hearts to one degree or another.  I think of Moon every time I hear Danny Boy.  For many years, I hated to hear the song.  My eyes would start burning when I heard it, especially the lyrics If I am dead, as dead I well may be, Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying . . .”  It would take me a while to ‘come back’ after hearing it and I never sang it, though it had been one of my favorites before May 1966.

I think Moon Mullen was for us emblematic of the ambiguous character of the war itself.  He was neither alive nor dead, just ‘missing.’  He went down in a country (of sorts) where our government wouldn’t even admit we were fighting, though every Tom, Dick, and Harry knew we were.   The terrain he was bombing was not land that we would ever in any sense ‘take’ or ‘capture’ or ‘seize’ or ‘hold.’  It would be used for years as a principal line of communication and logistics between North Vietnam and forces in the south and for years pilots would fly missions trying to slow the flow of men and materials southward and for years pilots would be shot down over that land.  Indeed, when Nixon’s so-called ‘peace with honor’ was negotiated in Paris in 1973, there was no written agreement for the identification and repatriation or return of the bodies of pilots shot down over Laos.  The treaty only bound “the parties hereof and the signatories hereto,” which did not include the government of Laos which was not ‘officially’ involved in the war.  What happened to Moon Mullen and his family,  the long, inconclusive waiting, the deceptions, the ultimate loss, was a microcosm of what was happening to America, and to Vietnam.  I believe we knew that as we poisoned ourselves at the club each night and as we looked on those infantry Marines so intensely preparing for what awaited them in Vietnam.  More Danny Boys, more Moons."

Willliam Francis Mullen's name appears on The Wall as "MIA" on Panel 7E, Line 11.

Deborah Kerr in an Actor's Studio interview:  “I don't like getting old. I hate it, in fact.  I don't know an honest person who likes it. You just thin out and all your energies go toward surviving or moving safely from one room to another.  But the mind thrives, thank God.  Or mine does.  I used to try very hard not to regret it.  I thought that regrets were a waste of time, a sign of weakness.  I think only the most insensitive of people have no regrets, because in this time, this slower time, your mind goes back to so many instances when there should have been more kindness, more attention paid to others.  I missed so many opportunities to be a better friend, a better mother, a better actress.  Of course I can't remember now what I was in such a hurry to get to that I grew so bad at the important things.  So I regret and I think.  Old age is the big index to the foolish young people we were."

William Butler Years, Vacillation:

Things said or done long years ago, / Or things I did not do or say

But thought that I might say or do, / Weigh me down, and not a day

But something is recalled, / My conscience or my vanity appalled.

LTMW at a female house or purple finch grabbing a big wad of weathered laundry lint from our nesting container while a male cardinal perches on top of the shepherd's crook and a red-bellied nuthatch feeds at the sunflower tube.  Then the female finch comes back again and again for even larger wads of nesting lint while a male red finch works on the orange half above.  The oranges are a big hit with the male red finches and the nesting lint with the females.  I think I am seeing a temporarily-bonded couple. . .  Now I'm sure of it; they fly as a pair, arrive and depart as a pair.  By the afternoon, they have become coordinated: they fly in together and one lands on one orange, the other lands on the other,

Colonoscopy prep tomorrow and the 'double dip' on Thursday are already bringing on some stress and anxiety.  I'm feeling some mild but generalized anxiety this morning, even over the mildewed contents of the cardboard box in the basement.  I have some second-hand experience of both colon cancer (my father) and esophageal cancer (my friend Roland Wright whom I assisted with g-tube feedings and otherwise up to his movement to a nursing home and death.)  My father survived his cancer and lived into old age; Roland died from his.  Other younger friends had daunting esophagus tumors.  

Going through some of the contents of the mildewed boxes  I see photos I don't think I've ever seen before including some ancient B&W photos of my father's friends in the USMC somewhere, sometime before Iwo Jima removed the youthful smiles from their faces, or perhaps removed their faces altogether; heavy armaments can do that.  Old family photos remind me I'm a 'sole survivor' except for my cousins.  Mother, father, sister, aunts, and uncles are all gone.  Some of the anxiety I suspect is from the Pushmi-Pullyu test I am passing and failing by going through with Thursday's screening tests.  See Zeke Emanuel's death wish.

In the mildewed box I found some books on religion that I had treasured: two by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, two by Paul Elie, a couple by Kathleen Norris and others by Karen Armstrong.  Also, a lovely book of photos and text on the growth of Chicago, badly mildewed.  I'm wondering why I had boxed up these particular books; had I intended to give them to Anh and Andy?  I also found a collection of a few of my law school casebooks that I saved, memories, memories, . . .

I also found a box of golf balls which I will offer to Peter.  I found a large, lovely scrapbook of photos and comments that Sarah assembled after our 2008 trip to the northern and Canadian Rockies: Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff, Jasper, and Theodore Roosevelt Parks.  A mildewed 1997 directory of Leo High School alumni, including Larry Stack, Jack O'Keefe, Johnny Flynn, and Ed Felsenthal.  Also, a plethora of old photos sorted by time, location, or occasion and packed away in labeled business envelopes, a treasure trove.

Among the items squirreled away were my Dad's Honorable Discharge from the Marines after World War II and his DD214 discharge record.  They reminded me again that he was discharged at a private after one and 3/4 years of active service including Iwo Jima.  Not even a PFC or private first class.  This tells me he got into trouble after Iwo.  I have no idea what kind of trouble but it involved misconduct of some sort.  He had no love for the Marine Corps and I suspect he may have spent some time in the brig before he was discharged.  He did tell me that the Marines did not want to discharge him with the clear implication that he was not ready to return to civilian life with his PTSD.  That he needed help is clear to me as I recall his withdrawal, sullenness, and alcoholism after the war.  I also noted that his discharge from the Great Lakes Naval Base in North Chicago was a few days after Thanksgiving 1945 leading me to wonder why he wasn't discharged before Thanksgiving.  Perhaps he had leave or liberty to be home for Thanksgiving and the discharge date was just due to some administrative need.  Or maybe not.  I'm reminded again of his telling Geri that my mother never wrote him while he was overseas.  What was that all about?  It's a huge mystery to me and completely inconsistent with her staying with him despite his PTSD when both Kitty and I wished she would leave him, take us away from him and the tension of living with him.  I'll never know.

Alas, now that I have retrieved all these treasures from the sealed cardboard boxes, I have to decide what to do with all of it.  Hmmm. . . something to think about after the 'double dip.'😖

An American Holiday. Gun violence in America over the Memorial Day Holiday weekend:  175 human beings killed, 496 human beings injured, and 17 mass shootings.  In the City of Milwaukee, 24 human beings were shot, and 3 were killed.  Happy holiday😧