Ghosts of Vietnam

Buddy Newlin awoke with a start. Was that a faint rustling in the dark? Was there something moving in the dead of the night? Maybe some premonition of danger pricked him awake -- Newlin will never know. \n What he does know is that something saved his life that night.\nIt was December of 1967: the year the Vietnam War lurched into stalemate. Newlin, 21, lay hidden in chest-high grass at the edge of a rubber plantation. Today, Newlin, 53, is an IU alumnus and a professional investigator. \nHis trim brown hair fades into gray at the edges. Crows' feet splay across the corners of his eyes. A slight drawl colors his words. Wrinkles ring the base of his neck. His motions are quick and energetic. Newlin is outgoing and friendly -- the kind of guy who makes an impression, said his sister, Debby Goodrich. \nBut deep inside, there is a place where Vietnam still haunts him. A place so deep only bits and pieces ever dribbled out to his family. A place so raw that touching it after more than 30 years sometimes still brings pained gazes and choked-back tears.\nThat muggy night, in only his second month in Vietnam, Newlin awoke minutes from death.\nHe had been manning a listening post with two buddies. The guy whose turn it was to stay awake had fallen asleep at the watch. \nA movement out of the corner of his right eye caught his attention. A dark silhouette glided out of the line of rubber trees 20 yards away. Then another. And another. And another...\nThe black figures were clearly outlined in the gray haze of the moon-shrouded night. They weren't Americans, a sinking feeling told Newlin. They moved too smoothly, too quietly.\nHis heart chilled.\nThese were the dreaded Viet Cong guerrillas -- who killed as silently as they moved. Three soldiers in Charlie Company had fallen asleep during the day. All three were found with their throats slit. \nHow many were out there? Newlin couldn't tell. But he knew two things: His three-man squad was badly outnumbered and the Viet Cong were headed right for his position. Newlin could only watch, paralyzed by fear.\nMaybe it was the terrain that did it. Maybe they changed their minds. Or maybe it was just plain luck. Whatever it was, a second miracle happened that night. When they were no more than 10 feet away, the Viet Cong veered slowly to the side. \nTheir new course would not bring them directly onto Newlin's position, but they were still very close. Newlin could see the top of their heads bobbing above the grass as they glided by. \nHeart pounding, Newlin quietly awoke his buddies. He did not dare to radio his company dug in 100 yards behind him. The sound of his voice might draw the Viet Cong's attention. A few clicks of the handset communicated his discovery of the Viet Cong. \nA guerrilla rustled through the grass no more than 15 feet away. Suddenly, the sky flared white, and gunfire exploded from the direction of Newlin's company. Someone else had spotted the Viet Cong and fired off a flare.\nInstinctively, the Viet Cong dropped to ground. Their AK-47s blazed fire in retort. They were so close Newlin could hear the thump of their weapons hitting the ground. \nNewlin's squad added the rattle of their M-16s to the fury of battle. Seconds passed, minutes trickled by -- it might have been hours. It didn't matter. To Newlin, it seemed like an eternity.\nWhen it was over, Newlin trembled. He had come so close to becoming another body bag.\nNewlin wasn't even supposed to be in Vietnam. \nIn the spring of 1967, he was taking nine credit hours at IU. His dad had been laid off, so he worked the night shift at the local RCA assembly lines to supplement their income.\nDuring the Vietnam War, college students were only exempted from the draft if they maintained at least 12 credit hours. But a family friend who worked at the local draft office assured Newlin that there wouldn't be any problems.\nIn late April, his draft letter came in the mail. \nIt was ironic to Newlin, because he recalled seeing news of Vietnam on television and thinking: "That's terrible! I'm glad I'm never gonna be there."\nAfter four months of military training, Newlin stepped off a chartered TWA flight Nov. 9 at Saigon. Twelve days later, he saw his first dead enemy guerrilla. \nMoving out for a body count the morning after a Viet Cong night attack, he saw a sight that still haunts him today. A boy, no more than 15, lay dead on the ground. A bullet hole gaped from the side of his head. \n"There he was, I mean he was just..." Newlin paused, and his voice lowered as he struggled a little with the memory: "...just like he was asleep."\n"I'm looking at this kid, and my God, what a waste," he said, as something dark and heavy weighed down his voice. "He didn't even get to live his life."\nNewlin couldn't help noticing how young and innocent that boy looked. Good-looking, even. \n"What are his parents going to do when they find out?" he wondered. "He's just a kid."\nNewlin will never be able to banish that terrible image from his head. \n"I've never dreamt about him, but I can close my eyes right now and picture him," Newlin said, as his anguished eyes gazed into the distance, staring at a ghost from the past only he can see.\nFourteen months in Vietnam left Newlin with an intense anti-war legacy. But he was still unprepared for the anti-war demonstrations that wracked the country when he returned in 1969. At IU, anti-war sentiment reigned strong. \nNewlin never experienced any direct antagonism. Maybe it was because he rarely revealed he was a veteran. But his veteran friends endured shouts of "Baby killer! Murderer! Drug addict!" shot their way by IU students. Newlin was deeply disturbed.\n"I saw what they were saying," he said. "I just didn't care for the way they went about it sometimes."\nOnce, he walked across Dunn Meadow during an anti-war protest. A student carrying a North Vietnamese flag marched right in front of him. Newlin's voice swelled with outrage as he recounted the encounter. He viewed that act as a betrayal of all the U.S. soldiers who fought and died in Vietnam. But he just walked on and never said a word. To this day, he regrets not telling that student how that made him feel. \nRon Jolly, a fellow veteran and a long-time friend of Newlin, said he understands the predicament Newlin faced.\n"The fact that you lived in a college town had a big impact on the way you were treated," Jolly explained. "At that time, you grudgingly accepted the fact that you couldn't do anything about it."\nBut while Newlin was bothered by the way some students conducted anti-war demonstrations, he couldn't help but agree with their message -- that the war was wrong. \nHe watched amusedly from across the road as anti-war demonstrators took over Bryan Hall in protest. That night, Newlin's father, Rex, was outraged when he watched the coverage on television. Rex launched into a tirade, saying Newlin shouldn't go to college with such people. Newlin retorted that he agreed with the demonstrators. Rex was stunned. \n"You should have seen the look on his face when I said that," Newlin said, grinning. \nHow could Newlin agree with the war? \nNewlin had seen scores of comrades wounded. He had seen an entire unit wiped out, save the last man. To the politicians and generals, the troops were little play pieces to be moved on a map. To Newlin, these were comrades with whom he ate, fought, lived and died. The price paid in blood just seemed too heavy for Newlin to justify.\n"Here's people killing each other for why? Because our governments disagree on something?" he asked, his face a mask of anguish.\n"I've got a 10-year-old son. He'll never go to war. I'll guarantee that," he said. "When he's asleep, I'll go in with a hammer and bust his kneecap. I swear to God, I'll never let my son go to war. I don't care how good a cause it is." \nNewlin's strong emotions arise from the pain that Vietnam inflicted on him. Nothing affected him like the death of his closest friend in Vietnam -- Lt. Bob Lula. \nNewlin's platoon was out on a patrol when it stumbled unwittingly into a Viet Cong base camp. Popping out of underground tunnels, the Viet Cong opened fire. Half of Lula's face was blown off. \n"I was devastated," Newlin said. But he carried on, numbed by denial. Three days later, Lula's death finally hit him. Newlin sat down for half an hour and cried. \n"I missed him ... and still do," he said. \nHe never forgot the caring and intelligent Lula. Almost 20 years later, in 1987, the Moving Wall, the half-size replica of the Vietnam Memorial Monument, came to Memorial Stadium. Newlin sat next to his friend's place on the wall and wept.\nBut Newlin never hated the Viet Cong. \n"Tremendous soldiers. For what they had to work with, unbelievable!" he said. "I have the utmost respect for them, as soldiers."\nHe saw them as only trying to defend their country against American soldiers like him. The most caustic criticism Newlin reserves for his own government. He blames them for wasting American and Vietnamese lives in a needless war. He blames them for mistreating soldiers and veterans. He blames them for allowing the draft-dodgers who fled to Canada to return home.\n"I'm not ashamed I went. My country called me, and I went. I'm proud of it, but it was such a waste," he said, as his voice grew tender. "It took a year out of my life ... And in some ways, it scarred me for life, too."\nHis sister Debby recalled that after Vietnam, he told her never to touch him while he was sleeping. Not even to wake him up. Debby learned to talk him awake.\nBut Vietnam was not all negative. Vietnam taught Newlin maturity. Vietnam taught him how fragile life is. He grew closer to his family.\n"I live every day like it's my last," he said.\nNewlin considers himself lucky compared to some of his fellow veterans from the local Vietnam Era Veterans' Association. Some wounded veterans never received the benefits promised by the federal government; some suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder -- locked into a nightmarish past they cannot escape. \n"Some of these guys are living the war 30, 35 years ago," he said. "They're fighting the war every day."\nNewlin constantly gives his fellow veterans support. In a way, by helping others overcome their Vietnams, he is also trying to overcome his own. \n"I don't think it's something he'll ever get over," said Becky Stailey, Newlin's ex-wife.\nNewlin is still haunted by the indelible memory of a dead 15-year-old Vietnamese kid with a hole in his head. \n"I still go back to that kid," Newlin said. "I'll carry it to my grave. It just tore me apart"