7 minute read
A Vietnam Veteran: Binging it Back Home ~ Bill McGee
HC: So what would be your ideal role? RL: I would love to play Daddy Warbucks in Annie. I would just love to do that.
HC: What’s the ideal role of a good funeral director? If he or she is doing the job well? RL: It’s so important that families know the final wishes of their loved ones, of each other. I emphasize all the time that if people will simply bite the bullet, come in and see us, they will save so much stress and conflict and even financial strain later on.
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HC: We’re here surrounded by merchandise, from casket types to memory books to urns. Do you ever feel conflicted by the business side of the business? RL: I never do, especially if we have made prearrangements with the family and they’re doing exactly what they’ve planned to do. So often a family, stunned by shock and grief, comes in fighting with each other, and actually spends more money than they might need to. HC: Are people still opting more for cremations than ever before?
RL: It’s pretty balanced. And we encourage everyone to do anything they might wish, have a picnic, scatter ashes, whatever. It’s just crucial that they have final wishes in mind, and keep some kind of tradition in place with their families and their futures. I just value traditions and what people have done, sometimes for centuries. If we don’t have ceremonies, the traditions can be lost. We need to embrace our history and our traditions and the way we deal with death and dying is part of that. Understanding what our families have done in the past and embracing it is part of continuity and community. HC: Speaking of continuity, what happens here, after The Wall That Heals? RL: We’re opening an entire new section of the park — we’ve finally outgrown our original plot from the 1920s and had been planning this expansion for years — and we’re going to have a special section devoted to veterans and their families.
By Hal Calbom
Adecorated Viet Nam veteran, Bill McGee was born and raised in Kelso and lives there still. In a few days he’ll visit The Wall That Heals, bringing with him profoundly mixed feelings.
“Believe it or not, the worst thing that happened to me in the Vietnam saga was not getting blown up,” he told me in a conversation a few weeks ago. “It was coming back home to all the hatred that was thrown at us. There was so much misinformation, exaggeration.
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Schedule of Events September 21-26
Tues, Sept. 21, 2pm Motorcycle Procession into the City Wed, Sept. 22, morning Assembling The Wall That Heals Wed, Sept. 22, 6pm Volunteer training Thurs, Sept. 23, 9am The Wall That Heals opens (24 hours) Thurs., Sept. 23, 6pm Welcome Ceremonies Fri, Sept. 24 Open 24 hours Sat, Sept. 25 Open 24 hours Sun, Sept. 26, 1pm Closing Ceremonies Sun, Sept. 25, 2pm Dismantle
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“For instance, after My Lai,” McGee continued, “which was horrible, we were all painted with the same broad brush. The people I was with there were just regular guys, middle America, trying to do the best job they could and serve their country and survive. That was it.” Bill McGee went to Viet Nam in 1968 and eventually ended up driver of an Armored Personnel Carrier, known as an APC. After setting up a defensive position near an abandoned Special Forces camp, McGee’s mechanized company was ambushed “We were in battle, for sure, taking heavy fire at the time,” he said.’”The 50 Caliber was up to my right, and the gunner was hard at it. We’d been in contact for maybe 20 minutes, and the barrel was starting to overheat. You tried to fire that thing in bursts, to keep it cool, but it still tended to heat up.” McGee scrambled out of his driver’s seat to retrieve a spare barrel and help change it out. Jumping over the side, he landed on a mine which blew off his right foot and badly fractured his left leg. His Platoon Sergeant, John Thompson, helped the medics stem blood loss and covered McGee with his own body — he had a flak jacket and Bill didn’t — until the Medevac arrived. “He’s a great leader,” McGee recalls today. “It was his courage and his quick thinking that day that probably saved my life.” McGee came back from Viet Nam with three Purple Hearts and a reluctance to share his story. He had spent eleven months in the hospital, and was twenty years old. “I pretty much avoided all that stuff, he said. “I just walked away. I didn’t want to…I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t want to deal with people coming at me.” Finally, years later he was invited by a great-niece to a gathering in honor of veterans. “This celebration thing. And I figured I didn’t want to go. I told my wife. I do not want to do this. But how do you say no to your own niece? And so I went and I figured that we’d be out in minutes. Shoot…”
Photos: Bill McGee on the APC, late 1968; Bill McGee today; reviewing photos with friend and photo archivist Lloyd Smith.
Bill McGee’s Vietnam photos, curated by Lloyd Smith, are available to view at
http://bit.ly/McGeeVN.
We pause while Bill fights back emotion. “An hour later, at the end of the presentation, they had a video screen up and different kids were coming on to say thank you — to a brother or a father who whoever had been in the service.” He pauses again and collects himself. “And then she popped up. She said thank you Uncle Bill for your service and your sacrifice. And that hit me like a ton of bricks. Because it was completely the opposite of the way we were treated when we came home.” McGee’s story has two other significant turns. The first was meeting Lloyd Smith, a friend with an interest in photography who convinced McGee to share his story and a remarkable trove of unseen photographs. Smith and McGee made them available online and sent the story to the Vietnam Veterans of America who publicized it in their magazine. Some months later Bill McGee got a phone call from a particularly interested reader of that magazine. To his astonishment, it was his heroic Platoon Sergeant, John Thompson, who he had not seen since January 17th, 1969, when he covered Bill’s body for protection, shot him full of morphine, and carried him to the helicopter for evacuation. Later, Thompson wrote Bill’s folks commending his bravery and good attitude, hoping to ease their pain, too. Today, Bill McGee says he’ll encourage people to see and experience The Wall That Heals on its visit to Longview. “Maybe just to honor those who have served,” he said, “those who tried to defend our freedom, the best way they knew how.” He’ll honor especially the platoon sergeant who was awarded a Bronze Star for the action and most certainly saved his life. In their phone conversation, Sgt. Thompson told McGee that more than his two combat decorations, he’s proudest that in two tours of duty, and four platoons, every one of his men — even the wounded, like Bill McGee himself — survived and came home.
Hal Calbom, now in his fourth year producing CRR’s People+Place feature series, is also editor of The Tidewater Reach and Dispatches from the Discovery Trail, published by CRRPress, and author of Resourceful: Leadership and Communication in a Relationship Age. Hal grew up in Longview, now lives in Seattle, and may be reached at hal@halcalbom.com.
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