In 1970, author Richard Bach, a Navy aviation veteran, published “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” a story of a seagull who flew for the love of flying rather than catching food. The book was wildly popular and eventually sold more copies in print than “Gone with the Wind.” One quote from Jonathan during one of his flights was about love and separation. Jonathan asked the question of himself, “Can miles truly separate you from friends and someone you love… If you want to be with someone you love, aren’t you already there?”
The emotions of this book and the seagull were with millions of men and women in Vietnam as they sat to pen letters to friends and those they loved, never knowing whether the letters would make it to the other side of the world. These letters often masked the real situation in order to spare those at home anguish about the safety of the writers.
It was at one of these times that I sat to write my then fiancée, Rosemary, as I approached my 24th birthday:
“May 15, 1970
Dear Rosemary,
I’m writing this in a mud hole, so I am sure that if this gets to you it will be stained, and the ink may have run. I will probably have to decipher some of these letters if you have saved any of them. I’m sure that some you have received show water damage because the choppers come in a hurry during tremendous downpours, and the mailbags have to be carried to them and loaded quickly so that they can get out quickly. They can’t risk being on the ground too long in some of the places we have been in the last month.
We were all called together for a company meeting the other day. It was the first time in quite a while that all squads and all platoons were in the same place. It was good to see some of the guys again. Often, we are just passing by each other on a helipad or on the side of a hill as one group is coming or going. We haven’t had the entire company together as a unit for a long time.
I just realized this morning that it will only be a few months before we are Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. I think I’ll have you make breakfast in bed for me for a few months. I have completely forgotten what the feel and smell of a clean sheet is like.
I have to go. Remember that I love you.
Lee”
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In Sept. 1969, General Wright of the 101st Airborne Division launched “Operation Lifesaver.” It was designed to group 10 infantrymen, 10 engineers and three pathfinders (motto: First In, Last Out) on single missions to scout potential helicopter landing zones in the 101st’s area of operation. Since these potential landing zones could not be reached by conventional landings, double-bladed, CH-47 Chinook helicopters hovered over potential sites while the approximately two dozen men had to descend on rope ladders.
On May 9, 1970, my squad was assigned a Life Saver mission. At the last minute, my squad was pulled to another area, and a sister substitute squad took our place. An enemy machine gun emplacement was waiting on the hillside selected by the aircraft commander for insertion. My friend, Michael Ussery, was killed on that mission, and another good friend took rounds through his feet, legs, and chin and survived.
The company meeting I mentioned in the above letter to Rosemary was actually a traditional Army memorial ceremony for Michael. For a brief moment, approximately one hundred and twenty of us stood at attention as we saluted an M-16 rifle bayoneted into the ground with a steel pot resting on the butt of the weapon and a pair of jungle boots supporting the weapon on the ground. We were shown no mercy by the enemy in our grief because we received mortar rounds, almost directly at us, halfway through the ceremony.
I never had the chance to thank either of these men involved in this mission. They were whisked away in the endless stream of killed and wounded in the war, leaving the rest of us to deal with the emotions that, for many, still simmer over fifty years later. If you haven’t stopped to thank someone like them, my hope is that Jonathan Livingston Seagull has done it, many times, for you.
Lee Fisher is a Miami University graduate, a current in-class student at Miami and an Oxford resident. This letter and hundreds of others like it are in Miami’s Special Collections as the Lee and Rosemary Fisher Vietnam Collection in King Library.
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