Gary Linderer - The Eyes of the Eagle: F Company LRPs in Vietnam, 1968

It was early in the afternoon on the fifth of June, 1986. Just eighteen years ago to the day, I had departed Travis Air Force Base outside San Francisco to begin a one-year tour of duty in the Republic of Vietnam. I had been fortunate enough to be able to serve my year with one of the finest outfits in the U.S. Army, F Company, 58th Infantry (LRP), attached to the famous 101st Airborne Division. Halfway through my tour, the company was disbanded and reformed under the designation, L Company, 75th Infantry (Ranger). But it was the same people, performing the same missions, in the same manner. Nothing had changed but the unit designation. I was extremely proud to have served with both companies.

Now I found myself southbound on Interstate 24, just a few miles north of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. In less than an hour I would be rejoining a group of men with whom I had shared that incredible year.

The first reunion of the LRPs who had served with F Company and its predecessor, the 1st Brigade LRRPs (Provisional) and the Rangers who had later filled the ranks of Company L, was going to take place at the Holiday Inn #1 across the state line in Clarksville, Tennessee. The LRPs and Rangers of the 101st Airborne Division were gathering again. It had been too long.

Eighteen months before, I had received an unexpected phone call from John Looney. The two of us had gone through Airborne Advanced Infantry Training and Jump School together back in the spring of 68. It hadnt come as a surprise when we met again at the 90th Replacement Center in Long Binh, Republic of Vietnam. We received orders for the 101st and went through the divisions combat orientation program together. As fate would have it, we both volunteered for the LRPs at the same formation. Two weeks after our return from combat, John showed up at my wedding along with two other LRPs.

We had communicated a couple of times over the years, you know, the friendly phone call once every few years just to stay in touch.

Now it was John who had phoned me with what he said was some wonderful news. Don Lynch, one of the headquarters personnel from F Company back in 68, was attempting to locate all of the guys for a reunion. Billy Nix, who had served with L Company in 70 and was now working for the VA in Atlanta, was helping. The LRPs and Rangers were gathering.

I was fascinated. My tour with the LRPs and later with the Rangers had left me proud but with a lot of mixed feelings and emotions. I had spent seventeen rough years trying to sort them out. The missing element seemed to be the loss of my comrades-in-arms. How could one spend a year living and fighting alongside men who would die for each other, and then suddenly return to a complacent, mundane life-style that offered only underachievement and shallow friendships? It had been tough. I missed my buddies much more than I had ever realized. Yet, for the same silly-assed reasons that none of them had tried to reaffirm those friendships, I, too, had avoided reestablishing any type of contact, other than an occasional phone call or a belated Christmas card. I guess none of us wanted to reopen the wounds left by our service in Vietnam. We were just too stupid back then to realize that the healing process could never begin until those old friendships were rekindled.

John gave me Don Lynchs number in Minneapolis and told me to give him a call. It took me two whole days of picking up the phone and putting it down again before I could summon the courage to dial the number. All those years. I had made up my mind that Vietnam would not haunt me. I had talked about the war to those who would listen, and hid it from those who seemed disinterested. I had heard too many stories of the Nam vets who wouldnt talk about it with anyone. Everyone thought that they must have been hiding something that they were ashamed of. By God, they werent going to say that about me! I wasnt ashamed of my tour or what I had done. For seventeen years, I fooled myself into believing that I had beaten the system.

The occasional nightmare that jarred me awake, shaking and in a cold sweat, I wrote off as short-term stress reaction. I convinced my wife that it was nothing, just bad dreams.

Fourteen years later, I knew that it wasnt so short-term after all. I finally had to share it with her, and she helped me overcome it. But I knew that the healing wasnt yet complete.

When I finally called Don, he treated me like a long-lost brother. He gave me the telephone numbers and addresses of several of my teammates and good friends from the company. I spent the rest of the day calling them. The healing had begun.

I was sitting at my desk in the basement of my home, going over copies of old orders that I somehow had kept over the years. I was looking for names and serial numbers to give to Don so he could track down the missing LRPs and Rangers. Suddenly, my phone rang. A voice on the other end said, Gary, do you know who this is? The voice sounded familiar, but I couldnt quite place it. I made a couple of wild guesses before giving up. The voice said, Its Frank, Gary. Frank Souza. I didnt believe it. Frank was dead. I had seen him die. I saw him lying there, hit in the chest and neck. I had looked into the huge hole in his back, past the shattered ribs at his shredded lung. I had been soaked in his blood trying to stop the bleeding that I knew couldnt be stopped. No, whoever was on the other end of that line was not Frank Souza!