Mark Fleming and Maggie O'Conner Reardon

[00:04] MARK FLEMING: My name is Mark Fleming. I'm 73 years old, and today is Friday, September 17, 2021, and I'm in Olympia, Washington. And my partner's name is Maggie. Maggie. And she is my life partner.

[00:23] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And I am Mega. Excuse me. And I am Maggie O'Connor Reardon, and I'm almost 60, of which I will not say which side of 60 that is. Today is Friday, September 17, 2021. We are in Olympia, Washington. I'm interviewing Mark Fleming, and I'm his life partner. Oh, we can begin now. Okay. So. So, actually, we were briefly talking about. Do you want us to explain? To open with the. Explain. I'm screwing this up the grand wazoo. I have so screwed this up.

[01:28] MARK FLEMING: Sure. My name is Mark Fleming. I'm 73 years old. Today is Friday, September 17, 2021. I am in Olympia, Washington. I'm here with my partner, Maggie.

[01:50] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And I am Maggie O'Connor Reardon, and I'm almost 60, which I will not say which side of that I am. And today is Friday the September 17, 2021. I'm in Olympia, Washington. My partner's name is Mark Fleming, and we are life partners.

[02:17] MARK FLEMING: And I served in the US army from June of 1970 to January of 1972, and that included our service in Vietnam from December 1970 to January of 1972.

[02:31] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: So I had wanted to talk to you as a veteran anyway, but also, I'm thinking you might have some insights that have bearing on the United States departure from Afghanistan. And I wanted to see what you thought. Like, how is that similar to our departure from Vietnam? Because it seems like it's been pretty stunning.

[02:59] MARK FLEMING: Yeah. Having watched both of them, they are very similar in the. If the nature of events, crowds of people trying to get out, planes flying out. So there was all of that. They're also similar in that both are what I would call wars of choice that we didn't need to make because we promised something that we couldn't deliver. We acted on information that we really didn't fully understand. We went into a situation that we didn't know, and we made it up as we went along. I mean, it was, these stories were told about progress when, in fact, there wasn't. So you see all the. All these. The misinformation and the lies that occurred over a period of time that led to the cataclysm that you saw in Afghanistan or in Saigon in 1975. So they're very similar in that regard. A lot of the details are different, but the overall sense of it, to me, feels very much the same.

[04:01] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Hmm. Well, I had also wanted to go back a little bit, even further, to have you relay some other really interesting information about your life, which is. I mean, so tell us about growing up in a Lustron metal house, full.

[04:31] MARK FLEMING: On metal, a full metal jacket, so to speak.

[04:35] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: I don't know. It's a full metal house.

[04:36] MARK FLEMING: Yes. I grew up in Danville, Virginia, and the house I lived in was, as Maggie said, it was all metal. This was. These were houses that were built right after World War Two because this entrepreneur said there would be a great demand for housing. He came up with an idea for producing them in factories so that they could be built, constructed there and then assembled and on site. So they went up fast. They had a lot of features that made it very good for families. Couples that were just starting out had some built in furniture features. So many they didn't have to buy things like vanities. So it was really interesting in that regard. And it had, as I say, it was very unusual in that you didn't have to paint it. All you had to do occasionally wash the walls, but it was really hard to hang pictures. And during the summer, when it got humid, those stick on hooks didn't hold.

[05:39] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: So it had built in closets but also built in vanities.

[05:44] MARK FLEMING: Yes.

[05:45] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And. Oh, that's right. And then there's the dishwasher washing machine.

[05:51] MARK FLEMING: It had in the. In the kitchen. It had a sink washing machine combination, but you could also remove the tub of the washing machine and put in a dishwasher rack. We never used it, but it was there.

[06:06] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: You didn't use the dishwasher portion?

[06:08] MARK FLEMING: I'm not aware we ever used it.

[06:10] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: But the washing machine.

[06:11] MARK FLEMING: Used the washing machine. That's so. It was very. It was very clever, and the entrepreneur had the right idea, but people didn't like it. They thought they were kind of seen as trailers, almost. Plus, the company failed. They were predicting to build anywhere from 30 to 45, 45,000 houses. They ended up building just under 3000. So these things are collectors items now.

[06:42] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: A whole house.

[06:43] MARK FLEMING: And there's a whole website on Lustron houses.

[06:46] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Yeah. Because it was built on a cement slab and it arrived in a truck and it all went together.

[06:53] MARK FLEMING: Right. It went up in three days and.

[06:56] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And it was like baked on enamel paint inside and out.

[07:00] MARK FLEMING: Right.

[07:00] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Wow. Yeah. Okay. I just thought that was an interesting tidbit. So after you grew up in that house, when did you first start thinking that the Vietnam draft could affect you?

[07:24] MARK FLEMING: In about 1965.

[07:26] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: How old were you?

[07:28] MARK FLEMING: I was turning 18. That was the year that the first combat troops went so suddenly. It was a big deal. My senior year of high school meant that I was going to be one. A. When I graduated from high school and the war was ramping up, so it was there. From then on, I went to college. So I had a student deferment, just like Dick Cheney. So I managed to put it off for a number of years, but that ran out, and the war was still going on. But all throughout last year of high school, all four years of college, I faced a dilemma. What do I do about the draft? And mostly I tried not to think about it.

[08:14] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: So you went to college, four year college before going over to Vietnam?

[08:21] MARK FLEMING: Correct.

[08:25] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And then when you came back, you used the GI Bill to get a master's degree.

[08:29] MARK FLEMING: Yes.

[08:30] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: In public administration.

[08:31] MARK FLEMING: I did.

[08:32] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Okay. So did you consider any options, like additional referrals, deferrals, joining before being drafted because you had this college education, going to Canada?

[08:50] MARK FLEMING: I considered a lot of them. I mean, but by and large, it really came down to, you know, I was going to have to deal with military. So it was going to Canada. I didn't want to give up my country. I didn't want to leave my family, didn't really want to go to jail. So by the time I got to my senior year in college, I was looking at, okay, I will have to deal with military service. And I had a draft number that wasn't in the low range that said, I will be drafted, but it was in the middle range that said, it's pretty likely that you would be drafted. And in fact, they went well beyond my number of that year. So I would have been drafted. What I ended up doing, rather than just sitting around waiting to be drafted because no one would hire me. I was one. A. So the idea, I said, well, I'm just going to join for two years. You could volunteer for two years, and you would go in the same status as a draftee, which meant you would end up wherever the army would put a. So I wasn't guaranteed any kind of occupation. I was taking a chance thinking that I'm a college graduate. I figure I can probably end up in some kind of relatively safe position.

[10:11] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And where did you end up?

[10:12] MARK FLEMING: In the infantry. Not safe. Yeah, anything but safe.

[10:16] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Anything but safe. Now, actually, you know, someone who chose to go to Canada was a high school classmate.

[10:28] MARK FLEMING: Yes.

[10:28] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And. Which we met at a class reunion, and he seems quite okay and did okay. But you had a. Is that what spurred a talk with your uncle Si

[10:49] MARK FLEMING: No. Oh, yeah. That's another story. When I, my uncle Si was a world war two veteran, he was a navigator on one of the bombers, flew a number of missions over Europe. And in 1981, I was visiting him and my aunt in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. And at some point, we were talking, and he was saying how he thought Jimmy Carter really did a disservice to veterans, people like me who served. And I point out to him that I thought, I think he may have used. He may have used the term coward. I'm not entirely sure what.

[11:31] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Those who went to Canada.

[11:32] MARK FLEMING: Yeah. That I actually thought they made the most difficult choice, because for me, I mean, going into the military was easy in the sense that it was acceptable. I didn't risk anything. Well, actually, I did, but I didn't risk social disapproval or losing. Going to prison or losing my country. So that was an easy choice. Resisting the draft, going to jail, going to Canada. That brought on a level of disapproval that I was afraid to deal with. So I chose the military. So I told Si and it. I think it struck him rather odd that a veteran would think that. I don't think I changed his mind, but I think it may have at least changed some perspective.

[12:18] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Sure. Yeah. Because that would be a lot to leave your country.

[12:27] MARK FLEMING: Yeah.

[12:28] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And your family for, to get away. You grew up in Virginia, and was it at that time, was it an era of segregation? I mean, legal segregation, or was it Jim Crow segregation?

[12:50] MARK FLEMING: It was Jim Crow segregation.

[12:52] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Oh. Uh huh.

[12:56] MARK FLEMING: Black passengers sat in the back of the bus. They went to separate schools. They had a separate library. They had a separate hospital. So. And, you know, I was just a white kid, and it just all seemed normal to me. That's the way it was.

[13:11] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Now, do you feel you saw a disproportionate number of black draftees in Vietnam?

[13:19] MARK FLEMING: It didn't seem that way to me, and it might have been, but perhaps because by the time I got to Vietnam, it was late in the war, and the disproportionate number of black soldiers, particularly, you know, in the front lines, was. Had been well noted, and it may well have been that they backed off on that. So we had black soldiers in our unit, but it didn't seem like, you know, they certainly weren't a majority, and there was also great resistance among the black soldiers. So if they were there, they were very often not willing to go into combat, and they risked that disapproval and the sanctions the army brought on them.

[14:08] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Yeah. And actually, we'll probably come back to that issue.

[14:19] MARK FLEMING: Okay.

[14:20] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Which is now they think about it kind of interesting how it comes back around. But what did you and what actually do you think? Think about what the Vietnamese themselves called the american war. We call it the Vietnam War. What did you think about it? I think you've touched on most of it. Like, did we go in for one thing? And it just kept snowballing into more and more engagement and staying there somewhat.

[15:02] MARK FLEMING: I mean, the idea was we went in thinking that we were supposedly stopping a communist takeover as opposed to a nationalist revolution. We supported the French for seven years, and when that failed, we took over. We were using advisors. We were building up an army that would stand on its own, that would fight on its own, that would resist this aggression from the north. And one of the things that we never fully understood is there really wasn't a North and South Vietnam. There was one country in Vietnam. You know, the distinction between north and south was a matter of a treaty that ended the french war and was designed and was supposed to be resolved with elections in 1956, which we refused to honor. Oh, my.

[15:55] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Okay.

[15:56] MARK FLEMING: So then we built up the south vietnamese forces on the idea that they would resist this since we didn't honor the elections, you know, the nationalist forces began their, began their resistance again. They began attacking this puppet government, what they called a puppet government. So we then supported them. And when that didn't work, I mean, that went on for that was in the mid fifties, but by the mid sixties, it wasn't working. It looked like that, that the North Vietnamese would, in fact, prevail. That's when we started going in with our actual combat troops. And by that I mean, in essence, we prolonged the war by 20 years. But we never fully understood that. And certainly one of the things I saw when I was there was I was extremely, I guess, impressed or respectful of the Viet Cong and the north vietnamese army. I was never entirely sure who it was that I was supposedly fighting. But, you know, I remember we used to find food caches in the jungle. We're fighting people who hide food under the rocks in the woods, and yet somehow they seem we can't prevail against them. And I also saw that we were fighting them in their homes. You know, we would go through villages and I would see people living in their hooches, the family units. What would it be like to see soldiers walking through my backyard? And that really changed my perspective because I realized that this was definitely. I had a sense even when I went in, this war was not right, wasn't good policy. I think by seeing the people and the effect, I began to realize it was even more than just policy. It was just in there, more war. And here I was in the middle of it.

[18:08] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Yeah. Because you have very mixed, very diametric feelings about that whole time period in your life.

[18:24] MARK FLEMING: Oh, yeah.

[18:25] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And everything. It's like, how, how does one ever resolve that?

[18:29] MARK FLEMING: You don't. You. At least I haven't. I mean, I thought, I always thought I would. And actually I went in thinking, well, I'm just going to get this behind me. And I realized, yeah, I can't. It's not going to ever be behind me. It's always going to be part of me. And literally, I mean, there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it. I mean, it's not, I don't have traumatic flashbacks or that sort of thing. It's not. Doesn't make me unable to function, but it's there. It's always a part of. Part of me. And I used to think it would go away, and I've now come to realize, you know, it's there. It's just kind of like the sun coming up every day. It's just.

[19:17] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Do you think there should be, there's time spent preparing soldiers to gear up and go to war, training of all sorts and whatever. And then when they come back, it's like there you are on the side of the road, you're home. Bye. And there's no, like, decommissioning the psyche and the spirit and the brain.

[19:46] MARK FLEMING: No, there's not. And that's one of the real shortcomings in our military policy. In fact, most traditional societies used to have that. They would have, you know, if the people, if they sent people off to war before they came back into society, they would have some ceremony, some form of detoxification to convert from being a warrior, being a killer to being a normal member of society. And we don't do that. You know, we go into combat situations where it's very intense and you are doing things that are literally immoral because one of the basic rules is thou shalt not kill. And here you are, you're authorized to kill. And even if it's legitimate, even if somebody's attacking you, that's going to weigh on you. So we don't decommission people from that. And we thought we might have learned some of that from Vietnam, but we really didn't. And we certainly saw that coming in more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guys would come home, but they would still be, still be back in Baghdad or back in Kabul and dealing with that.

[21:18] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: So is that something that you fervently wish that we had a different system for returning veterans.

[21:31] MARK FLEMING: It would be nice to have. One of the problems is, in fact, they did have it during the recent wars. They did have a system where, and I've forgotten exactly how it was asked, but some, like, do you have any psychological problems arising from the war? This is a guy coming home after being away for a year. If you check, yes, that means you stay. They're not going to let you go home. So you check no and you go back to life, but the problems are still there.

[22:00] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Wow.

[22:00] MARK FLEMING: And where we end up treating it is after the fact, after they start, they come back. You know, they were outstanding soldier, and they come back and now they're not making formation. They're taking meds to deal with their anxieties. So they miss it. You know, they can't perform duties. So they started getting in trouble, they start acting out, they start drinking, and they end up getting some kind of bad conduct or less than honorable discharge. So now they're not even eligible for benefits, so they can't even get the treatment.

[22:33] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Oh, that's if they. When they come back, they're still in.

[22:37] MARK FLEMING: Yeah.

[22:37] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Okay.

[22:38] MARK FLEMING: Because most people come back, and especially with the military now it's career.

[22:42] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Right.

[22:43] MARK FLEMING: Most of us that went to Vietnam got out of the service when we came back. If you were drafted for two years, you didn't, you ended up, people that I served with, they came back, they reported to their stateside duty station and were told, we're going to, we're going to separate you right now and you get to go home. I extended my tour in Vietnam so that I didn't even have to report to a duty station. When I got back to the States, they just discharged me right there.

[23:22] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Even while you were in Vietnam, I think you've told me that there was drug use there, mainly marijuana and maybe heroin.

[23:42] MARK FLEMING: Those two, those are two that I'm familiar with. I'm pretty. There may well have been other. And also, listen, lots of alcohol. Oh, but that was okay up to a point. And the drug use to say marijuana was extremely prevalent. Heroin was prevalent, and heroin was so pure that you could smoke it, you didn't have to inject it, and people would think, well, I'm not mainlining, I'm just smoking it. Well, it didn't make any difference because you could be totally destroyed that way. And we had any number of people in our unit and other units, they had serious problems.

[24:24] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Now, do you think from your experience over there, which was in the base camps and jungles. And it's not called base camp. What's it called?

[24:37] MARK FLEMING: Well, firebase.

[24:38] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Firebase, jungles.

[24:39] MARK FLEMING: And also second half of my tour, I was a company clerk. So I did finally get that job I was looking for. But after five months in the field and then back in the rear.

[24:49] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Okay, so do you think that the drug use was just because it was like a time to party or was it more just people trying to deal with being there?

[25:03] MARK FLEMING: Probably a lot of the fact you were there and also just time to party because. Why not? Because next day you could be dead.

[25:15] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Well, that's kind of like dealing with being there, though. I don't know. I don't mean. I didn't mean that kind of party. Like, that's pretty grim. Yeah, I don't think that's a party.

[25:27] MARK FLEMING: Yeah, but I mean, I know. Coming. You know, in my unit, I was in a platoon that was noted for smoking marijuana and we would come back and on the firebase we would. We would party and it was just kind of a release. And the amazing thing is we got away with it. I mean, a fire base isn't really that big of a place. So clearly the command would have known what was going on, but they seemed to let it go. Same thing back in the rear. I mean, it was everywhere. We even had a war on drugs. In fact, the original war on drugs started in Vietnam in 1971, yet none of us ever got busted.

[26:16] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Well, I think you've said they would have had to bust the entire army.

[26:19] MARK FLEMING: Yeah. The joke was, if they busted everybody that smoked marijuana, there'd be nobody left but the officers, and maybe some of them would be gone as well.

[26:32] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: So you also said you were lucky in that you weren't involved in any real, like, you didn't have to shoot anybody.

[26:51] MARK FLEMING: Yeah. Oh, I was extremely lucky. I mean, I spent five months in the field with an infantry unit. Never fired my. Well, I fired my rifle once, but that was just because everybody else was. And I. Maybe there was a target out there, but nothing else happened. In fact, for years I kept telling myself nothing. Nothing happened in Vietnam, but in fact, something did, because every day I was out on the field, something could have happened. And it's not like there wasn't anything going on. Every unit, my battalion had five infantry companies and every other company suffered serious casualties in ambushes. In some cases. I forgot. I know Bravo company lost, I think, six guys in one ambush. Delta company lost maybe three. So you have three, four, maybe up to six people getting killed in an ambush. And my company never had that happen. They got ambushed. But we never had anybody killed. But nobody was killed in action from my company the whole year I was there.

[28:00] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: So you've mentioned before that for a long time, any kind of stressors from being in Vietnam, you found you tried to not pay it too much heed because, quote, nothing happened. But every moment of every day and night, I can't imagine the anxiety and the panic and the stress because at any moment you could be under fire, you could be shot, you could be blown up. Just because nothing ever happened at the end doesn't relieve all of that. That went on for your entire time period there.

[28:49] MARK FLEMING: Yeah. And the odd thing about that is I don't really remember it being stressful at the time. I mean, it must have been, but it's almost like we could abstract it, you know, that was just. That's just the environment you're in. So don't worry about it and go on, get on with your life. But I'm not sure that's quite it either.

[29:10] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Well, maybe it's also because when you're in the thick of it, when you're there, you just. You're actually too tense to realize that you're upset or tense.

[29:23] MARK FLEMING: Yeah. Yeah. And again, that could be just over the years, just things memories have forgotten, but, I mean, I should have been terrified and I don't remember. I can remember one night when I was terrified, but that's the only time I was truly terrified. The rest of the time, you know, just. Okay, well, something could happen, but that's just life in the infantry.

[29:49] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: So that's the same. That applies to even veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if you weren't injured, even if you weren't in the middle of a firefight you had, even if a buddy next to you or a good friend didn't die, you still. That prospect was so. Such a weight, such a horrible weight.

[30:19] MARK FLEMING: Yeah. It really depends on, I guess, what your situation was. Both Vietnam or Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, there are some places that you could have been stationed in any of those cases that you were so removed from the war, it was. You really weren't involved. But for most cases in my case, I was never away from it when I was in the rear. But it wasn't. I wasn't really expecting anything to happen there. It could have happened, but, you know, we had glass walls everywhere. But, you know, on the firebase. Yeah, you're exposed. There's not a whole lot between you and the jungle on a firebase just being maybe a three foot high dirt berm and a bunch of concertina wireless.

[31:19] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Okay, one of the first things. One of the first. One of the first things you did, let me back up. When you got back, you then were able to use your GI Bill and got a master's in public administration, and you've retired from a career as an auditor. And finally, I think one of the first things you did after retiring was to fulfill a long time desire to through hike the appalachian trail.

[32:01] MARK FLEMING: Yes.

[32:04] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And that also brought up Vietnam for you and gave you time for reflection or brought it up for you. And you've already mentioned how it never really gets off your mind, but it was something that, it was just a lot of walking. Lots and months and months of walking.

[32:30] MARK FLEMING: And that's why, I mean, it really came back to me when I was on the trail. I mean, I never really gone away, but when I, when I was getting a master's degree, starting my career early, relationship and marriage, all of that, life was going on. I could just kind of put it aside and just not really deal with it. When I went on the appalachian trail and started walking, I'm in the woods, I'm carrying a pack, and it reminded me a lot of it. I'd gone hiking almost immediately after I came back from Vietnam because I learned I can, I can walk with a pack. I learned that. And every time I went in the woods, I always remember, you know, it's kind of like being back in Vietnam, but nobody's shooting at me, so that's good. But when I got on the appalachian trail, as you said, I would be on the trail hours at a time during the day, mostly by myself. Things and things would be passing through my head. And Vietnam came back, and it didn't help. The first part of the trail goes right past a training area for an army ranger base. I didn't see any of the rangers, but people told me about them. And when I went back to do a makeup hike, I covered some of the same ground. And I did hear small arms fire. I did hear helicopters during my first hike. You know, it was just there. And it kept. It was always something I would be thinking about. Kept wondering, how was it I served in a war that I didn't believe in? How is it that I was willing to kill and for something I didn't believe in? And that really bought. I mean, it still bothers me, and I don't know that I can ever resolve that, but it got more and more and seemed to get more and more intense as I got farther north. And got into Virginia, which is. And hiking some of the places I'd been in the months before I went into. Went into the service. This is where it brought me back to the time when I was thinking about those choices. How was it that I made that choice? Why did I make that choice? And I finally came. Came to realize that I made the best choice I could. I read that there's a line that road to hell was paid to with good intentions. I have read the vietnamese american writer, Nguyen. No, Vietnam, who said, the road to hell is paved with excuses. And I made a lot of excuses.

[35:07] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: We don't have much time left. So do you think that that reflection and time on the at helped you? In fact, it was impactful enough you wrote a book about it. And would that be good for today's vets? And to the point, do you wish you had actually done something like that soon after returning from war rather than waiting a lifetime?

[35:34] MARK FLEMING: Yeah, I mean, that probably would have helped. And actually, currently there are a lot of programs that do take veterans into the wilderness for that purpose. So that. And we talked about trying to detox from the war. This is more of a volunteer program, but that's one way veterans are making peace with their service.

[35:58] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And you became a volunteer, unpaid, accredited agent to help veterans get their benefits. And you're smart anyway, but I'm sure that your master's in public administration helps. And you have that because of the GI Bill. You have the GI Bill because you're in Vietnam.

[36:26] MARK FLEMING: There is that. And that's also one of the things that I can do, I guess I'm not sure if it's atonement for my service or it's just something I can do to help other veterans because I am good at policy, you know, procedure, filling out forms, understanding systems. So I did. I am accredited as a VA claims agent. I've represented veterans now for ten years and kind of drawing down back on that now, but I've been able to help veterans get. Get compensation, get health care, sometimes years after the fact.

[37:04] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Yeah.

[37:05] MARK FLEMING: And there are any number of people doing that.

[37:07] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And one of them I want to mention not by name, but back to the contribution or whatever of black America in the Vietnam war is you're still years. And this, unfortunately, the veteran has died and his widow is. You're still helping her get what was due him. And he was subjected to terrible events because he was black in the army. And it's still trying to be resolved to this day. And you also joined veterans for peace. And I think you were also joined Vietnam veterans against the war, right? And so now when people say, thank you for your service, your answer is.

[38:01] MARK FLEMING: Well, sometimes I just don't say anything at all. Sometimes I say, well, my real service is now speaking out against war and helping veterans.

[38:11] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Thank you for coming.

[38:15] MARK FLEMING: Yes, that helps a whole lot.

[38:17] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: Yeah. I'm glad you talked and that they recorded this. Thank you.

[38:27] MARK FLEMING: So, are we all done?

[38:29] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: I think so.

[38:30] MARK FLEMING: Okay.

[38:34] MAGGIE O'CONNOR REARDON: And he's going to read a poem.

[38:36] MARK FLEMING: Yes. Although no one. We had no one killed in action. We did have people killed in accidents. And this is one that I witnessed. I call it comrade. I never really knew him, but he has been my companion for many years. Someone said he was a jerk. I can't say. All I know is that our brief time together left a lasting impression. You see, I saw him die. His death was not dramatic or heroic, just dumb. An accident in a war filled with many accidents. The difference was that I saw it happen. I saw him die. He fell out of a helicopter. That was his ticket to safety. A medical evacuation for a minor cut, hardly even a wound. A convenient excuse to get out of the jungle. But nobody expected him to die. We watched him rising toward the chopper, envying his good fortune, each of us wishing that we were ascending in his place. The chopper's big rotor slapped the air as it hovered above the mountainside, its turbines screaming, waiting to carry him back to safety. I saw the medic leaning out of the door. I saw the medic reach out to pull him in. I saw him put his feet on the skids. And I saw him fall away from the chopper. He fell abruptly, violently. No slow mo effect. No eternity to reach the ground. Just a rapid, free fall and a bone crunching thud. Mere seconds ended his life at 19. His buddies wrapped them in a poncho and hooked him to the cable again. This time he made it, boots pointing upward as they disappeared into the open door. But this time was too late. The chopper carried away a corpse, leaving us to our thoughts, black and evil. No one wanted to trade places with him now. All these years, I have remembered his fall and seen his body break upon that mountain. All these years, his death has been my companion. I did not know him well, but he remains with me still. Even now, all I really know is that I saw him die. That seems to be more than enough.