In memory and in honor of the unknown soldiers of Alpha Company, many who became known due to the efforts of Phil Woodall. An excerpt from his first letter, so many years ago:
Dear Jean,
East 47 has an answer – the letter to Alpha Company is a poem. It is attached for you. I placed it at the base of panel 47 because on rows five and six are three Alpha Company members: Lt. Gary Scott, Lt. Frank Rodriquez, and PFC Manuel Ruiz – all killed March 29, 1968 in a paddy around Hue. The dates are documented in the book “Dear America,” excerpted from a letter that I wrote my Dad on April 5, 1968; the day after Martin Luther King was slain.
My Introduction to Alpha Company
It took only two words to get my attention in 1987.
The traveling replica of the Washington DC Vietnam Veterans Memorial was on exhibit at the Freedom Park. I decided to visit.
My first impression was the swelling whiteness of names that snatched a bigger chunk of each succeeding black panel. There were so many names, all names equal and unknown to me. I wondered, how do you approach something with so many unknown names? The crisp white serif letters drew me in. They formed words that communicated a name, and each name represented a life. And each life was surrounded by a family and friends. The realization was simple, but it didn’t strike me until I was standing there facing the wall of names. They were all unknown lives to me. I knew not one.
“Who were you?” I silently asked an individual name on the wall. I looked around to see what others were doing. An older woman was kneeling near the wall. She held a piece of paper firmly over a name on the wall, while she tenderly rubbed a pencil over the paper. Tears filled her brown eyes when she spoke to the wall as if speaking to someone nearby, “He has a little boy he never saw.” A single rose stuck between two panels drew attention to a line claiming a name that made a difference in someone’s life. A handful of yellow wildflowers, their stems intertwined, rested on the red earthen clay next to the wall. Divisional patches and long-stem red roses dressed the base of the black wall. I stared at the roses, their stems stuck in florist vials. The vials, tipped with tapered plastic spears, looked like expended green ammunition cartridges scattered on the ground.
One veteran, dressed in a camouflage shirt and olive fatigue pants, sat cross-legged, fifteen to twenty feet away from the wall. His hands were clasped in his lap and his face looked directly at the wall. He hid his eyes behind aviator sunglasses, his thoughts tightly locked and known only to him. Behind him, migrating geese landed gracefully on the glistening lake in the park.
I walked past panel after panel, life after life. I caught the contrast of a white business envelope standing against the black panel marked 47E. I couldn’t read the name, but I saw two words tightly scrawled in blue ink.
“I can read the name and find it on the wall,” I thought. “Just because I don’t know the person doesn’t mean I couldn’t touch his name.”
I wondered who wrote the letter. A mother? A father? A widow? A friend? Perhaps a buddy who was in the same battle? How did the soldier die? Was his helicopter shot down? Did he die during an ambush? What was his story? My attention returned to the letter. What did the letter say? What little mysteries might be sealed inside? How much the person is missed? What life is without him? But then, what did I know about war? I could never know the pain or suffering that might be sealed inside.
Curiosity moved me closer to the letter. I squinted to better focus my eyes and read the name. As my mind comprehended the words, a barreling blast burst through my heart. The tightly scrawled handwritten words quietly announced: “Alpha Company.”
My eyes remained transfixed on the two words scrawled on the white business envelope – Alpha Company. I heard a whisper that resonated deep within me, “Remember them.”
And I wondered, how do I remember them?
Who were these unknown soldiers?
What happened to Alpha Company?
Why was there a letter addressed to an entire company?
This unknown force humbled me with exacting precision. It spoke a piercing truth, “You think you know so much, but you don’t.” Alpha Company had blown away what I had believed to be true. I thought I was going to read the name of one soldier, and find it on the wall. That was to be the story’s end, but instead I discovered Alpha Company.
I left Freedom Park carrying the knowledge of their existence and hearing the call, “Remember them.”
Searching for the Unknown Soldiers of Alpha Company
For months after being introduced to Alpha Company, the questions continued to return. What happened to Alpha Company? What happened in Vietnam? I didn’t know anyone who would have the answers about the war or the unknown soldiers. I was 25 years old, a Vogue-reading, fashion-loving female who worked as a retail copywriter for a regional department store. I kept hearing the call to remember them, but my question kept returning, “How do you remember a group of unknown soldiers?”
I had two clues:
47E and Alpha Company
I wrote a letter to the Friends of the Vietnam Memorial asking for the dates of the casualties listed on panel 47E. The answer came slow in 1988 when there was no e-mail or internet. While I waited, I went to the library and checked the Time-Life series of books on the Vietnam War. I believed I could find Alpha Company. I plunged into the books and began to learn.
The answer arrived a few weeks later. I found it resting on top of my Vogue magazine in the mailbox. The days represented on East 47 were from March 29, 1968 to April 4, 1968. I was shocked that it was only seven days. I assumed it would have taken months to fill the panel with names. With the dates in my hand, I raced to the library to pour through the books on Vietnam and look for events or battles occurring between March 29 and April 4, 1968. During that time there had been a major movement at Khe Sahn. Operation Pegasus was implemented. I wondered if maybe Alpha Company was there. I looked in the back at the listing of troops in the area and discovered more than one Alpha Company listed. My heart sank and I closed the book. What do I do now? I hadn’t enlisted the help of anyone on my search for Alpha Company. In fact, when I did tell people I was researching Vietnam they laughed. They saw only the image I was to them. They saw little depth, and certainly no room in me to look outside my own life. I was embarrassed that they laughed, and it loosened my resolve momentarily. When the laughter ceased and they asked, “Why would you want to learn about Vietnam?” it was difficult to respond. Anything I would say would be so alien to how people perceived me at that time that it was better to throw back my hair and say, “Oh I don’t know.” And yet, “Remember them” kept ricocheting against the walls within me. It was an active call that lived.
Deep in the core of my being, I had experienced a truth when I read those two words. It was not an easy truth but sometimes that’s how life goes. I wanted to learn about Alpha Company and sensed an unwavering conviction that they had something to teach me. I was not going to let the opinion of others or their disbelief in my ability to learn about war keep me away from discovering the truth I had to know. I decided to keep my search for Alpha Company private. It was a project for me, and me alone. But the day when I learned there was more than one Alpha Company, I began wondering if I would ever find them.
Another Clue: “We Got Ambushed March 29, 1968”
Weeks later, the dogwoods and azaleas began blooming. One afternoon in early spring, Jay, the guy I was dating cancelled our dinner date for the night. He seemed to have a valid excuse, but I was disappointed and went home to sulk. There were few dinner options in my kitchen so I made tuna salad. I sat on the sofa to watch television while I ate my dinner. I was flipping mindlessly through the channels when I heard “Vietnam.” I stopped to see what was on television. The PM Magazine hosts were interviewing a hometown veteran about the HBO special, “Letters from Nam.”
I listened to the veteran, “My Company went to Vietnam in December of 67. We started down near Saigon, but after Tet we moved up towards Hue. That area was crawling with the enemy. We got ambushed on March 29, 1968,” the veteran spoke.
My mind screamed, “MARCH 29, 1968?” I moved onto the floor to get closer to the television screen.
“We lost a lot of men from my company that day. That’s the day that Gary was killed. Gary was the platoon leader, and I was his radio man. The letter in the HBO special is the letter I wrote to my Dad a few days after I had been evacuated from the field where Gary had died.”
“I felt pretty close to those guys. Alpha Company is a part of me.”
I screamed with the mention of Alpha Company. I jumped, and with my unexpected jubilation and spontaneous celebration, I missed some of the interview but I heard his name, Phil Woodall. I looked his name up in the local phone book and discovered he was there.
I went to the bookstore the next day, and found Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. I opened the book to the index, and found Phil Woodall’s name in the index of contributors. And best of all, there in print was the identity of Alpha Company: Company 1, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, I Corps.
I turned to page 224, which was the letter from Phil dated April 5, one day after the final date that filled panel 47E.
The next night, I tried once more to write Phil, but doubts kept entering my mind. I heard the laughter when I told people I knew that I was trying to find Alpha Company by researching the Vietnam War. What was a former sorority girl, now an advertising copywriter, doing with the subject of the Vietnam War? If my friends laughed, what would a Vietnam veteran think? Another war had begun inside of me as I turned my doubts upon myself. “This is stupid. What if he isn’t the one who left the letter at E47? What would he do if he isn’t the one? Would he get mad that I brought up memories of the war? What if he thinks I’m ridiculous because I don’t know enough about what he went through? How will he judge what he sees?” The doubts won. I stopped trying to write the letter, although I continued to read the book. There was one letter from Sandy Kempner in “Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam” that touched my heart.
Shrapnel in the Heart
Although I had stalled on contacting Phil, I was devouring books on the Vietnam War. A few months after finding “Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam,” I was in a bookstore looking at the offering of books on Vietnam. A title caught my eye: Shrapnel in the Heart by Laura Palmer, which had been reviewed in Vogue magazine. I bought the book and began reading it that night. Tears filled my eyes as I began feeling the sorrow and the pain of other people’s loss. It was too much too quick. I put the book down to stop the sensation.
A few days later, the Charlotte Observer featured an article about a Vietnam veteran called Rusty. I thought I saw that name in “Shrapnel in the Heart.” I retrieved the book to find the name and found Dusty on page 125, not Rusty. I read Dusty’s entry and continued reading. Soon I was at page 160, looking at a photograph of John Thomas Holton, Jr. My eyes glanced at the next page and it was from Pineville, North Carolina. I turned the page to learn who wrote the letter. It was from Phil Woodall.
It was time for me to contact Phil. I picked up pen and paper that night and wrote the letter.
Phil Replies: East 47 Has An Answer
Within a week, I received a reply from Phil.
Dear Jean,
East 47 has an answer – the letter to Alpha Company is a poem. It is attached for you. I placed it at the base of panel 47 because on rows five and six are three Alpha Company members: Lt. Gary Scott, Lt. Frank Rodriquez, and PFC Manuel Ruiz – all killed March 29, 1968 in a paddy around Hue. The dates are documented in the book Dear America, excerpted from a letter that I wrote my Dad on April 5, 1968; the day after Martin Luther King was slain.
The Operation was Carentan in I Corps near Hue, after Tet. We were “mopping up” NVA in the paddies of Thua Thien, so that farmers could plant their crops after the mighty February rains and before the September monsoons.
If you would like to read another member’s story of Alpha Company, check out the book “Line Doggie” by Charles Gadd. The places and people from his third platoon perspective are vivid, his sequences are not the same as mine in many instances.
Does your letter make sense to me? Easy – sure. Alpha Company left Fort Campbell, Kentucky, intact December 67, arriving near Hue, a week before Tet. I spent until September with the boys of Alpha Company, plus until May 69 with the battalion operations staff to whom Alpha Company reported. Gary Scott, Frank Rodriquez, Manuel Ruiz, Eddie Sands, John Holton, Roy Winer, Bogard Floyd, and Gary Hadley are all on the wall.
Of all Americans who faced 1968 – that decisive year that began with Tet and ended with Richard Nixon. Alpha Company faced intense guerrilla warfare that even Gadd can’t capture. Alpha Company is a real part of America – poetic, heroic, tragic – and never triumphant, but I hope never forgotten. Perhaps you would call me. I am moving to New Orleans shortly (company transfer).
The poem enclosed in the Alpha Company envelope was one of many items left at Freedom Park. I have copies of all the letters.
The Wall
Oh wall, oh wall of granite stone.
Not tomb nor glory chart
Reflects the pain of shattered bone
And shrapnel in the heart.
Mother’s moan. Warriors weep.
Abe and George look on.
Silent souls would angels keep
Inside the great black stone.
America, America, see
No shinning perfect star.
Your undercoat of memory
Reveals an ugly scar.
Remember how the warriors died
In places hardly known.
Remember tears that widows cried
Beside the great black stone.
Ia Drang, Phonc Yen, Hamburger Hill,
Khe Sahn and hundreds more,
Five thousand days to main and kill
The victims of the war.
Peace comes now upon the mall
Where painful memories start
To wound those standing by the wall
With shrapnel in the heart.
Multiple excerpts from the book, RESURGAM Standing on the Ground of Remembrance by Jean Niedert
(C) 2008
creative meander 
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