[Vhfcn-l] Joe Galloway

[Brian Piggott]

Nice job Julie

brian

On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 1:50 PM jomclaughlin--- via Vhfcn-l <
vhfcn-l at lists.vhfcn.org> wrote:

> Thank you Julie.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vhfcn-l <vhfcn-l-bounces+jomclaughlin=comcast.net at lists.vhfcn.org>
> On Behalf Of Julie Kink via Vhfcn-l
> Sent: Monday, August 23, 2021 9:58 AM
> To: jomclaughlin at comcast.net
> Subject: [Vhfcn-l] Joe Galloway
>
> Thanks for reporting Joe's death, Ross. When Mike and I heard it last
> Wednesday I sat down and put my thoughts together for no particular reason,
> just for my own benefit. It helped.
> He was the best writer I ever met.
> Julie Kink
> sister of WO David Kink C/1/9 CAV KIA 8-3-1969
> ********
> 8-18-2021
> I feel a peculiar sadness on hearing of the death of Joe Galloway,
> co-author of We Were Soldiers Once And Young, and its sequel, We Are
> Soldiers Still. He was my friend. This is not meant to be one of those
> boastful, sobbing epistles written to attract admirers and convince them
> that we were “that close.” We didn’t vacation together. We didn’t meet for
> coffee or swap photos of grandchildren. Joe was simply a touchpoint for me,
> at the beginning of what has been the biggest journey of my life, and a
> mile-marker along the way, these past 28 years. I am a Gold Star sister. My
> 19-year-old brother was lost to the skies over Vietnam in 1969, when I was
> eight. Though he served four years after the infamous battle of the Ia
> Drang Valley where Joe cut his newpaperman’s teeth, my brother David was a
> helicopter pilot in the revered First Cavalry Division, which became Joe’s
> second family after his baptism there in the central highlands of Vietnam
> in the early part of the Vietnam War. In a sense, I credit Joe Galloway,
> and his friend General Hal Moore, with my awakening from a long sleep, and
> ultimately, with bringing me in contact with the men who would become my
> new big brothers. After my brother David’s death, there followed 24 long
> years during which I knew nothing about the pink spot on the map called
> “Vietnam” where he had briefly lived and died, nothing about the war in
> which he had given his all.  We never studied it in school. I never shared
> the fact, growing up, that I had lost my brother in the Vietnam War. The
> feeling that I needed to “discover” him, and learn about the war that took
> him from us, grew from a distant echo in my youth, to a lonesome,
> persistent longing in my college years. I needed to know, and understand,
> “our war.” And then, in 1993, I saw cross-legged on my living room couch
> watching an episode of ABC’s “Day One” news program, titled “They Were
> Young and Brave.” The documentary chronicled the five-day Ia Drang battle
> in 1965 that turned the course of the war, and shadowed the return, 28
> years later, of the some of the pivotal players to the land where they had
> faced death, and seen their buddies perish. I was riveted. And I was crying
> my eyes out. I remember feeling very sorry for myself, thinking, “I’ll
> never find anyone who knew my brother.” Three years later, through a series
> of events that I now consider miraculous, I found myself in a crowded
> roomful of Vietnam veterans in a Washington, DC hotel, being introduced to
> Gen. Hal Moore as the sister of a fallen 1st Cavalry soldier. With the
> strongest handshake I’d ever experienced, and a firmly set jaw that I’ll
> never forget, Gen. Moore told me, “You’ll see him again.” He said the same
> words two years later, with the same firm handshake, when we were once
> again introduced. “Men who fight, shoulder to shoulder in battle . . .
> they’re brothers for life,” Moore said in the documentary. I could not know
> that, three years later, the pilot who had flown “high bird” on my
> brother’s last mission would write to me that “the bonds formed in combat
> are in many ways stronger than family” . . . that four years later, sitting
> in his study, my brother’s commanding officer would be telling me that the
> letter of condolence he wrote my mother in 1969 was his first . . . that 13
> years later, I would be walking the old runway in Phuoc Vinh, Vietnam where
> my brother had flown during his one month there. Somewhere along the way, I
> met Joe, and we became friends. As a newspaper reporter myself, I greatly
> admired his writing skills, and I told him so. As my quest to learn more
> about my brother David progressed, I let Joe know how his eloquence had
> impacted me. Joe wrote,“julie:thank you for all the kind words about WWSOAY
> and the Day One program. hal moore and i always thought if we could help
> restore some pride in their service to even a few of our brother
> veterans...and help even a few grieving family members find some peace that
> all of it would be worth it. and so it is. that remains the prime intent of
> the forthcoming sequel...where we broaden the circle of healing to include
> our old enemies who did their best to kill us all...and we them. so much
> work to do and so little time left to do it in. gen. moore is wearing
> out...running down...and it breaks my heart to know this is our last
> operation together.” On July 2, 2000, I stood among more than 1,000 Vietnam
> helicopter pilots gathered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington
> DC for the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association Reunion, as Joe Galloway
> told them, “I love you guys as only an Infantryman can love you. No matter
> how bad things were….if we called you came. Down through the green tracers
> and other visible signs of a real bad day off to a bad start. . . To us you
> seemed beyond brave and fearless…..that you would come to us in the middle
> of battle in those flimsy thin-skinned crates…..and in the storm of fire
> you would sit up there behind that plexiglass seeming so patient and so
> calm and so vulnerable…..waiting for the off-loading and the on-loading. We
> thought you were God's own lunatics…..and we loved you. Still do.” After
> sending him my newspaper editorial about a veterans gathering I attended in
> Wisconsin, and what it meant to see veterans reunited close to my brother’s
> birthday of November 11th, Joe complimented me and shared a bit of personal
> history - a huge honor for me. “Julie:Keep doing what you do so well. The
> guys love that, and you as well. Us old Scorpios! My birthday is 13
> November. In 1965 my birthday was spent under a tea bush in the Catecha
> Plantation. One of the guys gave me his can of pound cake to celebrate
> with. Next day I went into the Ia Drang Valley with Hal Moore's bunch, and
> the rest, as they say, is history. That was one hell of a birthday present.
> Yet I would happily march right in there again for the privilege of
> standing beside those guys and fighting alongside them. Funny how one move,
> one act, one decision can change your life for all time........God
> bless.Joe” A few years later Joe shared with a fellow veteran his great
> admiration for us Gold Star families, mentioning me and his then wife Karen
> Metsker: “People like Julie and Karen and all those kids have holes through
> their hearts just as certain as if they were shot with a .357. And yet they
> give back to us so much more than we are able to give them. God bless them
> all. rgds Joe” When I was about to leave for my first trip to Vietnam in
> 2006, I wrote to Joe, and to my surprise he wrote back. “Godspeed, Miss
> Julie, and God bless you on your journey. It is a beautiful land and most
> of the people are beautiful as well. Although it is neither beginning nor
> end i pray this journey adds a large measure of peace and calm to your
> heart. you deserve that and much more.as of june 1 i am quitting the day
> job at knight ridder and moving to my house on the south texas coast.
> winters there; summers in colorado with gen hal moore. we are beginning
> work on sequel to WWSOAY. plus i have about five more books to write solo
> after that one. again, Godspeed and Happy Trails to you!” I respected Joe
> because he was a “reporter’s reporter” - in the same sense that people
> refer to “a man’s man” - someone who draws out a larger meaning, perhaps,
> than its dictionary definition. I sensed that he had a deep-seated
> commitment to tell - starkly, without embellishment - the stories of the
> people whose lives he intersected either for a brief moment, or for
> decades. He had promised them that. He never let them down. Faced with the
> awful truths of life, and the poetic horror of death, he was adept at
> drawing the meaning out of both. It seems that when he left us, he grabbed
> hold of an entire era, and whisked it away with his leaving. Godspeed, and
> Happy Trails to you, my friend. Julie Kink
>
>
>
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