Vietnam revisited

Published 6:00 am Saturday, November 30, 2013

Not 10 minutes after a 20-year-old corpsman set foot in Vietnam in 1968, enemy fire began raining down.

    It didn’t take David Schuurman but just one second to figure out he should be following many of the other U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh who were diving in holes and bunkers to get away from the deadly shrapnel. It was Schuurman’s introduction into a war that has since been deemed the least popular conflict in American history and an experience of which he still has vivid memories.

    Those memories were one reason why Schuurman decided to return to Southeast Asia earlier this year. Accompanied by his son, Jeff Schuurman, and his daughter, Sonja Girod, Schuurman traveled to the villages, cities and battlefields that for one year of his life left such a strong impression.

    “What a difference 40 years makes,” said Schuurman, who is a certified nurse anesthetist. “The people there are very friendly and I felt completely safe. It was an amazing experience and I would go back if I could afford it.”

    It was during a conversation with his wife, Rosie, that Schuurman decided to take the trip. His son, Jeff, is a historian of sorts and Sonja just wanted to go because it was a place her father had served. Schuurman didn’t have any expectations when the trio took off from the United States in March of this year. But in retrospect he is glad he made the trip.

    In 1968 it was a different story.

    After graduating from high school, Schuurman admitted he didn’t have very good grades. He didn’t quite know what to do with himself but he was certain he didn’t want to get drafted to Vietnam. It’s not that he didn’t agree with the war. Schuurman said he really didn’t have a strong opinion either way. He just knew he didn’t want to be fighting in the jungles so he tried to join the Navy.

    Schuurman had a keen interest in medicine so he decided to stray from his original Navy course and join the Marine Corps as a corpsman, or medic. When he was running for cover on that first day “in country,” Schuurman was kicking himself for allowing this to happen. Oh well, he thought, just make the best of the situation.

    The siege of Khe Sanh lasted five months, 18 days from Jan. 21, 1968 thru July 9, 1968. It was the prelude to the Tet Offensive, the massive invasion of South Vietnam by North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong guerillas that began January 30, 1968. Schuurman found himself in April of 1968 as a corpsman with a Marine artillery battery. Schuurman also found out quickly that fire bases where artillery units are based are magnets for enemy ordinance.

    “It is kinda funny how when you get there and for the next five or six months you are running around jumping at every sound,” Schuurman said. “After awhile you get numb to what is going on around you. But when you get “short,” that is when your tour is nearing completion and you can go home, you get jumpy again.”

    On his recent trip, Schuurman wasn’t jumpy. In fact, he found revisiting the locations where he once served enthralling. While standing on paved roads with modern automobiles zooming by, Schuurman could see the wasteland of a fire base with pockmarked holes where enemy shells had tilled the ground with the smell of cordite in the air. He remembered how he felt the stout hand of fear grip his soul each time he heard the whine of an incoming shell or the whoosh of a rocket before it impacted, throwing deadly shrapnel through the air at twice the speed of sound. Now, nothing but the smell of car exhaust and the honking of a horn.

    “I don’t suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) like so many other veterans,” Schuurman said. “I don’t know why. I guess it was the way I viewed everything back then. But I understand why many vets do suffer from that. I just basically accepted that whatever happened to me, happened. There wasn’t anything I could really do about it.”

    But some of it may have been fate or destiny.

    On one occasion, Schuurman was supposed to join a convoy from the fire base to travel down a road to retrieve more medical supplies. He told the driver to stop by his hooch, or tent, to get something he forgot. The truck continued on without him and hit a mine that exploded right where Schuurman would have been sitting in the truck.

    Schuurman didn’t leave Vietnam unscathed, however. At another fire base, at a place Marines called the Rockpile, he earned his Purple Heart. The Rockpile was really a mountain jutting out of the surrounding green triple canopy jungle. At the top a forward artillery observer could call in supporting fire for many miles around. Naturally, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong didn’t like Americans being there.

    “There was a fire base at the bottom of the mountain and on the fire base was a very good bunker where the fire control center was,” Schuurman said. “This bunker was the safest place to be when we got shelled so naturally I always ran into it whenever it started raining explosives.”

    It was during one of these rain storms of rockets and shells that Schuurman and a young lieutenant decided to make some Kool-Aid. What else were they going to do, Schuurman said. A rocket hit the bunker dead center and Schuurman got shrapnel in his head. And the Kool-Aid spilled all over the floor of the bunker. Despite his injury, Schuurman said he went out after the shelling and tended to the wounded. When asked if this selfless act should have included another medal besides the Purple Heart, Schuurman said, “There were guys all over the place who did what was needed to be done. I was no different. I did what my country had trained me to do.”

    Even though he was a corpsman, his country taught Schuurman how to kill as well. During the trip in March he came face to face with scores of Vietnamese war veterans who had fought against the Americans and their allies. It was hard for Schuurman to think that decades ago these people were trying to kill him and his friends while Schuurman’s friends were intent on doing the same to them.

    “There was no animosity among us,” Schuurman said. “We laughed, told stories, and drank together. We could be friends now and I think I made some friends while I was there. It is the leaders of countries who make the wars. If it were left up to us, the men on the ground, we’d just try to get along without all the fighting. I didn’t then, and I certainly don’t now, have a hatred for the Vietnamese people.”

    After his tour of duty, Schuurman, who was born in Iowa but grew up in Denver, Colo., was living in Wisconsin when he met his wife, Rosie. After graduating college, the couple moved around for a few years before settling down in Meridian 20 years ago.

    In many ways the trip to Vietnam was the closing of one chapter and opening of another in Schuurman’s life. He said he feels he is a much better person for going over to a place that, not necessarily haunted him, but preoccupied a part of him for so many years. He now feels the trip was well worth the effort and expense and he is pleased to have taken it with his son and daughter.

    “I am glad I went,” Schuurman said. “It really wasn’t a priority for me to go but the closer we got to starting the trip the more I was looking forward to it. I really enjoyed it.”

    It is during this holiday season, Thanksgiving, that Schuurman said his experience there has actually given him reasons to be thankful in the here and now.