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53 °F Forecast | Road Cams Thursday, May 5, 2005 Today's News | Shop Our Valley | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery | Contact Us SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Menu Guide How To Guide Health Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Real Estate Guide Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Passport to the Rogue Valley SHOP OUR VALLEY AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Classified Place an ad TOP JOBS EXTRA Ashland News NIE Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People Volunteer Moving here? eSouthernOregon CUSTOMER SERVICE FAQ's Advertise with us Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend May 5, 2005 Jim Somers of Grants Pass, a Vietnam War vet, says his experiences as a helicopter door gunner led him from being a naive patriot to opposing the war as it was practiced in southeast Asia. He will read from his book of poetry at a weekend ceremony Mail Tribune / Jim Craven The war that never ends Grants Pass veteran of Vietnam tries to make sense of his experiencein words and imagery By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune Jim Somers recalls precisely where he was on April 30, 1975, when he heard on the radio that the Vietnam War was over. "I was driving in San Jose (Calif.) — I remember the tears coming down," said Somers, 53, an Army helicopter door gunner and crew chief for 20 months in Vietnam. A veteran of the AmeriCal Division’s 176th Assault Helicopter Co., his missions included everything from combat assaults to troop transport, from medevac-ing the bleeding wounded to picking up heavy body bags. Somers, who will be one of the Vietnam veterans speaking at the former domiciliary in White City Friday and Saturday to commemorate the end of the war, will tell you his experience pales in comparison to that endured by many combat veterans. But he leaves no doubt the war changed him. Advertisement "I went over there a naive patriot and came back clearly lost from the experience," said the Grants Pass resident. "Very few of us that went there had even a semblance of understanding what we were getting into. We had an astonishing lack of cultural understanding. "I was there 20 months and I missed the country," he added later. An accomplished poet and author, Somers wasn’t talking about geography but the people, culture and customs. Much of his time was spent in the Chu Lai area just south of Danang. But his missions took him as far north as the demilitarized zone north of Hue and into Laos. Hailing from Queens, N.Y., Somers dropped out of high school shortly after turning 17 to join the Army in April 1969. His father was a World War II veteran; his older brother an Army veteran of Vietnam. He was shy of 18 when he arrived in Vietnam as a helicopter door gunner, armed with an M-60. The Spec. 5 "reupped" for another tour but received an early honorable discharge November 1971 as Uncle Sam began cutting back its forces as the war began to wane. "Most of us were young," he said. "Now we are the equivalent of what World War II veterans were to us back in the 1980s. "It (Vietnam) is getting to be a tired old story. All the movies have been played out and all the words have been said until it’s just a clich�," he added. Somers doesn’t hold back his feelings about a war that killed more than 58,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese. "I’m vehemently opposed to the war in Vietnam as it took place and as war continuous to take place around the world," he said. "War is a contagion that is very addictive. "It’s the embrace of death over life," he added. "Life becomes incredibly cheap." But don’t get him wrong: He is no pacifist. "War has its place and own insane logic," he said. "But it’s the last thing you do. It’s humans taking the lives of other humans. "The dead remain dead, the maimed are forever maimed," he added. Somers was barely 18 when he went on his first mission to retrieve dead GIs. "It was a hot LZ (landing zone) — we’re taking a lot of fire," he said. "It’s a ‘get-and- go’ type of thing. The grunts with a poncho — three on each side — drag these two guys up. "Having never handled the dead, that was shocking to me," he recalled. But the shock wore off. "We were carting people off pretty regularly — dead and wounded," he said. That would include friends as well as strangers. "Most of the people over there were sons of the working class, from the ghettos, from the heartland," he said. "We were all indoctrinated to go over to their country see them as the foreigners. We were taught to diminish their value." Yet it was the morale of the American troops that began to diminish as the war literally went south. There were some 200 fragmentation grenade attacks against others wearing the same uniform in 1970, he observed. "It got so war made more sense to me than what was going on behind the wire (in our compounds)," he said. Somers, who has owned a bar and worked as a private investigator before becoming a writer, was eventually diagnosed with post- traumatic stress disorder. Now divorced, he was married for 23 years, raising two children. "It took a long time to really manifest itself," he said of the delayed stress. "I think most of us never understood what happened." Nor, he suspects, have Americans ever understood the war that ended 30 years ago. "We’re still divided as a country over the Vietnam War," he said. Anniversary events Jim Somers will be one of several Vietnam veterans speaking at a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War scheduled Friday and Saturday at the former Department of Veterans Affairs domiciliary in White City. Somers will read from his book of poetry about the war, "Kindly Stop the War Stories." The session will be held at the facility’s theater from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Somers’ work will be included in an anthology of Vietnam poems currently being put together by the Veteran Veterans of America. Ashland poet Steve Mason is the group’s longtime poet laureate. Displays from each of the armed forces will also be on display. The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975. The facility is now the VA’s Southern Oregon Rehabilitation Center & Clinics. Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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