Conrad Hebert was a tough, strong, mean kid. I saw him fist fighting out in left field of the Little League field during a pick-up game, surrounded by fifty curious kids. The fighters took numerous punches to the face and still walked away. I couldn’t conceive of the brutality.
Conrad enlisted, went to boot camp, shipped out to Vietnam, and within two weeks was reported killed in action. I was always in awe of his physicality, muscular strength, height and presence. His home was around the corner. It now seemed lifeless and empty. Only twenty years later, I scratched his name onto a scrap of paper at the Vietnam War Memorial wall. Even then, there were many pairs of boots, notes, flowers and other objects honoring the dead scattered along the wall.
After Conrad’s death, Mrs. St Clair, my fifth grade teacher said her son was coming to talk to our class about Vietnam. I recall that he brought his rifle and he explained that he cut notches in the wood handle for each of the 35 people that he had killed. My teacher allowed him to tell his own story from his own perspective, but I could see that she was both proud and horrified at the same time. In front of the class, he seemed larger than life, and one could easily image him looking down the scope of the rifle in the jungle, as his story seemed so real. Of course, given his physical presence, and strength as a soldier, he seemed huge and powerful to a fifth grader. But his perspective was new to us. We had never heard anything like it before. It was the taste of war, killing, and the reality of a soldier’s life. A lot for me to understand, but I recall it now like it was yesterday. One month later, Mrs. St. Clair was absent, and the substitute said her son was killed while training in a helicopter crash. When she returned after several months, she was not the same.
Every week; life magazine published the photos of all the US soldiers killed that week. It was strange to open it, and see photos of the dead. Sometimes the photos filled the entire page. The war seemed so far away, yet so close.