Signposts
and Junctions
Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage
Old ghosts come to Camp 16
It must have something to do with the autumnal time of the year, the way my
mind rummages through the dustbins of memory when the days grow short and
the fodder is in the shock, that I often find myself revisiting those days
after the Army when I attended school at the Community College back in
Manchester, Connecticut. That era included the period 1972 through 1975; I
met my first wife back in those days and I still include her among the
friends I remain in contact with these many years later. I can remember the
old apartments where my friends would gather and carry on, especially the
upstairs apartment on Cedar Street and the rooms that Don Doughty and I
rented above the Hartford Road Cafe.
Manchester Community College had an active Veterans Club and I joined this
group soon after the start of autumn classes in September of 1972. The
Veterans Club sported a wide assortment of Vietnam and Korean Veterans from
all the Armed Services. We studied hard and partied harder, enjoying both
the freedom of the time, as well as the camaraderie and empathy that all of
us found within the company of each other. We enjoyed the many functions and
activities sponsored by the club, including outings at the shore, canoeing,
camping, and hiking trips. The Veterans Club also fielded a softball team
that competed in the local slow-pitch softball leagues. New members were
welcomed into the group in an easy and friendly manner and quickly
assimilated into the various activities happening at the time.
I also recalled a Halloween party I had attended in 1975 as graduation time
neared. We gathered in the town of Glastonbury at the home of Jill Ann,
girlfriend of Clifford Deane, one of the ex-soldiers I knew from school.
Clifford and I were not close, I knew him through a mutual friend, Wayne
Vojick. Jill Ann had always been cool towards me, icy even. This did not
cause me undue concern, as I did not travel with their circle of friends,
though our paths often crossed at various club activities, school, or at
parties. I possessed a brash and upfront personality that my friends enjoyed
and my detractors found abrasive. Differences among personalities, however,
make the world go around so I remained content to spend my time with those
who called me friend.
What I do remember about that Halloween Party was that it came at a time
when that entire era of my life was coming to its inevitable conclusion.
Friends were graduating and going off to four-year colleges, moving to new
areas of the country, starting families, and searching out careers. Over the
years, the Diaspora continued and I found myself in contact with fewer and
fewer people who knew me from the old days at school. Yet I remain grateful
for the time we spent together, as well as for the friendship and support
that those many veterans and their friends provided me when I attended
school there.
In the summer of 1987, I was living in New Hampshire and working in
information technology for the global insurance giant AIG. The company,
headquartered in New York City, owned and staffed a large application
development center in Manchester where the reduced salaries and lower
operational costs, as well as various favorable tax breaks, contributed
greatly to the bottom line.
That June, using a mixture of vacation and comp-time, I cobbled together a
week off from work. I assembled my backpack, loaded up the pickup truck, and
headed for the White Mountains where I planned to begin the week by
backpacking in the Pemigewasset Wilderness for three or four nights and
finish the trip with a few nights at a drive-in campground.
On the day of my departure, after a good night’s sleep, I enjoyed a large
leisurely breakfast before setting out for the mountains. I drove north on
I-93 to Lincoln where I exited the interstate and headed east a few miles on
the Kancamagus Highway before pulling off into the Wilderness Trail parking
area. After making the final adjustments to my pack, I began the hike into
Camp 16, the site of an old logger camp located just north of the East
Branch of the Pemigewasset River and a little more than five miles from the
trailhead.
At the three mile mark, I reached the Franconia Brook Camp and took an
extended break at the bridge that spanned Franconia Brook just west of where
the water flowed into the East Branch of the Pemigewasset. Enjoying the
water and the rest, I ate a small bagel with peanut butter and drank a quart
of instant lemonade before continuing on my way. After crossing the brook on
the wooden suspension bridge, I made a turn to the east, and in a leisurely
hour, found myself at the Camp 16 tent platforms just north of the
Wilderness Trail and west of where the Bondcliff Trail diverged north for
the Bonds.
I set up camp and made dinner. As the sun went down the temperature went
down with it. Not having the energy to make a fire, I retreated to my
sleeping bag within the tent and hung a lantern to read by. From the pack, I
pulled out a new paperback book, 'A Piece of My Heart'. Compiled by Keith
Walker and published in April of 1987, the book carried the histories of
twenty-six women that had served in Vietnam during the War, whether as
nurses, volunteers, or entertainers.
It was a powerful experience to lay there alone in the mountains and read of
the poignant, and often terrible, experiences so many of these women had
lived and endured during their tour in Vietnam, as the wind rustled the
trees outside the tent. The horrors that the nurses faced and dealt with on
a daily basis were especially compelling. As I lay in the dim light of my
tent, my mind started to play tricks on my conscious state and I felt
transported back to the Army days; maybe it was jungle outside the tent
slowly closing in around me. I did not pull down the zipper to look outside.
Yet old ghosts were present and quickly made themselves known. I finished a
chapter and turned a leaf on the book, there on the page before me was a
picture of Jill Ann, she of the old Manchester Community College days and
girlfriend of Clifford. She had served as a nurse at the 24th Evacuation
Hospital at Long Binh from July 1970 to July 1971.
In the next 14 or 15 pages, she described her own frightful experiences,
which held horror after horror, and she quickly and succinctly brought the
insanity of the war into sharp focus. She pulled no punches and was not
afraid to go into detail about the times she lost control or could hardly
continue under the pressure. Yet because I knew her, those experiences took
on a more personal and visceral feeling within me. It was harrowing to be
alone in my tent that night, backpacking in the White Mountains, reliving
the horror of her year in Vietnam.
She followed that with her recollections of life in the States after the
Army. One truly haunting tale concerned a scene where she broke down crying
while buying underwear at a store. She also remembered the political tenor
of the times, recalling the days when she was hanging around a Woman's
Center and becoming a radical feminist. Later, she met Clifford and started
going out with him, only to face abandonment by her friends because she was
living with a man. She despaired about ever having children and a family of
her own. Clifford and Jill Ann broke up in Colorado, and she ended up
following him back to Connecticut, and into the time and place of her life
where our paths would intersect.
After reading her chapter in the book, I extinguished the light. Later, in
the dark of my tent, I would revisit many other old ghosts and memories from
the Army days, until I eventually fell into a shallow and fitful sleep.
In the morning, I made strong black coffee with my backpackers stove. After
downing two cups in the chill morning air, I threw a canteen and some trail
snacks into a daypack and set off on the trail back towards my car at the
trailhead, unsure of the motive yet sure of what I was going to do. In two
hours, I reached the car and started the short drive west to Lincoln where I
secured several dollars worth of change and pulled up next to a phone booth.
I called information for Glastonbury, Connecticut and gave them her name.
The short bio of Jill Ann in the book said she still lived there. I had no
idea whether the directory held her name and number, or if I would find her
at home, but I was attempting this anyway, driven by something ineffable and
deep within.
I called the number and heard a woman's voice answer. I asked for Jill Ann,
and the voice on the other end said it was she. I told her who I was and
asked if she remembered me; she replied that she did. Then I told her the
entire crazy story about how I had discovered her chapter in the book while
reading in my tent on the previous night, how moved I was by her
experiences, how the words had touched me so deeply that I felt compelled to
reach out today and connect with her. We talked briefly; I said that she was
always cold to me and she replied that, generally speaking, she had a hard
time liking men back in those days.
I cannot remember exactly what we said to each other, but I know I imparted
two things: how appreciative I was of her words and how sorry I was that I
did not know who she was or what she was dealing with back in those college
days in Connecticut. Then we bid each other goodbye and I returned to the
parking lot at the trailhead where, for the third time in less than
twenty-four hours, I hiked the stretch of trail between the parking area and
Camp 16.
That phone conversation transpired some twenty-three years ago. Late last
year, in December of 2009, I experienced a fresh postscript to this story.
While browsing in a bookstore I came across an original 1987 edition of 'A
Piece of My Heart', resting in a tub of used books, on sale for three
dollars. I bought the book and took it home to read once more, to experience
anew the haunting catharsis of the stories within. Her words today are every
bit as powerful and emotive as the night when I first read them alone in a
tent in the mountains of New Hampshire. I looked at the picture of Jill Ann
and thought we must all look much older now, and recalled my strange
pilgrimage in the mountains years before when I felt compelled to connect
with her.
I wonder where she is today and how her life has evolved. I hope she has
found joy, whatever that is, and that her life is populated and blessed by
people who love and protect her. For Jill Ann and the many Americans like
her, their lives hold up the mirror in which the soul and conscience of the
United States is revealed to the rest of us, even if only for a brief time.
Laudizen King
Los Angeles
April 2010