Vietnam vet gets '2nd tour' decades after his first one

Another great article by Katherine Kersten.

By Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune
Last update: November 11, 2007 – 11:27 PM

For 35 years, Clyde Lewandowski of St. Cloud didn't talk much about his service in Vietnam. Lewandowski served in 1968 with the Army's 6th Battalion, 33rd Artillery, which provided fire support to infantry troops. "There were too many ghosts," he says.
But this Veterans Day, things have changed. Now Lewandowski can't stop talking about Vietnam. He's found a way to purge the dark memories and reconnect with the distant land where he fought.

The transformation began in 2003, when he was rummaging in his basement and happened on an old suitcase filled with letters from his Army days. "They brought it all back -- the people I hadn't thought about for 30 years, the homesickness, the jokes we played," he said. He began to feel a tug to revisit memories he had thrust aside for decades.

His interest was sparked enough to scour his old unit's records at the National Archives in Washington and to start tracking down his former buddies. But when he ran across contact information for his closest Army friend, Ollie Bishop, he wrestled with whether to follow through. He and Bishop had shared the agony of wounded friends and the horror of being jolted awake at night by the scream of incoming rockets. Did he really want to revisit all that?

Lewandowski took a chance.

He arranged to visit Bishop at his home in Massachusetts. But when he arrived, hesitation seized him once again.

"I drove by Ollie's house and saw him on the steps," he recalled. "I drove another half mile before I decided to turn around and go back."

The two talked for hours like long-lost brothers. To Lewandowski's surprise, the bond forged years before sprang quickly to life as they pored over old pictures and reminisced about their comrades.

At an artillery reunion later that year, said Lewandowski, he and Bishop talked with other brothers-in-arms about "all the fun we'd had with the kids in Vietnam."

He couldn't forget the kids

"We'd give them gum and candy, trade things with them," he said. The vets shared photos of an orphanage they had often visited, and Lewandowski couldn't get the children's faces out of his mind.

"I said, 'if I can find an orphanage there to support, are you with me?'" They were.

In 2006, Lewandowski discovered Friends of VSO, an organization established by vets like himself to support Vinh Son Orphanages in Vietnam's Central Highlands. He signed on for a trip to Vietnam to deliver supplies. (www.friendsofvso.org) On the trip, he revisited scenes from his past -- the sandy beach where his troop ship had landed, a mountain pass near Da Nang where his convoy had come under devastating mortar fire.

"I began to see that the ghosts weren't so fearful after all," he said.

When the group reached Kon Tum, site of the orphanages, Lewandowski knew he had found what he was looking for. Vinh Son serves about 450 children. They are Montagnards, an ethnic minority so poor that parents must often leave one of a set of twins to die.

Lewandowski was overcome by the children's warmth, gratitude and kindness toward each other. They grow their own food, and the older kids constantly help the younger ones. "The kids have almost nothing, and the few things they have they want to share with you," he said. "One little girl had a barrette, and she wanted to give it to me in return for a tennis ball I gave her to play with." You Tube video

But the orphanages in the village were paradise compared with two primitive orphanages in the bush. Children there lived in bamboo huts and their water supply was a muddy river. The former GIs dug down and donated the last $1000 they had brought to enable the Catholic sisters who run the orphanages to finish digging a well and supplement the children's diet with rice for the rest of the year.

Spreading the word

Back in St. Cloud, Lewandowski has devoted himself to spreading the word about VSO, and raising money for projects that have included donating computers and sewing machines, and rebuilding a kitchen destroyed by fire. A few months ago, he obtained a $25,000 challenge grant from another St. Cloud Vietnam vet, Bruce Meyer.

Lewandowski is proud of his 1968 service in Vietnam. But he's one of those rare vets who gets a second tour of duty decades after the first. This time the tracers and napalm are gone. He sees only the wide eyes and bright smiles of the children.

Katherine Kersten • kkersten@startribune.com Join the conversation at my blog, Think Again, which can be found at www.startribune.com/thinkagain.