Once alone, Vietnam vets reunite

By Joe Rodriguez
jrodriguez@mercurynews.com

Liz Condon was only 18 when her older brother, Vic Best, was killed in the war in Vietnam more than 40 years ago.

"He was a screwball, a goof and the nicest guy, and he was my best friend,'' she said Saturday afternoon at an emotional reunion of her brother's old unit in Santa Clara. She gestured with her hand around a meeting room filled with gray-haired veterans, a few who knew her brother.

"These people take you into their hearts, they love you,'' Condon said. "They are the only people I have left who knew my brother.''

It is difficult to pinpoint the moment Vietnam veterans emerged from the isolated, unhappy and silent foxhole of the heart they had hunkered down in for decades after the war, but the first reunion of the Blackhorse regiment 24 years ago is as good a guess as any. Formally known as the 11th Armored Cavalry's Veterans of Vietnam and Cambodia, the group held its latest get-together this weekend at a Hyatt Hotel near a huge amusement park. While the 700 or so Army vets spent a lot of time catching up with old friends, — determined not to rehash the war politics of the present — this was no ordinary reunion of fading, old soldiers.

When it sends out invitations to the reunions, the Blackhorse alumni also invite the widows, brothers, sisters and civilian friends of the 729 men from the regiment who were killed in action from 1966 to 1972. Since the first reunion in San Antonio in 1985, dozens of "KIA families'' have learned preciously more about the men they lost after meeting their war buddies, or simply have had their memories reaffirmed.

"After 40 years, I couldn't tell if what I remembered about my brother was real. How much of it was my imagination?'' said Condon, who lives in Tennessee. "After meeting his best friends and unit commanders, I can say I remember him the way he really was.''

Fresh memories
Getting to that point was by no means easy. It took Condon two years to track down her brother's buddies. While the Blackhorse regiment has a Web site that invites vets and KIA families to reconnect, the vast majority of alumni haven't logged on or attended a reunion. That makes it harder for families who want and need to know more about the ones they lost. .

"The ones who need to be here aren't,'' said Barb Moreno, a former Army clerk who married a Blackhorse veteran and runs the women's group. "A lot of them are still hurting.''

Like Condon two years ago, Diane Silva and her sister, Linda Marino, were attending their first Blackhorse reunion on Saturday. They drove up from Moreno Valley in southern California, hoping to find friends of their brother, Frank Leal, yearning to add fresh memories about his brief life to their own recollections.

"He was killed on July 21, 1967,'' Silva said. "He was only 20."

Marino said, "We had four brothers and he was the mellow one. He was the nature boy, always eating fruits and vegetables.''

Silva's memory of him was frozen for decades while she married, raised her kids and generally got on with life. Then she went to see the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., a massive, black granite wall shaped like a tank trap and inscribed with the names of that war's American dead.

"I saw his name and that's when it changed for me,'' Silva remembered. "That's when I started looking for more information about Frank, to know what happened to him that day, to know his story.''

Unforgettable artist
Every year, a handful of Blackhorse veterans attend their first reunion.

After 40 years, Tony Bryant decided it was time. A cafeteria worker and part-time loan consultant in Los Angeles, he jumped on Hwy 101 and plunged right in.

"When I left Vietnam my mission in life was to forget I was there,'' he said. "I think I pretty much succeeded.''

But there was something that kept him in the Blackhorse loop. It was a psychedelic painting of a soldier wearing a helmet by a buddy, John Weigle, an artist. Weigle painted it on the back of a box of C rations.

"I've been carrying that around since 1970,'' Bryant said. "So when I knew I was coming up here for this reunion, I decided to look him up.''

They reconnected in September. Bryant said Weigle probably would never, ever attend a Vietnam reunion of any sort. However, Byant said, the former soldier-artist said it's OK to print copies of that battlefield painting for his old buddies in the regiment.