05/04/2017
Back to the battlefield, 50 years later
BY TARA SMITH
At 100 feet high, the red, white and blue
Vietnam Veterans Memorial is impossible
to miss as you drive past Bald Hill. The
view from the top on a clear day boasts
a panorama of Fire Island and the Long
Island Sound. For Vietnam veterans such
as Long Island native Bill Stilwagen, the
monument brings them 8,000 miles beyond
our island to the shores of Vietnam.
Stilwagen served in Vietnam in 1969
along the DMZ with the 12th Marines as
a field radio operator. The following year,
he served as door gunner on CH-46s with
HMM-364 (Purple Fox Squadron) out of
Marble Mountain near Da Nang. He left
Vietnam on July 4, 1970. “It was my own
independence day,” he said, recalling how
men on the ground fired tracer rounds
into the night sky to celebrate July 4 as he
began the journey home.
Since then, Stilwagen has been back to
Vietnam 50 times as a tour guide with Vietnam
Battlefield Tours, a nonprofit group
based in San Antonio, Texas. Earlier this
month, Stilwagen, who now lives in Virginia,
returned home to give a talk at the Patchogue-Medford
Library called “Traveling
in the Company of Heroes,” sponsored by
the Patchogue-based Colonel Josiah Smith
Chapter of the Daughters of the American
Revolution. “The stories were incredible to
hear,” said Dr. Joan Nathan, Regent of the
DAR. “They do healing work.”
Stilwagen explained that the tours lead
veterans, their family members and anyone
interested to the battlefields of Southeast
Asia. “It’s extremely healing to come
full circle in your life and walk the places
we walked when we were young and full
of grit,” Stilwagen said. Vietnam, Stilwagen
explained, was the first adult experience
for many young men, away from their
parents and from a “homogenized” society.
“For most of us, battle was an hour
ago — it’s that vivid in our minds,” he said.
“It’s like your first broken heart. You never
forget that one.”
You may think that revisiting the battlefields
may be triggering for some veterans.
“It’s not like the movies, where you’re
holding your buddy in your arms and he
dies,” Stilwagen said. “You keep moving,
keep pressing forward. The most you hear
is a helicopter taking him away and you’re
left with no chance to grieve or say goodbye.”
Stilwagen has led hundreds of veterans
to sites where they or their buddies
were wounded, or killed. Standing at those
sites 50 years later, Stilwagen said, does
bring a sense of closure. “[The tours] are
emotional at some moments, but whenever
you get a group of veterans together,
it’s a laugh riot,” Stilwagen said. “Everyone
comes back changed for the better.”
Stilwagen has found that after enduring
the heat and humidity while hiking through
the jungle and mountains, young people
come home the most profoundly changed.
“At the end of the tour, the kids have a
whole new respect for veterans,” he said.
Stilwagen explained that there’s a boilerplate
tour with the option to customize
trips to include places needed by veterans
or loved ones, by looking into declassified
records or personal family history. “We put
boots on the ground and walk. There’s no
sense in coming halfway around the world
and not seeing something you wanted to,”
he said.
One such tour has stayed with Stilwagen,
who brought a widow named Judy
back to the site where her husband, a
helicopter pilot, was shot down. Their
daughter Marcy was only 35 days old when
her father was killed and lived the rest of
her life — cut tragically short at 33 years
old — wondering about her dad.
Upon the death of her daughter, Judy
booked a tour, which included a trip to
her husband’s KIA site, where she placed
a white cross and her daughter’s ashes. “It
was a way for her to make sure [Marcy]
could be with the father she never met,”
Stilwagen said.
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the room,”
said Councilman Michael Loguercio after
presenting Stilwagen with a proclamation
recognizing his efforts to help veterans,
including his instrumental role in the
installation of the memorial at Bald Hill.
Stilwagen also holds 11 military decorations,
including the Air Medal for heroic
action, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry,
and the Purple Heart.
Stilwagen served as the first executive
director of the newly formed Suffolk
County Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission
in the 1980s. Hundreds of design
entries were submitted; the commission
eventually settled on a design by Bob Fox,
a Vietnam veteran from Massachusetts.
“We wanted something that would complement
the Wall in Washington, D.C., but
not be the same type of thing,” Stilwagen
said, pointing to subtle differences. “You
look down in reverence, in sadness,” he
said of the somber D.C. memorial. “In
Farmingville, you look up in hope.”
“So many lives have been changed for
the better because he has made a commitment
to help those who need it the most,”
Loguercio added.
This September, Stilwagen will return to
Vietnam for the 51st time, a trip he always
looks forward to. “The South Vietnamese
have never forgotten the sacrifices we
made for them so long ago,” he said. “They
welcome us into their huts for tea, they’re
happy to see us again,” he added. “It really
is a beautiful thing to experience.”■
This month, Brookhaven Councilman Michael Loguercio awarded Vietnam veteran Bill
Stilwagen with a proclamation recognizing his efforts to help veterans, including his
instrumental role in the installation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Bald Hill.
