Friday, December 29, 2006
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Staff photo by Larry GrardCarrying that memory with him for more than three decades, Green and other veterans have embarked on a project to memorialize Maine's Vietnam War dead.
Beginning this spring, they will tour the state with "Mobile Memories," a traveling board that will feature the names, biographies and photographs of all 343 Maine soldiers killed in the war.
"I guess it's because I was a medic," Green said. "I still feel a loss."
Mobile Memories also will feature computers, so visitors can go online to get biographies and other information on the soldiers.
For now, Mobile Memories is immobile. It sits outside the Lakewood Road mobile home Green shares with his wife, Tina. Wreaths and American flags adorn the front of the memorial trailer, which features the names of all 343 soldiers.
At night, spotlights hooked up to a pole and wires provided by Central Maine Power Co. light up the trailer. It is visible from U.S. Route 201, about half a mile north of Yonder Hill Campground.
"I want to make sure some people don't forget these boys, and also want to educate people on the time, and what it was like in Maine," Green said. "We just want to make sure nobody is forgotten."
The Greens are getting help from their son Brandon, former Navy Seal Roddy Kilkenny of Madison and Bill and Glenda Mixer of Carmel. So far, they have collected 70 of the 343 photos.
"We contact family members and what we ask is to scan them," Green said. "We don't want to damage any of their photos."
A 1969 graduate of Dexter High School, Green spent 11 months in Quang Tri Province, near the demilitarized zone in South Vietnam.
It was 1970, and 11 months after he arrived in June, his field infantry unit was sent home as the United States began to scale back its war effort.
Green was there long enough. Trained for 10 weeks, he went right into the battlefields with the Fifth Infantry Division, on patrols and helping dig foxholes.
"It seems like a blur," he said. "One moment might be dead quiet, and the next you had people to work on, and it was just a mess. We were trained as first-step life-savers, and had to stop a lot of bleeding.
"The helicopters would come in and take it from there. By the time you got them all ready, the choppers would be there. There was no waiting."
Green earned the nickname "OD" from his time in Vietnam, because everything he wore was "olive drab."
There was nothing ho-hum, however, about Vietnam.
"It's a serious life," Green said of military service. "It's an adult world. You just don't go home to your parents a day after a battle."
Following three years in the Army, Green made a career as a municipal police officer, many of them spent in his hometown of Dexter.
He recalls a trip he made to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1990.
"It was really emotional," Green said.
"But it was too many people there for me. I'd rather go when there was nobody around.
"I can see that with this memorial. A lot of people like to come at night or early in the morning to look, and just reflect."
Visitors are welcome "24 hours a day, seven days a week," Green said.
He will keep the unfinished Mobile Memories uncovered if, and until, snow begins to pile up.
Point out any of the 70 photos Green has in a big book he calls his "bible," and he can recount a short biography.
Green held up a photo to go with Clyde and Edward Withee of Madison -- both killed in Vietnam. Green recalls having a touching conversation with the Withees' late mother.
Kilkenny, a childhood friend of Green's, helped him pick up the trailer a couple of months ago in Carmel, and has provided Green with some area contacts. He put the memorial into perspective.
"It's good for everybody," Kilkenny said. "It's all our boys -- all 343 of them. I commend him highly. It's a lot of work."
Tina Green has developed a Web site containing all of the material. The first thing seen on the www.bairnet.org/organizations/vva site are the names of Maine's three Vietnam Medal of Honor winners -- Brian Buker of East Benton, Donald Skidgel of Newport and Thomas McMahon of Lewiston. Given a moment, Linwood Green will read aloud through the names of towns that lost more than one soldier within a certain time period. In 1967, he stresses, Lewiston lost seven.
He holds up a newspaper article of the four Buker brothers -- Gerald, Alan, Victor and Brian -- in Vietnam. Green has childhood photos of many of the soldiers, and will do PowerPoint presentations for family members who visit the traveling memorial, once it is finished.
Green, who wrote a poem entitled "For 343," recalled that prior to his best friend Don Hachey's death, Hachey asked him to come up with something that might unite members of the military. In 2000, American Legion Post 185 of Orono gave him $1,000 in seed money for his Vietnam project.
A group of Vietnam veterans employed by Unicel conducted a fundraiser a year later, providing the $4,600 Green used to purchase the mobile memorial. Since then, the Greens and their group have been raising money and working hard to collect the material for Mobile Memories. They do not accept donations from families of the soldiers.
Royce Knowles, a member of American Legion Post 16 in Skowhegan, taught some local Vietnam War veterans while they were students at Skowhegan Junior High School.
Told of the project, Knowles said he will drive to see the trailer soon.
"That will be something," Knowles said. "I think it's a heck of a good idea. I would think that would be a big project."
The Greens urge any family members of soldiers killed in Vietnam to call 474-0544 or 478-6220 with information and to visit the Web site. For now, it's a race against the time -- perhaps Memorial Day -- when Mobile Memories has its first big date.
"We'll go wherever we're requested," Green said.
Green can be assured of a waiting list. That's fine with him.
"It's very emotional for me," he said. "Sometimes I just can't hold it together."
Larry Grard -- 474-9534, Ext. 343
lgrard@centralmaine.com
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