Reviews

Tidings of grief
Vietnam: Angel of Death
by Harry Spiller
Center for Regional History
Southeast Missouri State
University
Cape Girardeau
2002

Imagine recruiting a young man into the U.S. Marine Corps and later having to notify his loved ones that he had been killed in Vietnam.

This is what Harry Spiller did from 1967 through 1969 as a Marine recruiter in southeast Missouri and southern Illinois. He writes about it his heart-wrenching new book Vietnam: Angel of Death.

Spiller, who teaches Criminal Justice at John A. Logan College in Carterville, begins his tale recounting his own experiences in the war around Phu Bai where he endured:

...temperatures of 110 to 120 degrees, leeches, mosquitoes, snakes, ambushes, rice paddies full of human waste, jungle rot, ham and limas, peanut butter and jelly on molded bread, rash and gall, our own body odor, everyone else's body odor, death fear, sleeping on the ground, Charlie, begging children, green tracers, the jungle, twenty-year-old packs of Lucky Strikes and Camels, stinky socks, holey boots and booby traps.

But Spiller's most difficult Vietnam experiences came after he returned to the States and became a recruiter in Cape Girardeau. The irony of his job quickly became apparent. While selling the Marine Corps to students at Fredericktown High School one day he was simultaneously making funeral arrangements for Private First Class Frederick J. Shuh of rural St. Genevieve, who died in March 1967 near Quang Tri. Shuh was killed by friendly fire, which made notifying his parents all the more difficult.

Shuh's was the first of all too many funerals for Spiller over the next two years as mounting American casualties required more replacements for the Corps. Undaunted, Stiller continued to meet his recruiting quotas. It was his job.

While arranging Shuh's funeral at the courthouse in St. Genevieve, Spiller encounted two bright-eyed young men who were eager to join the Marines. Spiller required them to attend the soldier's funeral before he would sign them up. Undaunted, they enlisted anyway, noting that Shuh had "died for his country" and they were ready to fight and die for it too, if necessary.

Lance Corporal Garry Price's parents expected their son home soon from Vietnam, and when Sergeant Spiller got out of his car in front of their home in Gordonville, Missouri, Mrs. Price, seeing only Spiller's backside, thought her son had at last returned. When Spiller faced her she knew the truth and her eyes filled with tears. This solemnface Marine in dress blues was the visitor they dreaded.

"I thought you were my son," the dead soldier's mother said. "He was due any time. He was going to surprise us."

Price had fallen to the "short-timers" curse, his time running out shortly before the end of his tour. Soon after, Spiller began to see himself as an angel of death.

Private John Terry, eighteen and from Cairo, died soon after shipping out to Nam, killed on patrol near Quang Nam. "He's only been there two weeks. You must be mistaken. I just got a letter from him today," the dead soldier's mother said in disbelief when Spiller told her that her son had been killed in action.

Velma and Otto Dobbs of Chaffee, Missouri, received their son Ronnie's last letter the day after Sergeant Spiller brought the news that he wouldn't be coming home. The letter was written two days before Mother's Day, 1968. Meanwhile, a telegram from Ronnie arrived posthumously at the local flower shop requesting a dozen red roses be delivered to his mother. They were. Five days later, Ronnie came home in a military coffin. Of Ronnie's funeral service, Spiller writers:

The ceremony was the same. Prayers, a few words by the minister, the firing squad, Taps, the presentation of the flag ("we present this flag to you in recognition of your son who gave his life in the Republic of Vietnam in defense of the United States of America"), and then it was over.

Casualties were high from Spiller's recruiting region, especially in the small town of Marquand, Missouri, population

20I Illinois Heritage

392. In the summer of 1968, teenage boys were lining up to enlist.

"I would meet them (at a park) and we would fill out the paper work under the oak trees. No sooner would I get one or two enlisted than I would get a phone call from another teenager wanting to join the Marines. I enlisted eighteen-year-old Clifford Combs, seventeen-year-old Lawrence Mills, nineteen-year-old Lindell Francis, and seven or eight other young men whose names I can not remember."

Spiller remembers Combs, Mills, and Francis because they were all killed in action.

At the funeral of Nam casualty Lynn McAllister of Oak Ridge, Missouri, Spiller in his dress blues stood at attention next to the Marine's casket. A small boy approached and asked, "How come you didn't fight in the war?"

"I did," Spiller replied. "How come you didn't get killed?" "I don't know," Spiller responded, "I don't know." That question haunts Spiller to this day, as it does many combat veterans.

If Angel of Death lacks any narrative element it's Spiller's account of his own experiences in Vietnam. Aside from the general list of hardships he and others endured, Spiller speaks little of the conflict. Yet faced with the black granite wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., Spiller chokes back the tears, expressing anger and frustration over how the war in Vietnam was conducted by our leaders.

Writing Angel of Death was cathartic for Spiller. "As I write once again about the war, he concludes, "I feel better, but in doing so I have not put it behind me. I keep bring it back to the surface. And this may be part of our national problem. Resolution may not come until all of the stories are told."

Vietnam: Angel of Death is recommended reading for all those anxious to go to war.

Mike Shephard of New Berlin, is a Vietnam veteran and former Stars and Stripes reporter. He is the author of Like Another Lifetime, in Another World.

Daily life at MPMA

Morgan Park Military Academy was Capt. Edward N. Kirk Talcott's school during the decade of the 1880s and consistency was its hallmark. There were minor adjustments, little changes here and there, but the school in 1888-89 was very much the way it had been in 1880-81.

The catalogue for 1880-81 begins with a description of the "exceedingly healthful" location, noting that it is conveniently located near a suburban commuter train station, and that it is very near two other institutions of learning, the Chicago Female College and the Baptist Theological Seminary. A sketch of buildings and grounds follows, mentioning that the buildings are lighted by gas and "supplied with water from an artesian well 1,700 feet in depth, which possesses especial medicinal and invigorating qualities highly conducive to health."

"The design of the Academy," the 1888-89 catalogue states, "is to furnish adequate preparation for business life, for the best scientific and technological schools of the country, for the government schools at West Point and Annapolis, and [almost as an afterthought] for college." The availability of instruction in art and music gives way to preparation in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, zoology, and natural philosophy.

Religious and moral training were a constant through the decade, with the Bible as a textbook for moral instruction, mandatory Sunday school lessons, and required church attendance. The entire aim of the school was to conduct itself "on the plan of a large, well-regulated Christian family." Students were also required to write a letter to parents each Sunday.

The 1880-81 catalogue, under the heading "General Remarks," made it clear that students who used tobacco ("in any form"), liquor ("of any kind") or "profane or vulgar language" need not apply. Those who gambled or read immoral literature were also not wanted. "Runaways," furthermore, "are not wanted in our school. No guard is placed to prevent Cadets from running away, and no time is wasted in looking after them if they do."

It was called Morgan Park Military Academy, to be sure, but military training was not first and foremost. "We have adopted the military feature," both catalogues state, "not with the idea of training the cadets for a military life, but because it is the best and easiest way to handle such an institution." It was the way, Capt. Talcott and his associates believed, to cultivate good habits and to inculcate physical and mental discipline.

Barry Kritzberg

Illinois Heritage 21