“What’s a ditty bag?”
“A duffel bag. When I was embedded at Firebase Phoenix, I’d been sending my film rolls to a lab in Da Nang. I had a buddy from film school, a lab rat working there. He made me copies of the best photos and sent them back to me in these canisters. He said mine were the best photographs he’d seen from military or civilian photographers. I kept the cans in my ditty bag.”
“And you didn’t have it,” I said, the picture becoming clear.
“But I didn’t want to ask anyone about it because I was worried they’d realize they made a mistake, that they sent me home from Nam before my DEROS, and they’d send me back, or that I’d draw attention to the cans and they’d take them.”
“So what did you do?”
“I kept my mouth shut, went home, and waited four months until my stuff arrived. I figured I’d be working as a reporter and photographer at the New York Times in a matter of days.” He smiled, but it was wistful. “They didn’t send the cans.”
I was aghast, and angry. “Why not?”
William took another drag, blew out the smoke, and took a swig of beer. “Initially they said they didn’t know what I was talking about. They said the cans must have been lost.” He shook his head. “Guys had been trying to ship home all kinds of shit—their rifles, pistols, knives. The military got wind of it and started searching bags. If they found stuff, they confiscated it and threatened to prosecute.”
“Why would they take photographs?”
“Because they didn’t want them to wind up in the press. The war was getting enough bad publicity at home from civilian photographers embedded over there. The marines didn’t need one of their own embarrassing them.”
“But they were yours.”
William shook his head and pointed the cigarette at me. “The military said I didn’t own the photographs because I took them during my service. Therefore, the marines owned them.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Another shrug. “Maybe, but they said I signed something that said I forfeited all rights to the photographs. Didn’t matter what they said; the photographs were gone.”
I couldn’t get past the loss. I knew that without those photographs, William was just a guy with a camera. “Did you ever find out if they took them or if they were really lost?”
He nodded. “I kept the cans with the photographs in the same bag with my medals, and my medals made it home.” He took another drag on his cigarette. “It was my own fault. I had contemplated mailing the photographs home, but sending home a package from the bush wasn’t that easy, and it’s likely they would have searched the cans before shipping them and found the photographs anyway. I thought it safest to carry them home with me.”
“You must have been pissed,” I said.
William smiled like I was the most naive person on the planet. “I was home, man. I was home. And I had all my body parts. I never thought that would happen. I figured that if they wanted their photographs of their war, they could keep them. I was done with it. I was done with them. I was done with Vietnam. The way I looked at it, I beat Vietnam. I made it home.”
I guessed that was true, and I was sure it was paramount, but I kept thinking there had to be a way to fix the situation. After a few moments, I asked, “What medals did you get?” I thought the medals would have improved his chances of getting a job at a newspaper.
William shrugged. “The Combat Action Ribbon is the one that really counts. That says you fought, that you were in the shit, that you weren’t just support at the rear. That and a Purple Heart.”
I knew the significance of a Purple Heart. “You were wounded?”
William pulled down his T-shirt and showed me a puckered scar on the left side of his chest just below the collarbone. About the size of a quarter, it looked like a spider’s web. “I still don’t have full motion in my shoulder. It’s why I can’t throw a softball worth a shit.”
I recalled from softball games that William’s throws looked like wounded ducks. Now I knew why. “What did you do with the medals?”
“They sat in a box marked VIETNAM in the basement of my parents’ house until I left New Jersey to come out to California. I threw out the box without bothering to open it.”
“Did you know the medals and ribbons were inside?”
“I knew.”
“And you threw them out?” I didn’t understand.