A Veterans Day Reunion

On Veterans Day, Jerry Barfield walked up to Tom Corey in a Washington hotel and introduced himself. Corey didn’t recognize him. Barfield had seen Corey’s name on an e-mail list some time before and was shocked at the sight of it. When he heard Corey would be at the Veterans Day dinner, he made inquiries.

When Barfield introduced himself, he told Corey he was one of the guys who put him on the chopper. They laughed when Barfield said, "You look a lot better now than you did then." He thought Corey was dead that day 34 years ago. Everybody did. Even Corey himself.

They hugged. They cried. Each says he gets emotional about these kinds of things now. Each says every moment means so much more now. "All kinds of things were running through my mind," Corey said.

On Jan. 31, 1968, in Quang Tri Province, 22-year-old Tom Corey was a squad leader with a First Cav unit. Jerry Barfield was a lieutenant’s RTO. A call came in to saddle up for a ride into a hot LZ. Corey had a bad feeling about it, a premonition he couldn’t shake. He didn’t want to go.

"I was trying to get my guys organized and not show them I had any bad feelings about where we were going," he said. "I had a responsibility, especially to the new guys."

On the flight to the LZ, Corey sat on the floor at the helicopter’s door with his feet on the skid. He liked to stay close to the door "in case those things fall from the sky." The helicopter didn’t touch down at the LZ, but hovered a few feet off the ground. Corey and his squad jumped, the bad feeling hanging with him all the way. He couldn’t rid himself of it.

They headed for dikes near the village. They called in artillery and air strikes. When the barrage ended, Corey stuck his head up over the dike’s edge to see the best way to approach the village and to locate other men. He saw a flash come from the tree line. It was the last thing he would remember clearly for a long time.

The bullet hit his neck on the left side, severed the main artery and the jugular vein, went through his back, hit his spinal cord, and exited his right shoulder.

That day, and for years afterward in hospital after hospital, people asked, Why is he alive? The artery, the vein. How could he live? He wondered himself. He thought he was dying, if not dead already.

"I remember saying words to myself, 'God forgive me,’ ’’ he said. "It’s like when you go to confession in the Catholic Church. I felt I needed to be forgiven for anything I might have done in my life, because I thought that was it. I was on my way out. I thought I had died."

Then came the hospitals - Japan, California, Colorado, Tennessee. Critical care wards. Burned men. Disfigured men. A triple amputee who screamed incessantly because there wasn’t enough medication to bring relief from the pain. Brief moments of consciousness lapsed into long periods of darkness. Someone told him he was paralyzed. He didn’t understand what it meant.

"I don’t remember who told me," Corey said. "It didn’t come across that I was paralyzed permanently. I tried to move and nothing on my body moved."

Tom Corey is the president of Vietnam Veterans of America now and one of the architects of the Veterans Initiative, an endeavor meant to bring healing to people on both sides of the war. He said it never occurred to him over the years that he would be in a position to give back in a meaningful way to so many people.

On Veterans Day, he sat at Jerry Barfield’s table in the hotel banquet room, talking about the war, looking at photo albums filled with Barfield’s Vietnam memories.

"I told him how much I admired him for what he was doing," Barfield said. "Most people in his condition would just give up on life and you couldn’t blame them in a sense. I admire him for what he’s done for Vietnam veterans. If I would have been in Tom’s position, I probably would have just given up on life."

Corey said such thoughts were not unfamiliar to him, that "giving up" was a companion for many years. The thoughts come to him even now. He knew men who had chosen to quit.

"I thought about it a lot," Corey said. "I thought about it in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s. I lost several friends to suicide when I was in therapy in Memphis. I go through it every once in a while. Then I think about the things I do have, the things God has blessed me with, the family and friends and people who are so important to me. So I hang in some more."

Jerry Barfield said he spent 21 years in the Army and laughs at the thought. Old friends said he hated the Army so much they couldn’t begin to imagine that he’d make a career out of it. He said he gets "real emotional now when I talk about my guys."

"It’s hard to put into words what I felt when I saw Tom," he said. "When I was in the Army, I was never like this. It’s different now, but I don’t know why."

Corey said the moments Barfield described carry significant weight.

"Vietnam changed the lives of those who served," he said. "There is only one group of people who understand that change. It’s important that we talk about it, about the sacrifices that were made. No one else wants to talk about those things. No one understands. The guys on The Wall, the guys who have left us since then - thousands have left us so early, dying of things related to what happened to them in Vietnam. There are so many people. It’s all around us. It’s important to make that connection. It’s important to touch those people we served with."