Decades Later, Vietnam War Keeps On Killing

WASHINGTON - It took 20 years for the battle outside Firebase Black Horse to kill Lee Schaaf.

Twenty years, five months and six days, to be exact; from the bloody afternoon near Xuan Loc, Vietnam, to the winter day in Pennsylvania when his heart finally gave out and his lungs filled and his stricken wife yelled at the emergency-room staff, "He's dying!"

This past week, his country acknowledged his sacrifice, adding the name of the 41-year-old paraplegic from Erie, Pa., to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial here and paying tribute not only to his death but to his valiant life as well.

The honor came during a windblown ceremony, under a blue sky with scudding clouds and the morning sun just beginning to warm the polished black granite of the wall.

It came as hushed tourists walked among fallen leaves and as a dozen grizzled veterans from a West Virginia veterans hospital posed with a plaque reading: "In memory of our absent brothers and sisters."

And it served as a moving reminder that after all these years the war still kills and afflicts those it touched. The names of three other men whose recent deaths have been attributed to their war injuries also are being inscribed, bringing the wall's total to 58,196.

The ceremony began about 10 a.m. when veterans and government officials honored, among others, Schaaf's wife, Mary Schaaf, 45, who had been his fiancee when he was wounded on Sept. 5, 1969.

Schaaf himself had stood near the spot one spring day about eight years ago when he and his family had visited Washington and, reluctantly, the memorial. Then, the wall had depressed him, his wife said. It already bore the names of five comrades who were killed outright in the battle in which he was wounded.

Schaaf is among four Army men and a Navy officer who died as a result of the Vietnam War and will be added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in time for Veterans Day ceremonies this coming week.

The other servicemen are Thomas L. Gates, of Cincinnati; Robert H. Holloway, of Keithsburg, Ill.; Francis P. Jelinek, of Chicago, and Douglas E. Peterson, of Fairfield, Iowa.

Four of the names are being added to the wall because their deaths were attributed to gunshot wounds the servicemen received during combat in Vietnam, according to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

The name of Holloway, who was lost overboard from the USS Hancock in February 1966, was omitted inadvertently, officials said.

The Vietnam Veterans Fund, which built and dedicated the memorial on Veterans Day in 1982, pays for all additions and changes to the wall.

The memorial opened with 57,939 names, and 257 have been added since.

ENCOUNTER WITH THE ENEMY

In September 1969, Schaaf and his unit were headquartered at a place called Firebase Black Horse near Xuan Loc, 65 miles northeast of Saigon.

On Sept. 5, he and 100 men from Bravo Company had been hacking through the jungle with machetes, searching for an enemy hospital, said an old war buddy, Joseph Costello.

Suddenly they encountered the enemy. Costello said one of the Americans spotted an object in a tree and pointed it out to Schaaf. He recognized it as a huge enemy mine. He yelled the alarm, just as it blew up right in front of him.

Schaaf, his left leg now filled with shrapnel, was dragged back to an area of supposed safety.

But as the battle with what turned out to be a fortified enemy base camp raged on, snipers opened fire on the wounded. Schaaf was hit twice in the back.

One slug lodged near his heart and stayed there for the rest of his life.

The other later would be extracted and worn by Schaaf on a chain around his neck as long as he lived. The wounds left his legs almost useless.

But gradually he improved, and on Sept. 11, 1971 - two years and six days after his wounding - he and Mary were married in St. George's church in Erie.

Her love for him had never wavered, she said, despite well-meaning cautions from friends about the road ahead.

"There wasn't a day in my life that I ever regretted marrying Lee," Mary Schaaf said. "We had a very special marriage. I loved him with all my heart. It's one of those things that happen once in a lifetime. We had 19 1/2 years.

"And I realized only later that every day was really God-given."

The couple bought a pretty ranch house and raised and schooled three children, and Lee was active in civic organizations.

But there were tough times, too. Lee was tormented by pain. His back was scarred. Once in a while pieces of shrapnel would work their way out of the wounds. He could not hold a steady job and often had to rush to the local veterans hospital in the dead of night for a shot of pain medication, his wife said.

He died unexpectedly on Feb. 11, 1990.

Doctors would determine that he had died as a result of a heart infection, along with a host of effects from his war wounds.

"BITTER WITH EVERYTHING"

After his death, she said at the monument Wednesday, she felt bitter - "bitter with the war, bitter with everything, bitter with life."

But then she heard that, as a Vietnam casualty, Lee might be eligible to have his name on the wall. She sent his medical records to the Department of the Army, and in August the Army informed her that in their view Lee's death was, indeed, a direct result of the Vietnam War.

Wednesday, after she had stood on an aluminum ladder and made the first rubbing of the bleached letters, "Lee R Schaaf," she tearfully shared her thoughts.

Lee might well have been killed that day in the jungle two decades ago, she said. His name might have been up on the memorial from the beginning. But it wasn't. And for that she was very grateful.

"We were given a gift of an extra 21 years," she said, "that the other 58,000 did not have."