The Grady Myers drawing "Still Life with CIB" is on display in Surrealism and War, which opens this Memorial Day at the National Veterans Art Museum. The work is among others from the NVAM's permanent collection that are included in the six-month exhibit and series of special events.

War is almost by definition a surreal enterprise. That's certainly the impression I got when listening to Grady tell the stories that we captured in his memoir "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War."

It's interesting that Grady chose the Combat Infantry Badge as the subject of this, the most abstract of his war-related works. Among his military decorations, he was most proud of the CIB. It meant he hadn't just served in the Army. He'd seen battle -- and, as this piece suggests, paid a price for that experience. This disheveled soldier does not fit his clothes and seems disjointed, harried. He has seen a lot. Are his eyes closed against  memories of violence and fear?

Surrealism, write the exhibit curators, is "an attempt to revolt against the inherent contradictions of a society ruled by rational thought while dominated by war and oppression. Surrealism seeks expression of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and free of aesthetic and moral preoccupation. It is this same absence of control exercised by reason that many combat veterans seek to explore and express after their experiences in war."

"Still Life with CIB" is one of four pieces that Grady created in the 1990s for a traveling exhibit of work by Vietnam veterans. That project evolved into the Chicago museum, which is the repository of Grady's original Vietnam-related artwork.

That art is reproduced in "Boocoo Dinky Dow." But the small-format book doesn't do justice to the original poster-sized works. It's wonderful to know they are occasionally brought out for public viewing.

Like the recognition due to Vietnam veterans, it was a long time coming. But the audiobook version of "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War" was worth waiting for.

Grady Myers was a consummate storyteller, with a voice full of inflection, sound effects and damned-if-it-isn't-true panache. The audiobook narrator does Grady justice. He is Jeffrey S. Fellin, who is both an actor and a military veteran. He spent decades as a U.S. Army and National Guard helicopter pilot and instructor.

Though Jeff was too young for Vietnam, he served with many pilots who flew in that war. He heard their stories and "Boocoo Dinky Dow" rings true to him.

And he enjoys Grady's sense of humor.  While he was recording the book, he emailed me to say: "Today I had to go back and edit out my laughing at Grady's writing about the animal names in his Basic Training battalion."

Jeff got a double dose of basic -- first, in the Air Force in 1976. Then, after he finished college, he did Army basic in 1986. Another thing he shared with Grady was suffering in the line of duty. Jeff suffered a severe back injury while serving in the Germany. Plus, like Grady, he towers over most of us. Jeff is 6-foot-4, just an inch shy of Grady.

"Reading this memoir I feel strangely connected  to Grady, and lament that I will not be able to meet him in this life," he told me. "We share many parallels, like both being Medevaced half way round the world in a C-141, both recuperating at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver."

He added: "My goal is to do PFC Grady proud by telling his story."

He's done just that.

The audiobook is available through Amazon, Audible and iTunes.

By Julie Titone

"I’d been on the hill for a day when the cook decked out the food hut with Yuletide bunting. Choppers flew in with bins of hot holiday meals. Along with the food and mail came tasseled, tissue-lined, gold-lettered menus. Each one was stamped with a red and green shield of the United States Army in Vietnam and an address indicating the forthcoming turkey a la king had made its way to the front lines compliments of Gen. Creighton Abrams, commander of all U.S. forces in South Vietnam. " -- Grady Myers recounting Christmas 1968 in "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War." 

As Grady goes on to explain in his memoir, the fancy dinner amid the squalor of Fire Support Base 30 came with a nasty little surprise from the enemy. 

Here's the U.S. Army menu from that day and the message that Abrams sent the troops. It begins: "Christmas has a special meaning for the soldiers who serve in Vietnam. Amid the tragedy and ugliness of war, the Holy Season reminds us of the joy and beauty of peace." 

Peace in Vietnam was a long time coming -- seven more years, in fact. But on Christmas Eve 1968, high above the madness of war, Apollo 8  astronauts were sending stunning photos from lunar orbit and their season's greetings "to all of you on good Earth."

Grady Myers lay wounded in the heat of an ambush. If he called out for help, he knew he'd be shot again. If he didn't, his platoon mates would think he was dead, and he would end up in enemy hands.

I thought of that battlefield scene when I saw this message: "They can't rescue you if you don't know you need it." Of course, it's meant to encourage military folks to get help dealing with mental trauma. Which also makes me think of Grady.

You have to read between the lines of his vivid, sometimes funny memoir "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War" to know that Grady went to war suffering from depression. And -- though he lived a rich life as an artist, friend and family guy -- the problem didn't go away.  It's hard to say how much his war experience affected his state of mind. The lingering pain from physical wounds certainly took a mental toll.  For sure, Grady didn't like the stereotype of the "crazy veteran," which would have made him reluctant to seek help for depression. For doubly sure, the illness contributed to the health problems that led to his death at age 61, long before the master storyteller had run out of tales to tell.

Thankfully, the stigma of mental health problems is fading. Nowadays, if someone he knew hesitated to seek counseling, Grady would tell them to "Knock it off!"  He'd urge them to speak up. Like he did in Vietnam.

This article first appeared in The Spokesman Review.

By Julie Titone

At the sight of me cradling an M-60 like the one he carried in Vietnam, Grady Myers would have rocked back on his heels and wiped tears of laughter from under his thick eyeglasses.

Julie, complete with silver swoosh in her hair, was a 5-foot-3 machine gun granny.

Hefting 23 pounds of firepower was one of many surprises I’ve had while sharing “Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War,” the story of Grady’s U.S. Army life in 1968-’69. He was a crackerjack storyteller who used artwork and humor to brighten a dark subject. I co-authored the memoir and published it in 2012, a year after his death.  

The machine gun episode took place after a book reading at the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis, Wash. Despite my uneasiness with firearms, I had been curious about the M-60, which soldiers called the pig. It’s what Grady humped through the tropical heat and up the mountainsides, what he was firing in the ambush that he barely survived. So when museum staff asked if I’d like to hold one, curiosity won out over discomfort.

Good stories like Grady’s are timeless. Still, it can be a challenge to interest people in a book about a war that many don’t remember and others want to forget. One way I do that is to ask if there are any veterans in the family. One 50-something bookstore customer furrowed her brow and answered, “No.” Then her son reminded her that Uncle Bob served in Vietnam. “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “But he never talked about it.”

I’ve met a lot of Uncle Bobs lately. Many have opened up about their war experiences after reading “Boocoo Dinky Dow.”

Often a veteran’s first response to the book is a cheerful recognition of the title. “Dinky dow! I haven’t heard that in 40 years!” It is how American soldiers heard the French/Vietnamese phrase beaucoup dien cai dau, meaning very crazy. Vets regularly chide me for using the Urban Dictionary spelling of the slang expression. It should, they insist, be bookoo, or bucu. One gave me a lapel pin that reads “Dinky dau.”

I was unprepared for my emotional connection to the scores of combat veterans I’ve met. The vets who chat with me after book readings. Who visit my living room. Who post comments on the “Boocoo Dinky Dow” Facebook page. How else to put this? I love these guys.

Another surprise: the depth of readers’ curiosity about my relationship with Grady. Why, people wonder, would a woman put so much effort into sharing her ex-husband’s story with the world? I tell them that a writer can’t let a good story go to waste—certainly not a story about a gentle, nearsighted teenager who is transformed into a machine gunner nicknamed Hoss and thrust into an insane conflict on the other side of the world.  

My biggest motivation was to honor Grady. Even though we divorced long before he died, he remained a friend. (One of his platoon mates responded to this information by saying, “Well, that’s refreshing!”)

Body counts, Agent Orange, Zippo raids, napalm, post-traumatic stress and political gamesmanship. All were signatures of the Vietnam “police action” (never officially a war), and I’ve learned a lot more about them in the last year. I’ve seen battlefield photos I’d like to banish from my brain. What I am happy to remember are the many personal stories I’ve gotten in return for sharing Grady’s. They’re like pieces of a puzzle. Put together, they create a picture of war’s trajectory and of its impact on our national psyche.    

I could fill another book with these stories. 

That unusually cheerful professor I know? Turns out he’d been a soldier who, after zipping so many buddies into body bags, came home determined to savor each day. Another veteran calls Vietnam the best thing that could have happened to him, because it kept him out of the family business, which was the Mafia.  

One fellow remembers strangers who, upon seeing his uniform, bought him drinks and meals. Another insists he was spat upon by war protesters. A former protester, still a peace activist, winces at the memory of menacing police dogs.

One man did his best to stay out of Vietnam, then spent years wondering what he’d missed. A woman who wrote a friend one week into his tour of duty got the letter back, unopened. He didn’t live to read it. A widow only recently learned her husband had served in Vietnam; she discovered that while going through his papers after his death.

One fellow recalls running through his college dormitory, deliriously happy that he’d gotten a high draft number. He passed other students who sat sullenly on their beds, letters in hand.  

A broad-shouldered Native American, handing me a book to sign, describes with pride how his platoon buddies called him Chief. “Anybody else, I wouldn’t let them do that.”

A high school dropout from Brooklyn carried his platoon’s radio in Vietnam. Its antennae made him a ready target. But he survived his year in-country, earned a Ph.D. and became a leading authority on English composition. A Chicago fellow got drafted after one year of college and was so traumatized by his war experiences that he couldn’t return to the classroom. His dream of being a history teacher evaporated.    

A Washington state man survived four tours as an Army aerial gunner. He kept re-enlisting because he thought his talent for killing was keeping Americans alive. He returned home unscathed, became a long-distance trucker, then nearly died after a driver pulled in front of him. He married his nurse, raised a family and bought an Illinois tavern.

Though I sometimes overdose on the subject of war, I haven’t tired of hearing stories or meeting veterans. I admire their resilience. I look beyond their gray hair and see them standing bronzed, slender and bare-chested in the red soil of Vietnam. I imagine them sitting down in a tavern, like the one in Illinois, laughing with Grady as he mimics helicopter sounds and talks about his crazy, explosives-happy buddies—including the ones who, eyes wide with fear, came running to save his life, “just like in the movies.”  

Julie Titone’s writing and photography have appeared in Northwest regional, national and international publications.  

The military loves rank and insignia. Why not designate worthy veterans as Top Brass Volunteers? I'd nominate Bill Crist.

Bill is a fixture at the National Veterans Art Museum, where Grady's work is part of the permanent collection. When I gave a reading from "Boocoo Dinky Dow" at the Chicago museum last spring, Bill was my guest veteran reader. (Because Grady died in 2011, I like to have a fellow join me to bring a male voice to the telling of his story.)

Bill did more than read passages from the memoir. He talked about his own experiences with the Army's 25th Infantry in Vietnam. He told his stories with flair, conviction and a charming lack of political correctness. Afterwards, he gave the audience a tour of "The Things They Carried," an exhibit of military gear that he organized and helped finance.

It struck me that Bill's greatest contribution is his willingness to talk about his own difficult journey since Vietnam. He told me some of his story after the museum reading. We met up at a neighborhood bar. He insisted on buying me a cocktail, but ordered a soft drink for himself.

"I was an alcoholic for 15 years," Bill told me. "I was just trying to kill the bad memories in my head. Now I've been sober for 15 years."

Post-traumatic stress was affecting him as soon as he came back, in 1971, from a world of sniper fire and body count competitions. Before being drafted, he'd started college. "I couldn't go back to school after 'Nam. I wanted to be a history teacher, but gave that up."

He found work in a warehouse, as a truck driver, as a salesman. Over the years, his stress piled up like so many sandbags on his soul. "I've been to Vietnam in my mind more than 300 times," he said. Eventually, he ended up at Hines VA Hospital, where he spent 50 days in the psychiatric ward. Art therapy was part of his treatment. One day, "a therapist asked us to draw something in our minds that was bothering us."

Bill responded with "colors that kind of like to jump off the page and go after you." His illustrations of soldiers and veterans show troubled faces, bloody limbs, American flags. They ended up in the museum collection (see them here), even though "I never intended for anyone to see those drawings."

Bill has lectured at Loyola University about his post-war trauma. When he takes student groups through the museum, he shares what happened during the war. The kids love trying on the rucksack that he donated to the exhibit. They like his candid recollections, such as the fact he didn't stand up when he had to pee in Vietnam because that was a sure way for a soldier to become a target.
 
It's a tough sell to get veterans to volunteer and share their stories with the public, Bill said. He'd be glad to mentor anyone who'd like to soldier up and give it a try.  

We use "heart of stone" to describe the absence of emotion. Yet the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is stone that practically throbs with emotion. Sadness, memories and gratitude converge at the reflective granite. That's why I wanted Grady Myers's memoir  "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War" to be among the many items left there in remembrance. 

My sisters Maureen and Angela did the honors for me this summer. Angela lives in D.C.;  Maureen and her family were visiting from Texas. Her husband Albert captured the occasion with these photos. Above, 10-year-old Ross and Maureen are holding the book below the name of Lt. George Callan. George, Joseph Strucel and Antonio Garcia died in the March 1969 ambush in which Grady was severely wounded.

Ross had heard of the war, but didn't know much about it. He didn't know so many Americans had died in Vietnam. Like everyone who visits, he was impressed by the 58,286 names engraved in the granite. He also noticed how quiet and respectful the visitors were.

"I had been to the memorial before but was still amazed at how far The Wall goes ... and how many are honored there," Maureen wrote to me later. "After reading 'Boocoo Dinky Dow,' it was more of a personal experience as the book gave a better idea of just what the soldiers like Grady and George went through. It was a hot, humid day and construction/detours to the memorial were frustrating, but nothing in comparison to what the soldiers experienced."

Angela had visited several times since 1992. "When I've been before, it was just so crowded. But this time, there was hardly anyone there," she said. She was grateful not to be jostled by crowds, but added: "I just don't want people to forget." That doesn't seem to be happening. The Vietnam Memorial is 13th among the country's most-visited historic sites.  

People leave many things at the Wall, from yellowing letters to teddy bears. On the day that "Boocoo Dinky Dow" was propped up against the granite, it was momentarily alone because visitors' offerings had just been gathered up for the archives. For a touching account of the archive process, be sure to read The Things They Left Behind: Artifacts from the Vietnam Memorial.

Basic training came as a brutal shock to the systems of what Walt Morrow calls "a bunch of freewheeling Boiseans" -- the group of 18 or 19 young Idaho men who were drafted together one summer day in 1968. The draftees included Grady, who recounts his U.S. Army experiences in "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War." And they included Walt, who remembers Grady as smart as well as funny.

"He was a guy with great intellect and a really dry sense of humor," says Walt, recalling that the other  trainees had to pay close attention to catch the double meaning of what Grady said within earshot of the drill sergeant. They'd be marching along and suddenly get the joke. "Then you'd have to keep from smirking or you'd be down doing pushups."

Walt's fun times at Fort Lewis included huddling near the barracks coal furnace with Grady and other trainees. All eyes were on a cake that Bob Ramsey's mom had brought him.

"Bob stabs a pocket knife in it and it goes 'clunk.' She had put a pint of whiskey in the center of the cake. Each guy took two pulls on the pint and it was gone."

Given the chronic hunger of the trainees, the cake no doubt disappeared just as quickly.

Like Grady, Walt was an M-60 machine gunner in Vietnam. He survived 13 months, while Grady served three months before being seriously wounded. Grady, awaiting evacuation, crossed paths with Walt in a field hospital. In "Boocoo Dinky Dow," he recalls it this way:

I’d spotted Morrow, who was in the 1st Air Cavalry Division, pulling himself on crutches through the ward. He told me that he arrived at his first firebase assignment only to have the company pack into helicopters and fly away while he and another replacement continued to stand O.P. for no one. It was a full, fearful day after they were abandoned before they frantically flagged down a passing Huey. The suspicious gunship pilot circled for a long time and called in another Huey before a third chopper was summoned to rescue the stranded soldiers.

Walt remembers the encounter, but not being on crutches that day. Asked about his wounds, he allows that there was "some shrapnel stuff." And, later, "some poisoning stuff."

"I don't have any bad memories of that time," says Walt, who lives in Meridian, Idaho. "Just interesting memories."

His stories from the war years are full of resilience and humor. Like the one about being in the San Francisco airport, in his dress greens, coming home from 'Nam. Fresh from primitive conditions in the field and having enjoyed a cocktail or two, he didn't think twice about using a newfangled airport urinal. Two years later, he had a flush of enlightened embarrassment when he saw another hand-washing sink.

Grady would've liked that one. What a shame he and Walt didn't connect after the war.

Fourth Platoon's new lieutenant, writes Grady Myers in Boocoo Dinky Dow, "was a stocky Californian with a thick moustache that curled up on the ends. He told us how he used to live on the third floor of a warehouse in L.A."  His name was George and he was "so mature, a natural officer."

George was also one of three men who were killed on March 5, 1969. That's when members of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, walked into an ambush near the Cambodian border. He is the only soldier lost that day who is mentioned by name in the book -- and then, only by his first name, because that is how Grady remembered the popular platoon leader. In the ambush chapter of the memoir, he recalls how the last words the lieutenant said may have been some good-natured ribbing that he gave Grady.  And he recalls the impact of George's death.

The medic returned to bandage my arm, rewrap my leg wounds and tear open my bloody shirt to look for more damage. Then he moved on to another wounded man who was lying a couple of yards to the left. To my right was George’s body.

George’s death had devastated the radio operator, who had been his friend, assistant and roommate for nearly a month. I could hear the big RTO crying like a kid into the phone as he called in air strikes. His sobs were more easily understood than his directions. George was dead. The lieutenant was gone.

I'm grateful to Charlie Company veteran Bob Robbins for supplying George Callan's last name, as well as the name of that heartbroken radio operator: Dennis Harris. I'm grateful to DelShahn, the volunteer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, who sent me an etching of Lt. Callan's name as it appears on the Wall in Washington, D.C.

Most especially this Memorial Day, I am deeply aware of the sacrifices George and the others who died in Vietnam, and of men like Grady, who suffered greatly because of the war but lived to share their stories.