The Vietnam War and the Traveling Soldier

Traveling Soldier

I was working at the Carvery Restaurant at Seattle Tacoma Airport in Washington State during the Vietnam War. In 1968 I was 20, not really old enough in those days to be considered an adult, 21 was the golden age of legal adulthood.  Still I had married at 17 to a Navy man we had two babies by the time I was 19, separated when I was 20.  I moved out of Seattle proper and into the suburbs, in south King County in the winter of 1968 my son Dale wasn’t even a year old.    

There was at that time a large anti war fight going on, not a happy time for our GIs no matter what, where or who, coming home or being deployed.  To give the illusion that they were sending fewer troops overseas they adjusted the times the troops moved though the Sea Tac airport.  This false front was supposed to calm the anti war hippie movement.  Now before you jump on my hippie remark, I had been married to a Sailor stationed aboard the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam, RR was in Saigon.  I was young, not well informed, and under educated at the time.  That happens when you quit school 16 to get married.  

Recently someone said to me that troops travel by military planes yes and no.  The government was sending a lot of troops to Hawaii and Guam (?), before they deployed them to bases in Vietnam. I only know they flew out of Seattle Tacoma Airport using commercial airlines.   

When I first started working at the airport I would see the boys wandering through the airport, reading, eating, sleeping, or just talking together.   They were already there when I went into work at 4 PM and fewer were then when I left at midnight.  Then it changed, it reversed, fewer GIs when I went to work, then at 10 PM the airport would be flooded with all branches of the service.   

The point of this walk into my past is the Song, Traveling Soldier song By the Dixie Chicks (they have been punished enough so get over it). We would be swamped the hour before we closed with America's finest young men ages 17 and up, many drafted and those who volunteered.  

They would sit at the tables and flirt, laugh; was I available, did I want to spend the rest of the evening with them.  More than one young man who asked me to marry him so he had someone to come home to, someone take back to Missouri (insert state of choice) to meet his folks.    They laughed, smiled, and were scared, would they come home, or would the die in that war. 

It was the first war where film came quickly, the first war we saw on TV sometimes as it happened.   

I had not a clue what to say, so I smiled said I hoped to see them on their way back home.

Then there was the young man from New York, he wouldn’t smile, not just scared, but sure he was going to die that he would never see his family again. I tried to say "don't say that"  but he was sure he would die, just like his brother. What do you say, what he said could happen, it did every day? I wanted to tell him he was wrong he would be fine, in the end it was all I could do not to cry.  I don’t remember if he told me his name.  But I listen to this song and cry and think of all those eager young men I saw in the airport night after night, and I hope some of the boys I waited on in the Carvery Restaurant came home alive.

Saroya Poirier   October 30, 2012

Travelin Soldier, written by Bruce Robison in 1996

Two days past eighteen
He was waiting for the bus in his army green
Sat down in a booth in a cafe there
Gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair
He's a little shy so she gives him a smile
And he said would you mind sittin' down for a while
And talking to me,
I'm feeling a little low
She said I'm off in an hour and I know where we can go

So they went down and they sat on the pier
He said I bet you got a boyfriend but I don't care
I got no one to send a letter to
Would you mind if I sent one back here to you

Chorus: I cried
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
Too young for him they told her
Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier
Our love will never end
Waitin' for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter said
A soldier's coming home

So the letters came from an army camp
In California then Vietnam
And he told her of his heart
It might be love and all of the things he was so scared of
He said when it's getting kinda rough over here
I think of that day sittin' down at the pier
And I close my eyes and see your pretty smile
Don't worry but I won't be able to write for awhile

One Friday night at a football game
The Lord's Prayer said and the Anthem sang
A man said folks would you bow your heads
For a list of local Vietnam dead
Crying all alone under the stands
Was a piccolo player in the marching band
And one name read but nobody really cared
But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair

Chorus: I cried
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
Too young for him they told her
Waitin' for the love of a travelin' soldier
Our love will never end
Waitin' for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter said
A soldier's coming home