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Red Clay
On My Boots
A book by Robert J.
Topmiller. Kirk House Publishers
Reviewed by Karen St. John, VietNow Contributing
Editor
 With his family steadfast against
his plans to enlist in the Marines and
go to Vietnam, 17-year old Robert J. “Doc” Topmiller
did the next best thing – he joined
the Navy in 1966, under the Kiddy Cruiser
Program, which permitted those under the
age of 18 to enlist, with an out date of
one day before their 21st birthday.
At
Great Lakes Naval Station, north of Chicago,
he entered the training for “Hospital
Corpsman” (medic). After completing
his medical training stateside, Topmiller
found himself in two months of intensive
field training on Okinawa, and then arrived
in Danang, Vietnam, in mid-January of 1968,
and immediately continued onward to the
Marine base at Khe Sanh. In between treating
serious wounds and rat bites, Topmiller
filled sand bags and dug bunkers.
Then,
in the wee hours of January 21, the enemy
began an assault of mortars, shells, and
rockets that varied in intensity and damages
for 77 days, until April, when the siege
was finally ended. In June of 1968, General
Westmoreland no longer needed the Khe Sanh
base for defense, and approved its abandonment
and demolition.
“Doc” wastes no time in describing
the results of the Khe Sanh battle. He
lists the casualties of Khe Sanh, and describes
his troubling emotional reactions to the
experience: “… a lifetime
of profound alienation from the society
around me.”
“Doc” doesn’t stop with
the assault on Khe Sanh. He is critical
of the current administration’s attitude
toward war, and has nothing but disdain
for the “neo-conservatives” who
are always ready to attack the patriotism
of Vietnam veterans.
Red Clay On My Boots is
a busy book – bouncing
from Khe Sanh in 1968, to any of “Doc’s” 11
trips back to Vietnam. We read of the religious
persecution that now exists in that country,
references to the military tragedy of My
Lai, and, the devastating and long-lasting
effects of Agent Orange.
Several interesting
photos document “Doc’s” trips
to Vietnam, and some will cause uneasy
reactions: a U.S. helicopter on display
as a trophy at the Tà Cón
Airport Monument, bodies strewn along a
water point, the author drinking beer and
toasting with members of the Peoples Army
of Vietnam, and the children who suffer
the effects of Agent Orange.
“Doc” writes well, and with
candor. He is articulate, logical, thoughtful,
and insightful. Because of his educational
rather than emotional approach, Red Clay
On My Boots more often reads like a social
studies lesson than a personal story. The
reader might feel grateful to “Doc” for
that, though. His slightly detached, intellectual
style in presenting an account of one of
the worst battles of the Vietnam War makes
it easier to absorb the harsh statistics
of that horrific assault.
Instead of assailing
the senses with vivid descriptions of the
sight and smell of blood, death, and tears,
the facts are put gently upon the reader’s
mind to absorb, calming a heart that starts
to beat too fast over the account of the
siege, or clearing a throat that starts
to feel choked over the loss and destruction
of so many lives.
Red Clay On My Boots is
an excellent reference book for the historic
events leading up to the Vietnam War, and
our country’s
misguided approach to the conflict. It’s
hard not to make comparisons to the current
conflicts in the Middle East, and feel
apprehension.
You can learn a great deal
about the Vietnam War from this book, and
you will also learn a great deal more about “Doc” than
he may have intended. Even he could not
escape the very good job he does of placing
himself upon each page of his narrative.
“Doc’s” inability to
resist the pull of the Vietnam War is evident
in the broken promise he made to his wife
not to visit Khe Sanh in 1996, and the
repeated visits to Vietnam. He takes the
weight of the war upon his own shoulders,
apologizing for the destruction to the
innocents – even apologizing
to the enemy. He seeks forgiveness for
himself and for our country, in the hope
of receiving the healing forgiveness in
return.
The red clay of Khe Sanh isn’t
just on “Doc’s” boots.
It’s under his skin, in his air passages,
and in his hair. He walks around in a psychic
layer of red clay dust, like the sweet
character on Charlie Brown, unable to shake
the dust off or move out of its cloud.
He breathes it in through his survivor’s
guilt and flashbacks, through his multiple
returns to “in country,” and
even through his teaching.
May “Doc” and
other veterans living with the red clay
dust of Khe Sanh, find their breath of
fresh air soon. Heaven knows they certainly
deserve it.
Karen St. John is a freelance writer,
living
in Indianapolis. You can read more of her
writing at www.stjohnjournals.com.
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