HILARY SCHWAB
HOMETOWN
As seen in the
September/October
2009 issue of
Reston says he was “gaga” over the
experience of being a character in a
play and then a movie.
Unforgotten
G e o rg e W h i t e h o u s e n e v e r re a l l y l e f t t h e b u d d i e s
who died so needlessly in Vietnam
By Steve Roberts
“
I
carry their names right here in my wallet,” George Whitehouse says as he
hands me a well-worn piece of paper.
There are seven of them, all casualties
of the Vietnam War. Three were high
school friends who died before Whitehouse graduated from American University in 1969 and was drafted into the
Army. Four were members of his artillery
unit, accidentally killed by an American
shell just before U.S. involvement in the
war ended in 1973.
Whitehouse had written down where
to find the names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. “That
wall is a big wall, so when I go down there
I don’t have to look in the book,” he
24 Bethesda Magazine May/June 2010
explains. “These guys died; I didn’t go to
any of their funerals, I don’t know where
they’re buried. The only real contact you
have is to be able to go down and visit
that wall.”
The veteran visits the wall regularly,
always looking for the names in his wallet. But in January, Whitehouse made
another journey that reconnected him
with his lost buddies. He returned to Vietnam for 10 days as part of a delegation
sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial Fund, which supports efforts
to clean up unexploded ordnance that
still kills and maims Vietnamese civilians
almost 37 years after American troops
left the country.
Now 62, Whitehouse helped launch
thousands of rounds against the enemy—
including the very last U.S. shell of the
war—so the trip provided a whole new
perspective on his experiences. “I view Vietnam not as a war anymore, but as a country and a people,” he says. “I really do.”
Whitehouse grew up in Bethlehem,
Pa., where his father, a flight engineer
during World War II, worked for the
Internal Revenue Service. His uncle had
been an intelligence officer who dropped
behind German lines before D-Day. So
the military was in his blood, and when
he left for college in 1965, his father
warned, “You probably won’t end up graduating when you think you are. There’s
As seen in the May/June 2010 issue of Bethesda Magazine
Right: Aug. 10, 1972. The last round fired in Vietnam, by B Battery 3/82nd Artillery—a historic
moment in which Whitehouse took part.
COURTESY US ARMY
this thing called Vietnam…”
His friends from home started dying.
Then his younger brother, Tom, “goofed
off ” in college and was quickly drafted.
As we chat one snowy morning in his
office near White Flint, this peppery, personable accountant no longer looks like
the soldier he once was. But the past is not
far from his thoughts: “That’s what I lived
with, it was very personal to me. I lived
through the anti-war movement, but I was
not part of it. I took the other view.”
After graduation, he had few options.
Finding a “friendly doctor” and wangling
a medical deferment was out of the question for this son and nephew of proud
WWII vets. Enlisting meant a higher rank
but a longer commitment than waiting
for the draft, and since Whitehouse was
already working at an accounting firm in
Bethesda, living on Battery Lane and “eating three meals a day at the Tastee Diner,”
he wanted to finish quickly. So when the
draft board back in Bethlehem called his
number, he went willingly and was sent
to artillery training at Fort Sill, Okla.
“All the guys I was with were just like
me, college grads who were accountants
or engineers,” Whitehouse recalls. “We
all had high math scores, and artillery is
all math.”
Whitehouse’s job was to analyze infor26 Bethesda Magazine May/June 2010
Below: Tom Whitehouse,
Gen. Tranh Hanh, George
W. Whitehouse and
George A. Whitehouse in
Hanoi, Vietnam, at the
headquarters of the
Veterans Association of
Vietnam. Gen. Hanh was
a fighter pilot during the
Vietnam conflict and later
commander of the
Vietnamese Air Force.
COURTESY WHITEHOUSE FAMILY
Below: April 1972. Whitehouse is standing in front
of the 3/82nd Fired Direction Center in Da Nang.
COURTESY US ARMY
HOMETOWN
mation from troops in the field and tell
the gunners where to aim. It was a strange
business, delivering death to an unseen
target many miles away. “It’s a misnomer
to say that people in combat see the enemy all the time,” he says. “You just don’t.”
What he did see were the four Americans cut down by an artillery barrage
they mistakenly called in on their own
position. Whitehouse knew the men, he
helped fire the shot that killed them, and
the tragedy scars him to this day. “I was
part of that whole incident. I was there
when it happened.”
The war was winding down, and a few
weeks later camera crews crowded around
as Whitehouse’s unit fired one last symbolic shell. “We had packed everything
up to move out of there, but when we
pulled the lanyard, it was a dud,” he recalls.
“We had to unpack some ammo and get
another round, so it was a fitting end.”
Soon, Whitehouse was back home,
where he married his girlfriend, Kathy
Stangert, settled in Silver Spring and
rejoined the accounting firm. He’s still
here, a senior vice president at Payroll
Network, a company that handles bookkeeping for many local businesses. For
years, he seldom talked about his service.
“I think we all went kind of underground,”
he says. “You didn’t know what the reac-
tion was going to be. People didn’t put it
on their résumé.” And the vets who were
visible repelled him. “I didn’t want anything to do with these guys running around
in fatigues and long hair. That wasn’t me.”
His view started to change when the
Vietnam memorial opened in 1982. “So
many people came out of the closet or
woodwork,” Whitehouse says. “A lot of
people went down there and saw the
names and saw other vets and said, ‘He’s
just like me, he was a vet.’ It really did
help a lot.”
As the door to his past opened, Whitehouse gradually became more involved
in veterans organizations (in 1997, he
organized a reunion of the math whizzes
who trained together at Fort Sill), and
when the chance came to return to Vietnam, he was ready. He invited his brother, Tom, and together they convinced
their 89-year-old father—who had served
in Vietnam in the mid-’70s as a civilian
employee of the State Department—to
join the delegation.
Still, it was a shock at the Hong Kong
airport to see the sign for their flight to
Hanoi. “Am I really doing this?” he
thought to himself. When the plane landed, the red and yellow flag of the Communist regime sent “a little chill” right
through him. “The one thing in your
As seen in the May/June 2010 issue of Bethesda Magazine
mind is: How are we going to be treated?” Whitehouse says. “We were bombing the crap out of these people, and then
in the South we left them. I was really
queasy about that.”
His fears were unfounded. “Everyone
was incredibly friendly. They seem to
have put the war behind them, not just
with us, but with each other.”
For one thing, a majority of Vietnamese
are under 35 and don’t remember the
war. For another, few signs remain of the
American presence. Many U.S. bases have
been reclaimed by jungle. One where
Whitehouse served has been turned into
a driving school. Wide boulevards and
luxury hotels line the beach near Da Nang,
where American troops once landed.
The most tangible reminders of the war
are the abandoned bombs and shells that
have claimed 100,000 lives. The delegation brought $1 million appropriated by
Congress to help remove the weapons and
rebuild wounded lives. In one village, they
met a legless farmer who was set up in the
mushroom-growing business by a grant
from the Veterans Fund.
The emotional high point came during a meeting with senior military officials, when George’s brother, Tom,
returned some medals he had stripped
from the corpse of a North Vietnamese
soldier. “I thought of them as trophies,”
Tom said. “As an older man, I know they
are not. They represent a soldier and a
person who served with valor. As such,
they should be returned.”
After the official tour ended, Whitehouse found the spot where his four buddies had been killed. “I just had to revisit it, I guess,” he says. “I don’t know, pay
tribute. I thought: What could I do to
commemorate this? And there was nothing I could do.”
There is no marker in the jungle where
the Americans died from friendly fire.
But their names are inscribed on that
small piece of paper in George Whitehouse’s wallet.
Steve Roberts’ latest book, From Every
End of This Earth, was published last fall.
Send him ideas for future columns at
[email protected].
)FSF&WFSZ%BZ*T
"%BZ*O5IF1BSL
"5SVMZ6OJRVF3FUJSFNFOU $PNNVOJUZ
Embracing eight-acres, with mature trees, a quiet stream, colorful
gardens, abundant bird life, and numerous walking paths,
Kensington is one of a kind and you’ll see why residents
compare us to a country inn. Combining Victorian residences in a
serene park setting and a continuum of services, Kensington Park is truly a
premier retirement community. Our residents are eager to meet you, and share
why life here is like a day in the park.
Kensington Park
RETIREMENT COMMUNITY
*/%&1&/%&/5-*7*/(…"44*45&%-*7*/(…"-;)&*.&3µ4$"3&
301-946-7700
www.kensingtonretirement.com
3620 Littledale Rd., Kensington, MD 20895
Bethesda Magazine May/June 2010 27