Jessica Hines
www.jessicahines.com
Untitled #5, The Mystery
Untitled #3, The Mystery
Untitled #19, The Imaginings
Untitled #15, The Imaginings
Untitled #31, The Imaginings
Untitled #12, The Imaginings
Untitled #2, The Imaginings
Untitled #5, The Beginning
Untitled #20, The Beginning
Untitled #17, The Imaginings
Jessica Hines
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In 1967 my brother, Gary, was drafted into the US Army during the Vietnam War. Because both of our parents were ill and Gary was our caretaker, I was sent to live with relatives. On November 4th, my brother arrived in Qui Nhon, Vietnam. It was my eighth birthday. I rarely saw my brother again until I was grown.
Gary wrote many letters home while he was stationed in Vietnam. Pictures arrived. Although in his letters he spoke of his living quarters and described the helicopters he piloted into the front lines, he rarely discussed the dangers. Discharged from the army in December of 1969 with a “service connected nervous disorder”, he came to know his problem as “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”. My pre-war brother, a normal and well-adjusted person had become, according to the Veteran’s Administration, 50% disabled. He took his own life ten years later.
Twenty-five years after his death, I read his letters again and studied the photographs he sent home. I discovered among his belongings, a memo pad that revealed the names and addresses of his wartime friends, some of whom, with diligence, I have managed to contact – 35 years after the war. While perusing my brother’s Vietnamese/English dictionary, I found hand written declarations of love to Gary from a Vietnamese woman with whom he had fallen in love. I have since found information that confirmed their plans to marry. Gary returned to Vietnam in early 1970 to live as a civilian. He never told any of us of his love. Gary’s reasons for leaving Vietnam and returning home remain a mystery.
Through the remembrances of his friends and through my own journeys to Vietnam in both 2007 and 2008, I have retraced Gary’s “footsteps” using his letters and photographs as guides. I continue to make discoveries about wartime in Vietnam as experienced by its veterans. The visual record of those experiences continues to unfold.
Mets & Schilt of Amsterdam, Netherlands will publish "My Brother’s War" in 2009.
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