Semper Fi

When Nora McInerny’s dad died, she lost his stories — the ones that she’s not sure she can quite remember right, and the ones she never knew … like the stories from his time as a Recon Marine in Vietnam.

Nora decides to look up some of the men he served with. What unfolds is Nora discovering a story about a single day — September 20, 1968 — and the patrol where two men were killed. Nora’s father was on that patrol. It was one of his first.

As Nora learns about those men and that day, she discovers that it had a profound effect on shaping everyone who was there.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

WARNING: A quick warning that this episode contains repeated references to war, violence, and death. Plus some strong language.
HANS: Can you pull your microphone a little bit closer?
[MIC NOISE]
NORA: Oh yeah. There we go. Hello.
HANS: Hello. So…we’re headed do wn to Houston.
NORA: Yes. Houston, Texas. Home of Beyoncé. Hometown.
HANS: Home of Beyoncé. But that’s not why we’re there.
NORA: It’s one reason why we’re going there.
[THEME MUSIC]
NARRATION
The other reason? We’re going to the United States Marine Corps Reunion, to talk to a bunch of vets who served with my dad. And ask them about my father and the horrors of a war they don’t really talk about. Just like my dad didn’t.
I’m Nora McInerny. And this is Terrible, Thanks for asking, a show that encourages us to talk about how we’re *really* doing. And this is how my producer Hans and I ended up heading to Houston.
HANS: So, your dead dad served in Vietnam.
NORA: My dead dad served in Vietnam, when he was 18. He went voluntarily. He was an enlisted Marine…and he basically went because he didn’t want to get drafted.
NARRATION
My dead dad is my mom’s dead husband. And here’s how she puts it…
MADGE: He was…just a goofy high school…kid. And so…he knew he would get drafted and he didn’t want to go into the army so…you know…tough guys go into the Marine Corps. So, who doesn’t think they’re a tough guy when they’re a high school kid? NORA: He didn’t want to get pushed into hell he wanted to jump of his own…free will. So…that’s how he did it. HANS: So…what are you hoping to find in Houston?
NORA: Before my dad died he had emailed two men who I’m hoping to talk to in Houston. One is named Curtis…
CURTIS: My name is Curtis Gruetzmacher…I went by the nickname of Gritz…that I carried as a young kid…all the way up through Vietnam and carry to this day…
NORA: …and one is named Pete…
PETE: I would say hello to you, my name is Pete Martinez. I’m known as Texas Pete in San Antonio…because my license plate says I’m Texas Pete. I have a purple heart on my plate…that nobody else can have…and I’m a hell of a nice guy once you get to meet me. I might not look like one…’cause I never smile…but I’m a hell of a good guy, so…you want me on your corner.
NORA: …and…at this point in time he knew that he was dying…and he reached out to both of these men.
HANS: Why did he reach out to them? At that moment in his life after not having reached out to them in a long time?
NORA: I have no idea but he was really excited…that he had found them. And…that doesn’t feel like nothing. [MUSIC]
NARRATION Curtis had been trying to find my dad for years before they finally connected, had wanted to invite him to the Marine Corps reunion he’d been organizing forever. My dad never made it, but I’m going to. And so is my mom. I asked Curtis if it was okay for me to bring Hans, and recording equipment. I explained the idea of a podcast. And he said of course I should come, and Hans was welcome, but to keep our expectations low. These men didn’t want to talk about stuff with people who weren’t there, they didn’t open up to just anybody.
I am flying to Houston to meet men my father hadn’t seen in decades, to find something I never had. I don’t even know what it is, just that I need it. And I think I’ll know it when I see it.
Before we leave, Hans does something very professional and Googles my dad. And something pops up. It’s a post on the Vietnam Memorial website. On a page for a man — a boy, really — named Felipe Herrera. This is my brother Patrick pretending to be my dad.
Patrick (as Stephen): I was with Filipe the day he died. Filipe Herrera was always smiling, always positive, and always ready to go out on another mission. Not a day of my life has passed since that September when I do not think of him and pray for him. Great guy. Best Marine I ever knew. Semper Fi.
NARRATION
Reading this was like almost having something. It’s different from the few, disjointed stories I remembered from the rare times he talked about that time in his life.
There was a story about one of his friends being shot so many time his head nearly came off as he saved the rest of the unit. A story about my dad trying to pull a body into a helicopter, another marine stepping in to help him, and that man being shot in the head with a bullet that would have otherwise killed my father. A story about my dad crossing paths with a young Viet Cong soldier, both of them scared, both of them moving on without shooting.
So what we have is one wall post. Two phone calls. And two names.
HANS: So we’re going to go talk to them.
NORA: We’re going to go I don’t want to lose any other…part of my dad even if it’s something that I don’t know that I’ve lost yet..I don’t want these men to die with pieces of my dad that I haven’t gotten to find. If they even have them.
HANS: Let’s go check it out.
[FADE UP Tape of arriving in HOUSTON]
NORA: Hi!
CURTIS: How you doin’?
NORA: Good!
CURTIS: I’m Gritz…Curtis.
NORA: I’m Nora McInerny
??: You’re Nora McInerny? Your father…?
NORA: Yeah!
PETE: And I’m Pete.
NORA: You’re Pete? Hi!!
PETE: Hiya. Gimme a hug.
CURTIS: Pete Martinez
PETE: Alright now. Yeah.
CURTIS: Yeah, let’s go sit down.
[SCENE FADES UNDER AS WALLA]
NARRATION
Curtis didn’t wait to sit down. He didn’t even wait for us to get checked in. We literally got as far as the front desk before he just started telling stories. Opening up. This wasn’t small talk about the drive to Houston or how our flight went. The man who told us not to get our hopes up? He just got into it. Curtis: My very first patrol was a firefight with the enemy… and we ended up running from them for several hours and we couldn’t get away … and… me and another buddy of mine… that was Felipe Herrera… [CUTS OUT]
NARRATION
Uhhhhh. Felipe Herrera? Both Hans and I looked at each other immediately. Felipe is the man whose memorial my father wrote on. I honestly didn’t register any more of Curtis’ story. As soon as he paused I jumped in and asked about Felipe.
Curtis: he was originally from San Antonio and he was a… very close friend. Me and him were actually like brothers. Real brothers, you know?
NARRATION
This was amazing. We weren’t even sure if anyone here would know Felipe, or would remember him… and we haven’t even set down our bags before he comes up. And then… suddenly… while Curtis is describing his friendship with Felipe… he drops this…
Curtis: And how I lost it over there when he got killed and this and that.
[MUSIC]
NARRATION
“I lost it over there when he got killed.”
Curtis: I was took out of the bush for a period of time because I… literally I cracked up over there. Nora: What does cracking up mean?
Curtis: Well, losing it. couldn’t handle it. Like a nervous breakdown. And… if I remember right… I’m not sure… but I have some patrol reports with me that… your dad was on. And I think he could have been on that same patrol.
NARRATION “Like a nervous breakdown”
[MUSIC OUT]
When Felipe Herrera was killed, Curtis cracked up.
When Felipe Herrera was killed, he saved my dad’s life.
In this moment I realized that my dad’s post on Felipe’s memorial page isn’t significant because it’s the only thing my dad left behind about his time in Vietnam. It’s just…significant. Felipe is significant. That day he died is significant. And not just to my father.
[MUSIC]
Please keep in mind this happened five minutes into our trip to Houston. We had three more days there, to talk to the men who knew my father, the men who knew Felipe. These men came to a small hotel room and sat two feet away from me, while Hans sat on a small stool and balanced a giant microphone above his head. For hours. These men were a part of the First Recon Division, Alpha Company. Recon is small and quiet. Groups of six to ten men — and again, I use this to describe really young guys — who go out in search of the enemy for days at a time. There was a small phrase on the buttons they wore — something i hadn’t seen before, that made my dad’s time in Vietnam feel more real to me. Swift. Silent. Deadly. Here’s Pete Martinez again.
Pete: The first recon division is a team of recon people that go out and look for the enemy. We find them, we kill them, capture them, gather info, intel. We also do rescue type things. Mostly has to do with finding out what’s going on around the area. And we are assigned different grid zones which is an area where there is no friendlies. You’re the only people in there and everything else is bad. The only way to get out is by chopper and nobody else is going to help you. You’re on your own. A letter from my father to his older sister dated September 18, 1968 describes it like this:
I should tell you how we work in recon. We go out in 10 man patrol with(out) helmets or flak jackets, just packs and camouflage uniforms, for 4 or 5 day patrols. It’s a lot of fun but it gets hairy at times. By hairy…he means…violent. It’s war. We had a pretty exciting patrol. We were creeping down the train when we heard some gooks off to the right. We heading up to the trail to surround them when we saw 200 North Vietnamese soldiers in the clearing. These dudes aren’t guerillas, their regular troops with uniforms, helmets and packs. Well we ran down the hill about 100 miles an hour and called in an air strike in one them.
This letter was written 1 week before Felipe died. 7 days before this same team of very young men would find themselves in another hairy — violent — situation.
NARRATION
So Felipe — or, as they sometimes call him, Phillip — he was a part of something small and special. Whatever happened to him that day stayed with all of those boys. As they grew into men. As they became fathers and grandfathers. And we asked all of them about that, we cried with them about it, and even after we got back to Minnesota, we weren’t done piecing it all together. So we also found Phil Ehret, who wasn’t at the reunion, but was the officer in charge of the patrol the day that Felipe died.
Phil [phone tape]: I’ve been trying to remember as best I can so that I can give an accurate… rendition… filtered through what… 48 years of… time.
NARRATION
Phil Ehret held the rank of Lieutenant on September 20th, 1968. Curtis Gruetzmacher was there as well.
CURTIS: Yes. I was out there on this patrol…and what I best can remember of it…that Felipe Herrera…
[MUSIC STOPS ABRUPTLY]
NARRATION
Hang on. Before we get to that we need to make something extremely clear. That language that Curtis and Phil just used – the best I can remember – is really important to what comes next.
What you are about to hear is subjective. It is versions of the truth of what happened that day. Everyone we talked to carried their own.
We can confirm some of these things with government documents and other sources…but some things are just memories and feelings of men who went through something 50 years ago. Some of the exact details of what happened that day, we just don’t know.
[MUSIC]
What we do know is that at 8:30 AM on September 18, 1968, Felipe, Curtis and my dad left their barracks at Camp Reasoner…the First Recon headquarters in Quang Nam province …and boarded a helicopter with seven other men. It veered into the jungle… and descended towards a marked landing zone in the trees. The ten men did what all recon teams did: they jumped out of a helicopter wearing 65 pounds of gear they’d need for the next 3 days……and the helicopter left.
There was a well-worn trail heading west. It ran along a mountain range crested by a large hill. The terrain was steep, with thick tree cover. The rainy season was about to start, but streams and rivers in the area are already full and flowing.
For the next two days the men moved along and in parallel to the ridgeline…patrolling along an area of about one-and-a-half square miles of thick jungle.
55 hours after landing… at 16:30 hours on September 20… on the high ridge above the valley near the helicopter landing zone where they were going to be picked up for extraction.
CURTIS (18:34): …we had moved into regional extraction LZ, which was a old fortified position built by the South Vietnamese military. And it was done away with. Abandoned.
PHIL (2:15) The triple canopy jungle had really… had blocked any view of it from above….there were little trenches… and what used to be called foxholes or whatever. And at a pretty large area. Certainly would accommodate a couple hundred people. And so it was very eerie. It was almost like walking into a house that… and no one was home. We had come in from the north… on what would have been the south side it dropped off very dramatically down into a river valley… and either east or west would have taken us out of our assigned or prescribed area.
NARRATION
Lines on a map said that the men were at the very edge of the grid they were allowed to explore. Lieutenant Ehret requested permission to ignore those lines…
PHIL: And the response came back it was negative.
NARRATION
So the only option was to go back north, where they came from. The men started back down into the valley. Here’s Curtis again.
CURTIS: I was originally a tail end Charlie man, and I think at that they wanted to break McInerny in as a future Tail End Charlie.
NORA: And just for people who don’t know…also me…what does that mean?
CURTIS: Okay. Tail End Charlie is a man that is the last man in a patrol. And he covers up all signs and evidence of us being out there, as best he can. And guards the rear. He stays something like 20 meters behind and makes sure that team is secure and none of the enemy is sneaking up on us.
NARRATION
So coming down the hill… my dad is Tail End Charlie…and suddenly we’re in one of the stories that my dad had told me. Here’s what my dad wrote on Felipe’s wall. STEPHEN: I turned and saw an NVA regular crossing the trail behind us. Neither of us fired. He moved back the way he came. I signaled the team to stop. Filipe came up and when I told him what I saw, he went off in the direction of the enemy with Lance Corporal Koontz. The rest of us followed.
NARRATION
Directly behind them… coming from the zone they weren’t allowed to move into… 30 North Vietnamese Army soldiers were being pursued by American Green Berets, and had been driven directly into the rear of the Recon Marines.
STEPHEN: We were just fanning out when the shooting started.
[MUSIC STARTS]
PHIL: There was a yell of “gooks!” which was the pejorative that was used to describe the Vietnamese… you know cries of “gooks gooks!”… and shots being fired, so we immediately turned and moved back.
CURTIS: So we got in a bad firefight with the enemy there. And shortly after the fight initiated there…we was fighting the enemy and Felipe Herrera had spotted a soldier that was fighting us that he thought looked like a chicano. And it ticked him off.
NARRATION
Curtis says Chicano. But we know from the official patrol report that among the Vietnamese dead there was a caucasian. He was described as being approximately 5’8” tall with fair complexion and a dark beard. He was wearing a North Vietnamese helmet with a big red star… which apparently pissed off Felipe…
CURTIS: …So he was attacking that position to kill this enemy with an M60 machine gun…
PHIL: He got up from his position… and started on a trot, firing towards the enemy.
NARRATION
Felipe charged the North Vietnamese. He got to within 10 meters of their position, killing 6…
CURTIS: …and at that time the M60 jammed on him after several rounds.
PETE: I think it turned red hot and it didn’t fire so they put another barrel in and that one jammed and that’s when he got hit. CURTIS: And he caught several bullets in his body….and he was still alive enough that he dropped the 60…reached in his holster and got his .45 out and he got a few rounds off…
PETE: And that’s when he got hit. CURTIS: …and then he took the initial round at that time that hit him in the head.
PETE: …and took it in the chest and in the head and somewhere else.
CURTIS: Then Felipe went down and died.
[MUSIC OUT]
PHIL: What stayed in my mind… and I’m sure all the guys… was… was… he had been hit in his upper torso. And so you could hear the… his breathing is a sound that you never want to hear. The rattling and this… called a sucking chest wound and it was just… horrible… as we could do nothing but listen to him… die.
PETE: He got hit when he was carrying a .45 and should’ve been carrying a rifle or something with a lot more firepower. It just shows you what kind of guy he was.
NARRATION
According to the Silver Star commendation report that Felipe Herrera received for his actions…. his charge was “instrumental in enabling his comrades to gain fire superiority and deploy into advantageous defensive positions.”
According to my dad…
STEPHEN: I’m convinced he and his M60 machine kept us from being overrun in the initial minutes of the fight.
[MUSIC RESUMES]
NARRATION
But the fight wasn’t over. The Recon team was still under heavy small-arms fire from the North Vietnamese…who were still very close, hidden in the trees
STEPHEN: I remember at one point I was firing a M79 grenade launcher almost straight up in the air.
CURTIS: And later after that when…once we got him back under cover…we had another man got wounded…
NARRATION
The radioman had been shot. Immediately, Sargent Larry Johnson left his protected position and ran across fifteen meters of fire-swept terrain. He took up the radio…and simultaneously administered first aid while calling for air support.
CURTIS: So at that time they got the Huey’s in with mini-guns, and they pretty well worked the area where the enemy was…and pretty well all around us.
PHIL: [14:00] And they came in with their machine guns and… 50 caliber machine guns and really just… hosed down the area where we were directing them. CURTIS: We thought, we’re gone, too, you know?
PHIL: Shortly thereafter an F14 Phantom came in… dropped bombs…
NARRATION
And once the dust had settled, it looked like they had broken up the North Vietnamese attack. Sargent Johnson radioed for evacuation. Soon after, a large twin-rotor CH-46 helicopter arrived at the landing zone.
[MUSIC STARTS]
CURTIS: Once the CH46 landed, most of the team took off for the helicopter. Not…my opinion…they wasn’t worried about Felipe and the other wounded guy…which he was able to get on by himself. Somebody, because I was holding security on the team while they were trying to get Felipe on the helicopter. And for some reason when I looked back at them to make sure everything was secure for them…I only seen one Recon marine trying to get Felipe Herrera on it.
NORA: [39:06] And then… my dad had mentioned that he tried to pull his body in the helicopter and couldn’t do it. And somebody pushed him out of the way to do it and had been shot instead of my dad.
PETE: That’s the version you heard?
NORA: Yup.
PETE: That happened. That is true.
CURTIS: So…I more or less got pretty angry about it, and I threw my 14 down and I had also been carrying a M16 rifle with me…and evidently this had belonged to Stephen. So…I threw both on the ground and I went over to help Stephen get Felipe’s body on the helicopter. And then once we got the body on there, I turned around and went back off the CH46 to retrieve my M14 rifle, because I wasn’t going to leave that there for the enemy. So I ended up grabbing up the M16 also…and headed back for the CH46…. and it was already taking off with the tail ramp still down. So…the 46 was approximately…oh…3-4 foot already off the ground…causing the tailgate to be at least that high. So…I bailed on, just jumped on, grabbed ahold as best I could to get on the helicopter instead of being left behind. And…
PHIL: [16:00] And… right at the ramp of the helicopter…
CURTIS: I heard a round snap like a sniper round. [MUSIC HARD STOP]
[GUNSHOT SFX]
CURTIS: And when I looked up…Sergeant Johnson was standing there, and…
PHIL: … Sargeant… [chokes up]… excuse me… [coughs]… Sergeant Johnson was shot… right… right below his eye. And we had our heads almost touching. And I’ll never forget the… the look… [coughs]… sorry… [MUSIC]
CURTIS: I completely lost it after that. All I could do is…I seen the men in the helicopter all looking back…I literally cracked up. Not knowing if it was my fault of what it was.
PHIL: It’s hard because… [chokes up]… you can say it in your mind but it’s hard to say it… [cries]
NORA: You felt like it was your fault?
CURTIS: Well, yes I did. Because…Sargeant Johnson had got killed because of me going back of the helicopter to retrieve my M14. I felt really guilty in my heart because he got killed by a sniper, and if I would have just let the helicopter take off and leave me behind…at least maybe he wouldn’t have got killed.
NORA: You would have felt better…risking yourself than somebody else?
CURTIS: Right. Definitely.
NORA: And that… was that the first time that you had lost men.
PHIL: Oh sure. I think it was my third patrol. NORA: I’m interested why do you think you remember this patrol so well?
PHIL: Well just because of the trauma of having your head… I mean our heads were almost touching. We were within… inches. Inches. And then to see just how arbitrary… there was no reason that bullet couldn’t have… hit me. And so that stays with you. And wow. I’m very very fortunate. And he was very very unfortunate.
PETE: I was there when they brought Felipe back in dead. That was not a good day. NARRATION
Henry Covarrubias, another Recon Marine and Felipe’s cousin… was also there when the helicopters arrived with the team and the two bodies.
HENRY: And I heard about the ambush and everything else…and Todd Barker, our first sergeant came to me and said you were close to Philiip. I said yes I am. So I need for you to go with me to the morgue and identify the body. They opened up the plastic bag. It wasn’t pretty.
[MUSIC]
NORA: Do you think my dad felt guilty about the whole day? All of these things?
25:04
CURTIS: Well, he possibly could have, you know…him struggling and getting a body on…especially Felipe being a dear friend of Mac’s…you know, it hurt him very rawly because he was struggling to get Felipe’s body on the helicopter. Knowing he was scared to death also…you know…
Nora: I think my dad felt guilty.
Phil: I guess there’s some of that, too. You kind of try to file it away but… yeah there is I guess a little bit of survivor’s guilt, too. NORA: [16:24] It feels like that day was…like a big…
HENRY: Yeah. Everybody knew him, but…he was close.
HENRY: [16:26] I understand what your dad…Philip was hit…so I know how your dad felt. People who knew Philip…they feel the same way as your dad did.
NORA: [17:41] That was the story that…that my dad said had affected him the most…and that was his first…I think from what Pete remembers…my dad’s first patrol.
HENRY: Mmm hmmm. I heard…I mean, I wasn’t there on that patrol but…it was a pretty bad ambush, so… But Philip…stubbornheaded as he was…went up and took some with him. Just the luck wasn’t there.
NORA: What my dad had written was that he was sure that he was the only reason that my dad…was alive.
HENRY: Yeah. That’s true.
[MUSIC OUT]
NARRATION
Back in Houston, as we were hearing all these stories for the first time, I did a debrief with my mom. She was there, remember? She had been talking with all these men as well. And we both sat in our room one night… sprawled on the beds… thinking about my dad.
Nora: And… I think he thought it was his fault forever.
Madge: Maybe so.
Nora: And that’s why… he never came to these things. And why he was so relieved to hear from Pete.
Madge: Oh… it all makes sense now.
Nora: Like I never had to think about… like whether or not my dad was a good person… I still wouldn’t doubt it. I never had to think about… any of those stories as if… there were… any complication to them. You know what I mean?
Madge: Oh, yes, I do know what you mean. Like that there was any… question about who did what, or any blame about someone…
Nora: Yeah.
Madge: Like, it’s war. Guys get shot. Guys die. That’s… Steve said that… many times, like… what the fuck people…
Nora: You always want something… to be somebody’s fault, or something’s fault… because that’s what makes sense. But… I don’t know so I just think that Dad didn’t want… to do any of this.
Madge: He didn’t want to re… live any… anything that happened.
Nora: He was living it all the time and… carrying it all of the time. And that he’d been doing that since he was 19. And that… like even writing that… on Felipe’s wall… like he did that and that was the only way that… people could confirm…
Madge: It was just his way of… closing it up.
Nora: Yeah.
Madge: He said… Steve said… in a letter… to me at one point… “whenever someone was hurt or killed in my unit… I was the one who showed the least feelings… or even thought on the subject. My whole being… was dedicated to survival. Personal survival… survival of the functioning…” this is so Steve… “the functioning biological unit known as Stephen McInerny… and to hatred for anyone who attempted to get near me. There are many methods… and areas… in which an individual can be killed… and so… I closed myself to all but the most superficial relationships with others. When I returned home… I was shocked by the world around me. I’d journeyed from a barbaric zone of controlled brutality to a world functioned with no real idea or concern for others. I was a superficial man… thrust back into a superficial society … and it was at that point… that I met you.” he… he buried his heart. I mean I think he had to do that. And, yeah… so… Nora: [crying] That’s like really hard for a kid to understand…
Madge: Hard… I think it’s impossible. You know…
Nora: Like when he had Ralph I remember he was holding Ralph when we were in his house, and I said… “oh my God you loved me when I was little.” He was like “well, no shit.” I was like “no, dude, like…” It’s more like “oh, shit.” Like the only way that I could like… see that is through like old pictures or like through him… like… interacting with my child and me imagining myself.
Madge: As Ralph.
Nora: Yeah.
Madge: He loved babies. I think he loved… innocence. You knew that that soft, marshmallowy… inside was there, deep down.
Nora: Yeah I think it came out more like… when he was older. There were obvious moments… it’s not like I thought my dad didn’t love me, but… you know I just wanted him to be… an 80’s movie dad. In high school I’m like just be this kind of dad. Like…
Madge: Yeah you always tried to like sit down and have these little heart-to-heart talks with him and he’s like… golf is on.
Nora: Yeah I’d be like “I don’t know… should I have sex before I’m married? I feel like I shouldn’t.” He’s like “Jesus Christ.” I’m like “OK well I’m just letting you know the pressures of being a teen.” It’s like nope… unsubscribe.
[MUSIC]
NARRATION
My dad’s love wasn’t always the love I wanted but it was steady and faithful, like his love for these men, who he didn’t see or speak to for decades but NEEDED to talk to before he died. That’s why my dad reached out to talk to these men. He needed to. He needed it. The marine corps logo is semper fi. Ever faithful. Like my father. And all these men. Who do love each other like family, or maybe even deeper.
During my interview with Henry Covarrubias there was one moment that summed this up. Sitting across from this kind, quiet man who had seen and done so much in his life, I asked him about…guilt. Because I wanted my father to feel forgiven. I wanted all of these men to feel forgiven. I wanted to life these invisible weights from them, but it wasn’t my place to do it. They weren’t asking me to.
NORA (18:54)
Do you think my dad was feeling like…my dad wrote that post…I think he knew had cancer. Had been sick but wouldn’t go to doctor. And two months later would be diagnosed with every cancer. And he wrote that and then he connected with Curtis and then Pete. When I read that it almost feels like a sense of my dad…like trying to thank this…boy who had saved his life…and the way that I read it is that he had been carrying around not just what had seen but guilt of surviving.
HENRY
Many of the guys feel that way some…how come some made it and some didn’t? They hold that back, too, so. It hurts. It really does.
NORA
Is there anything that makes that go away at all?
HENRY
No ma’am. Not at all.
[THEME MUSIC]