'Each Sweaty Midnight I’m a Lifer'

Think of this as an unexpected coda to Monday’s post, “A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit,” in which I asked readers to report anything they knew about the war correspondent Albert W. Vinson. He was author of a dispatch recounting a 1968 reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam led by the future poet R.L. Barth, whose father had served as a Marine in the Pacific during World War II, as did Vinson. After the story was published, Vinson and Bob’s father started a correspondence. Bob, who had often wondered what had happened to Vinson, wrote to me: 

“Mr. Vinson had been badly wounded and had a left arm that hung uselessly at his side, and to this day I marvel at his tenacity and sheer guts to be slogging around in Vietnam, looking for stories.”

 

A longtime reader of this blog in Ohio found several references to Vinson online, including a September 5, 1944 Sheboygan Press story about Vinson being wounded the previous March and his return to the U.S., datelined “U.S. Naval Hospital, Oakland, Calif.” It begins:

 

“Critically wounded by Jap machine gun bullets while leading a column in an attack on Talasea, New Britain, last March, marine 2^nd Lt. Albert W. Vinson, 33, has been returned here for treatment. Lt. Vinson’s mother lives in Milwaukee; his wife and children live in Sheboygan.”

 

The story quotes Vinson: “‘The first burst from the machine gun caught me in both arms. I got up and ran back to the tree. Just as I reached it, another burst got me in the leg and shoulder.’”

     

Twenty-seven years later, on Page 1 of the September 25, 1971 edition of The Waukesha County Freeman (less than three years after Vinson wrote the story about Bob's patrol) is a story headlined “Suicide Ruled in Train Death.” The lede:

 

“A man who was killed when he threw himself in front of a Milwaukee Road freight train at Okauchee on Friday morning has been identified as Albert W. Vinson, Jr., 60, of 2365 Woodland Park Drive, Delafield.”

 

The coroner ruled the death a suicide:

 

“A train crewman said Vinson walked out on the track as the eastbound freight approached and put up his hands. He had been hiding in bushes on the south side of the tracks near the abandoned Okauchee station.

 

“Welch said Vinson was a disabled Marine Corp [sic] veteran from World War II and had been living on his disability pay. He and his wife were planning to move to an apartment in Milwaukee, where Vinson was born, Welch said.

 

“Welch said Mrs. Vinson told him also her husband had been in Vietnam as a war correspondent.”

 

Bob includes an epigram in Learning War: Selected Vietnam War Poems (Broadstone Books, 2021):

 

“I swore I’d only be a three year cypher

But learn each sweaty midnight I’m a lifer.”