By Joel Langton
The 830 Times
For more than half a century, Lupe Vargas has lived with pieces of his life that simply are not there.
He remembers the grenade that wounded him in Vietnam, the helicopter taking enemy fire and coming home and recognizing his parents, brothers and sisters. But much of what came before a serious head injury that was practically untreated in Vietnam remains beyond his reach.
Now, more than 55 years later, the Del Rio Vietnam veteran has turned the photographs, sketches, poems and stories he used to reconstruct his own life into a book titled A Veteran’s Anthology he hopes can help others find a way through memory loss, post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt.
“If it only helps one person, to me, it’s a success,” Vargas said.
Asked if that would still be true if the only person it ultimately helped was himself, Vargas answered, “Yes. Because my life has improved.”
Vargas served in Vietnam in 1970 and 1971, initially working as a wheel mechanic before volunteering to become a helicopter door gunner.
On Jan. 9, 1971, Vargas said he was walking near an enlisted club at Tuy Hoa when he and several others were caught in a large fight involving military personnel from several units. Someone threw a grenade into the crowd, injuring 27 servicemen.
A piece of shrapnel struck the top of Vargas’ head, leaving a wound 3 to 4 inches long and opening his scalp. He was treated and returned to his barracks that night.
“The next day I woke up, everything seemed normal,” he said. “My machine gun was there, my boots were there, my bunk, some of the guys, and we kept on going. Just get up and continue the next day.”
Within weeks, Vargas’ unit was sent north for the 1971 military operation in and around Laos known as Lam Son 719. It was there that Red Cross representatives tracked him down and unknowingly helped him discover something was seriously wrong.
They told Vargas his parents were concerned because they had not heard from him in more than two months.
“I said, ‘I wrote last week,’” Vargas recalled.
Then something clicked.
“You mean I have a family?”
Vargas tried to reach backward into his memory and discovered very little was there.
“I came to a real quick, cold decision that I had lost my memory,” he said. “It’s like trying to look for a book with blank pages.”
Vargas decided not to tell anyone, fearing he would be removed from his unit, hospitalized or medically sent home.
“I was more scared of that than the war,” he said.
He stayed with his unit and continued flying combat missions.
On April 2, 1971, Vargas’ helicopter was escorting a medevac aircraft sent to reach soldiers caught in an ambush when it came under intense fire from North Vietnamese forces.
A .51-caliber round tore through the helicopter’s hydraulic system, and the pilot was struck by shrapnel and temporarily lost consciousness. As the crew chief tried to pull the pilot upright and the co-pilot fought with the controls, Vargas stood on the helicopter’s skid with his M60 machine gun, firing to provide cover.
The damaged helicopter made a crash landing away from the fighting, and Vargas said the crew was rescued about 20 minutes later.
Vargas eventually returned home, but much of his earlier life existed only in fragments. He recognized his immediate family, but many friends, relatives and events were gone or badly faded.
Over time, Vargas began rebuilding what he had lost. He walked through old neighborhoods making notes and used photographs to reconnect people, places and memories. When he could not explain something he remembered from Vietnam, he drew it. When he struggled to express an emotion, he wrote poetry or verse. More complicated memories became stories or narratives.
Only much later did Vargas realize he had developed his own system for dealing with what happened to him.
“I intentionally, without even knowing what I was doing, created a visual roadmap on how to recover memory loss and how to live and deal with post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said.
The process also helped him confront survivor’s guilt and the question of why he survived when others did not.
For decades, the material remained largely his own. That changed after friends of Vargas’ daughter returned from overseas with a small booklet from an old Croatian hotel that combined drawings, photographs and narratives. Vargas’ wife suggested he do something similar with his own material.
The result is a 6-by-9-inch booklet containing 18 photographs or sketches paired with 18 stories, poems, verses or narratives.
Each copy comes in a small drawstring cloth bag inspired by the Army laundry bags Vargas remembered soldiers using for personal belongings. His wife designed the first bag, the bags were embroidered locally at T-Shirts Etc., and Vargas designed wooden display stands for them.
The first printing was 500 copies. The book sells for $21.95 and is available at several Del Rio businesses, including Val Verde Winery, Mesquite Creek Outfitters and Russell Hardware and Co.
Vargas created Leatherback Books to publish and distribute the work himself. His strategy, which he describes as “Johnny Appleseed,” is to begin in Del Rio before gradually taking the book to businesses in Eagle Pass, Brackettville, Fort Clark Springs and other communities and eventually moving toward San Antonio.
His previous book, “Promises,” is a work of realistic fiction involving five Vietnam veterans who reunite decades later after a teenager is kidnapped in Del Rio.
After Vietnam, Vargas built a 36½-year career with the U.S. Immigration Service that later became U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He married, raised children, helped open Vevilu Art and Frame Gallery and spent years helping other veterans with disability and compensation issues.
All the while, he continued trying to reconstruct pieces of his own past.
Vargas can look at an old family photograph, recognize the faces and remember their names but often cannot remember the event captured in the photograph. He remembers embracing his mother when he returned from Vietnam but cannot remember ever having hugged her before he went to war.
Today, Vargas hopes the book that grew out of his own efforts to cope can help another veteran, someone struggling with trauma or someone confronting memory loss.
But his children have already pointed out that even before the book reaches that person, it has accomplished something important.
“If nothing else,” Vargas recalled his son, Lupe Jr., telling him, “I think it’s great because it helped you.”
