Carry Me Home

Author's Note

Author’s NoteTHERE IS NO HECKLEY County in Pennsylvania. The name was taken from a gravestone: Heckley—50th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, Infantry, 1848–1910. There is no township of Mill Creek Falls, nor, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone in north central Pennsylvania called their farm High Meadow. The communities of Ridgewater, Rock Ridge, and Coal Hill are imaginary, as are the Mill Creek Falls subdivisions—Old Town, Old New Town, New New Town, Creek’s Bend, etc. There is no Veterans Administration and no State of Pennsylvania Veterans Medical Center in Rock Ridge. In California, no land exists between Sonoma and Marin counties. The city of San Martin, like Heckley County, is a figment of my imagination.

Carry Me Home is the last installment of a trilogy about America’s Southeast Asia era. The 13th Valley (Bantam, 1982) is the story of American infantry combat in Viet Nam and an inquiry into the causes of war. For the Sake of All Living Things (Bantam, 1990) is the story of a Cambodian family from 1968 to 1979. The story explores the making of a g******e with emphasis on Communist factions, their actions, interactions, and ideologies, and their effects upon a people. Carry Me Home is the story of a medium-size aging mill town and the generation that grew up there during the Viet Nam War era. The title has been borrowed, with permission, from Marcus Leddy’s Carry Me Home album, a collection of songs for and about Viet Nam veterans (Blue Roan Records).

I have attempted to keep major historical events and general background history accurate. Times and dates of some specific events, particularly non-news television programming, which occurred in the United States may have been altered. Certain films, TV shows, reviews, and critiques that are cited in the late 1970s and early 1980s did not appear until later.

Personal and minor events are composites, built or extrapolated from interviews, conversations, and/or official records. The characters who peopled these areas in the sixties, seventies, and eighties are fictitious. Characters depicted from specific military units (i.e., Tony Pisano of the 2d Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 3d Marine Division) have not been based upon anyone who served in these units, though where unit actions are described I have attempted to be true to the history of that combat. Any resemblance to any person, living or deceased, is purely a matter of many people having shared similar experiences, held similar beliefs, exhibited similar behavior.

However, some people do live by The Code.

Part I

Homecoming