Wandering Souls: Journeys With the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam

by Wayne Karlin

On March 19, 1969, First Lieutenant Homer R. Steedly, Jr., shot and killed a North Vietnamese soldier, Dam, when they met on a jungle trail. Steedly took a diary—filled with beautiful line drawings—from the body of the dead soldier, which he subsequently sent to his mother for safekeeping. Thirty-five years later, Steedly rediscovers the forgotten dairy and begins to confront his suppressed memories of the war that defined his life, deciding to return to Viet Nam and meet the family of the man he killed to seek their forgiveness.Fellow veteran and award-winning author Wayne Karlin accompanied Steedly on his remarkable journey. In Wandering Souls he recounts Homer’s movement towards a recovery that could only come about through a confrontation with the ghosts of his past—and the need of Dam’s family to bring their child’s “wandering soul” to his own peace.

Wandering Souls limns the terrible price of war on soldiers and their loved ones, and reveals that we heal not by forgetting war’s hard lessons, but by remembering its costs.

Genres: Nonfiction

376 pages, Hardcover

First published September 8, 2009

About the author

Wayne Karlin has published nine novels: The Genizah, A Wolf by the Ears, Marble Mountain, The Wished-For Country, Prisoners, Lost Armies, Us, The Extras, Crossover; a collection of short stories, Memorial Days, and three works of non-fiction: Rumors and Stones, War Movies, and Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam, as well as poetry, stories and articles in literary journals and newspapers. He has received six State of Maryland Individual Artist Awards in Fiction, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts), the Paterson Prize in Fiction for 1999, the Vietnam Veterans of American Excellence in the Arts Award in 2005, and the 2019 Juniper Prize for Fiction for A Wolf by the Ears. Several of his books have been published in the U.K. and in translation in Vietnam, Italy, Denmark, Holland and Sweden.

Reviews

[Mai Nguyễn · Rating 5 out of 5]

In most literature written about the war by Vietnam veterans, Vietnamese people hardly appear, and if we do, we mostly serve as a background for American stories. WANDERING SOULS is a different book. It places the story of the Vietnamese soldier Hoang Ngoc Dam on the same level with the American soldier Homer Steedly Jr.. Homer shot and killed Dam during the war and many years later, he traveled to Vietnam to meet Dam's family. This painful, brave and honorable journey is brought to life by Wayne Karlin who describes it with great care and sensitivity. Via Karlin’s words, we see Hoang Ngoc Dam and Homer Steedly not just as soldiers, but as human beings who have dreams, hopes and families. We know where they came from and the reasons for them to go to war. And we know that even the Vietnam War ended nearly forty years ago, there is still much needed healing needed by the people of all sides.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two young men meet on a jungle path: one American, one North Vietnamese. The American is quicker to react and kills the Vietnamese soldier. A diary from the soldier makes it way eventually to the attic of the American’s mother where it is left for three decades. The deadly event on the path remained in the mind of the American who rediscovers the diary and sets out on a journey to return to Viet Nam to find the family of the young man he killed and to seek their forgiveness. This book is a intensely gripping story of that emotional and physical journey as well as the background of the two men whose destiny was to come together on that jungle path on March 19, 1969.

The words put you in the boots of both men as they tread their paths to their meeting. The Vietnamese soldier was named Hoang Ngoc Dam. When Homer had been in Viet Nam for four months, Dam had already been serving for five years. He was a medic with no medical experience before the war and he carried his notebook with him to record details that would help him perform his life saving duties.

The day Dam walked away from Thai Giang [his home], taking the shortcut through the rice fields with his bride and his sister, was the beginning of a thousand-mile journey that would take him finally to Gia Lai and his encounter with Homer. On the first day he and the other young men from Thai Giang laughed and sang, filled with the excitement of leaving home and the adventure that awaited them, the opportunity they felt they had been given for an instant transition into adulthood or immortality.
They mustered in Thai Binh, where they were issued green cotton uniforms with plastic buttons, webbed cotton belts, sun helmets – made not of pith, as the Americans assumed, but rather of pressed cardboard covered with green cloth – and Chinese green canvas boots. For many of them it was the first time they had completely encased their feet and ankles. They were given backpacks of dark green cotton and chest pouches with three larges pockets in front to hold the thirty-round banana-clip magazines they would eventually carry. As soon as they were dressed, they were also given a taste of what the next years would bring, when they were marched by night fifty kilometers to the larger town of Nam Dinh. The march didn’t faze them – they were tough farm boys – but the boots did, and before long many had taken them off and slung them over their necks by their laces.

The American was Homer Steedly, Jr., age 22. There is more detail about his experiences since he was still alive at the end of the war.

They searched the jungle for signs of the NVA. Too often they acted as bait; the enemy was located when it hit them. Vines clutched at the men’s arms and legs to delay or trip them; sometimes they would fall with a clatter of equipment. Clouds of mosquitoes buzzed around their heads and settled into their ears and on whatever skin was exposed. Their sweat poured over and around the bumps of insect bites that covered their skin and made them itch more fiercely; scratching them lead easily to suppurating infections. Heat rash prickled their shoulders and chests and crotches like someone was driving hot needles further into their flesh with each step or rub of their packs. The triple-canopy layers of the trees enveloped them in a steamy, green-stained gloom. “Day after day, same thing,” recounts Tom Lacombe, whose unit, Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry, moved in that same area, “dawn to dusk, one foot in front of the other, lean over, try and catch your breath, shift the load, hope for a time-out.” At night Homer and his men pulled off the leeches, wrapping themselves in their ponchos, and caught a few moments of uneasy sleep. The sweat and dirt felt like a filthy crust freezing on their skin as the temperature plummeted with the darkness. Every three or five days they’d find or hack out a landing zone for the helicopters to come in and resupply them; pull out the wounded; and bring mail, ammo and rations. They got used to water, dipped out of jungle streams, that tasted like bleach from their purification tablets.

If you want graphic, try this on for size:

I was helping the door gunner load the bodies onto to the next chopper, when the poncho blew back, revealing the guy’s head, with maggots squirming in the goo that had once been his eyes. The door gunner fell to his knees and began projectile vomiting.

Who wants to sign up for the next war? The recruiter will tell you that you will get training so that when you get out, you will have skills that will make you more employable. And don’t forget the GI Bill. No thanks, you say?

… he watched in awe as an unarmed medic, a conscientious objector, crawled time after time into the heaviest fire, taking a bullet through the shoulder and then through the buttocks, but still dragging back the wounded to safety…

And then it was over and he came home?

Homer had returned to his native soil, but he was in a shifted universe in which everything had a different meaning to him than to the people around him. He had seen and done things that he knew the people around him did not want to know about, and because of that he knew he could never rejoin them.

Homer helped the soul of Dam end it’s wandering and come back to his family alter. There are 300,000 lost souls in Viet Nam from the war and, like the American MIAs, there are Vietnamese who work to restore those souls to their families. You will read in a very personal way about that effort in this book.

This is a stunning book for me. I give it four stars though there are certainly some five star sections. Published in 2009 about a time forty years earlier, it makes me wonder how long we will keep writing horror stories about boys, American and Vietnamese, who went to the war in Viet Nam and how long I will keep reading them. All the people who served in that war will die eventually but many of their words will remain. There is another war to take its place. Of course. How sad.

You may want to visit Homer’s website: http://www.swampfox.info/

[Blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the first half of this book completely engaging as we follow Homer through his tense battles in Viet Nam and the unfortuante death of the young North Vietnamese medic Dam. However, the pace of the book slows down when Homer's tour of Viet Nam finshes. The book then turns from a week-by-week battle diary into a soft, philosophical and 'emotional' review. It becomes quite heavy and drawn out until the inevitable meeting of Homer and Dam's family many years into the future. While uplifting this book could have been shortened. A good but often lengthy look at the different faces of war, and those with a good heart.

[Julian · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engaging read, the author describes the fateful meeting of two men on opposite sides of the war on a secluded jungle path. One died, and the other lived with the heavy burden and guilt for 30 years, before embarking on a journey of reconciliation with the family and relatives.

It's not often that one walks in the shoes of one's enemy, and the author does exactly that - meticulously describing the background and past of the two men, their upbringings and ideals and what motivated them to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country. It is an eye-opening insight into the Vietnamese psyche and culture as well, their superstitions and how they deal the horrors of war and their concept of loyalty and fate. After seeing life from the other person's perspective, a great sense of futility is also embodied, raising many questions on how one justifies wars and whether the human toll is all worth it.

On a literary note, I felt that the book could do with some tighter editing in terms of pacing and perhapssome trimming of unessential narratives - but ultimately does not detract in any way from this powerful and evocative story.

[Mikey B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the Vietnam War an American soldier, Homer Steedly, rounded a bend in a jungle trail and saw a North Vietnamese soldier about 30 feet away. They both reached for their guns and Homer killed the Vietnamese soldier. He searched his body and found a journal with sketches and photographs. It turned out that his name was Hoang Ngoc Dam and he was a medic. Initially Homer was going to hand it over to Army Intelligence, but thinking it over, he decided to mail it to his home in South Carolina where his mother carefully wrapped it up and stored it in the upstairs attic. It lay there for over thirty years.

Homer had PTSD and was anguished over the years about his war experience, and more so about the brief and fatal encounter on the trail. He decided to examine the contents of the journal that his mother had so carefully put away. Steedly published Dam’s name and some of the contents of the journal online. He got a reply.

This eventually led to a heartrending reunion in Vietnam with Dam’s family, where he handed back the journal. It all became part of a complex ritual where these were placed at Dam’s altar in the family home. Steedly, despite what he had done, was welcomed for bringing Dams’ journal and putting an end to the mystery of how Dam died. The family was also very grateful to Steedly’s mother for preserving Dam’s belongings.

There are problems with the structure of this story. The author alternates between the experiences Hoang Ngoc Dam and Homer Steedly. I found the passages on Dam and Vietnam far more interesting and engaging. There are also long portions on Steedly’s military experiences in Vietnam, which resembled other stories I have read on American Vietnam Veterans.

The author makes some dubious parallels between the life of Steedly and Dam – particularly of their rural poverty and upbringing. The rural poverty that Dam experienced in Vietnam was totally different from than that of Steedly. Also, Dam grew up in country constantly at war. The author was trying to establish similarities between the two men where there were in fact none.

The other interesting fact the author points out is that several American Veterans have returned to Vietnam with memorabilia, journals, photos and the like to give them to the Vietnamese families. However, as this book demonstrates, the case of Homer was unique.

There are several extraordinary scenes, but there were times when the author’s writing style tended to overflow – like on descriptions of flora. These digressions interrupted the momentum of the main story of the return of Dam’s journal.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Vietnamese belief, that the spirits of those killed far from home, through violence or accident or war, wander the earth aimlessly, far from the family altar. If a body cannot be recovered, the deceased’s family can still draw the soul back to the family hearth by placing objects that belonged to that person on the family altar. But without the remains, or at least some object that belong to dead, the family will never find peace.

"Wandering Souls" is about former 1st Lt. Homer Steedly who came "face to face" with a North Vietnamese soldier by the name of Hoang Ngoc Dam. For a split second, the two faced each other unsure of what to do, and then each began to automatically raise their rifles. 1st Lt. Homer Steedly fired first and ...Hoang Ngoc Dam was dead before his body hit the ground. Steedly extracted two small notebooks and some loose papers from the dead soldier’s pockets, which he sent to his mother for safekeeping. Karlin took the lead, doing what Steedly felt he could not do at the time, and returned the diary and papers to the Hoang family around 2005. It took a couple more years, but Steedly's thoughts got the best of him and decided to return and face the family of the man he killed. Returning those objects was what helped this family bring comfort and peace.

This anguish and isolation of many combat veterans, and their loved ones, is depicted in Karlin's narrative had me thinking of the book, "All Quiet on the Western Front." Remarque vividly describes the soldier's thoughts while he fights the enemy and depicts grotesque images and scenes of war the men had to face every day of the war. I was also surprised at the deep sense of humanity and forgiveness that most Vietnamese have. Despite having their country and their lives so disrupted by the war, they find within themselves the compassion to understand and forgive. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about the war, and how it affected families on each side. I like the fact that it doesn't just focus on one side, but shows both families sorrow, and in the end, the reconciliation that comes because of a return of documents taken from the one who was killed.

[Jhiella · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wandering Souls made me realize how much I enjoy historical fiction. It is clearly well-researched, and the historical context feels authentic without ever overshadowing the characters. The story is heartbreaking, but it never feels exploitative or like tragedy for the sake of tragedy. Instead, it treats its characters with dignity and humanity, making their struggles feel real and meaningful. I also loved how the novel explores themes of displacement, identity, family, and resilience. Even in its darkest moments, there is a sense of hope that stays with you long after you finish the book.

It’s a little sad that I didn’t have much time to read, so it took me almost two weeks to finish it, but I finally completed it this weekend. I read part of it in a sunken garden and finished it in a museum while wandering around looking for a good reading spot.

I’d give it 4 stars—if it were 5, I probably wouldn’t have been able to put it down without finishing it.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Follows the story of a US soldier who killed a Vietnamese man in the war, stole the guy's diary and then 30 years later returns to Vietnam to give the diary back to the man's family. This book is almost kind of like 'I can't belive that really happened' kind of twist here and there, and is a fascinating look at Vietnamese culture, history and post-traumatic stress for the US soldiers over the decades.

[Armatstorage · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fascinating. I only skimmed it tho, and didn't read many of the words.