What does it take to ease a man’s conscience when he is haunted by war?

 
 Wayne Karlin, CSM professor and author, will share his experience of returning personal documents to the family of a fallen Vietnam solider, and the acts of self-healing Vietnam veterans undertake, March 2 at CSM’s Leonardtown Campus.

On March 18, 1969, a young American infantry lieutenant named Homer Steedly turned a bend on a trail in Kontum Province and came face to face with a North Vietnamese soldier. In the split-second that life-altering decisions are made both men reached for the guns and, as recounted by author and College of Southern Maryland Professor Wayne Karlin, Steedly shot first, killing the 24-year-old medic Hoang Ngoc Dam with a single shot through the heart. Searching the body, Steedly found several small notebooks and papers which he took and sent home to his mother in South Carolina.

A year later, he returned home and tried to forget the war, but while Dam’s papers stayed hidden Steedly’s memories of the war and the encounter on the trail lingered.

Thirty years later, Karlin, a friend of Steedly and himself a Vietnam veteran, located Dam’s family and traveled to Vietnam to return the notebooks and documents. His recounting of that journey and its impact on the lives of Steedly and Dam’s family was published in “War, Literature & the Arts,” the literary journal of the Air Force Academy, and was the subject of an NPR radio program.

As part of CSM’s Connections Literary Series, Karlin will present “Wandering Souls,” a multi-media presentation on the return of Dam’s documents, acts of self-healing and the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

The presentation will begin at 7:30 p.m., March 2, at CSM’s Leonardtown Campus, Building A, Auditorium.

In preparation for CSM’s Connections program, Karlin, who is working on a new novel, a film script and a series of programs for radio, responds to questions about his friendship with Steedly, the heartbreak of war, and how soldiers are reaching out to build communities through acts of self-healing.

CSM: How did you meet Homer Steedly and how did the idea of returning Dam’s personal papers come about?

Karlin: I know Homer through another writer, Tom Lacombe, who wrote a novel about infantrymen in the Vietnamese Central Highlands (Light Rucksack). Tom and Homer knew I had contacts in Vietnam as I have been promoting the work of Vietnamese writers and film makers here in the states and the work of American writers there in Vietnam. Homer was a very young infantry company commander who fought a very rough war, and he has suffered greatly from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Thanks to the encouragement of his wife, Tibby, Homer came to a point in his life where he wanted to confront his memories and make something positive out of them—not by changing or denying the things that happened, but through confronting them and doing redemptive acts. Because Homer’s first kill in the war had been someone he had seen face-to-face and whose papers he had taken, Homer felt he had to do everything he could to find the man’s family and return the possessions he had taken. As I helped him in the process, we became good friends.

CSM: Homer Steedly is not the first time you have seen one of your fell