He's flying back to Vietnam, to the exact battle sites and tiny villages where he served as a soldier on two combat tours between 1965 and 1970.
This time, he'll arrive as a tourist, taking along his wife and traveling with about a dozen other veterans, guided by three retired military officers. But their itinerary wouldn't attract most tourists.
The Cartwrights are heading into Vietnam's back country, aiming for several places outside the village of Tam Ky, along what was Highway 1 in the former South Vietnam. At one spot there, on Feb. 20, 1970, Mr. Cartwright pulled injured American soldiers from a burning, exploded tank and won a Bronze Star Medal with a "V," for valor.
Mr. Cartwright's bravery was recounted at the time in several Cincinnati newspaper stories. But local readers might better remember him as co-author of a 1965 letter, featured on the front page of the then-Cincinnati Post & Times-Star, which lamented the lack of mail for soldiers in Vietnam. Hundreds responded with letters and packages.
He awaits this Vietnam trip calmly -- but prepared for an emotional wallop.
"I can't say I'm excited, but I want to go," he said, tears spilling down his cheeks.
He composes himself by talking about travel details, then tries again, slowly, to explain the journey's importance.
"I guess I'm going back to answer some questions -- and I don't know what the questions are. I don't know what I'll feel," he said. "I know I have blacked a lot out. I think, if I'm standing there, I can remember it a little better. I can walk myself through it.
Deborah Cartwright, 47, an intensive-care nurse at St. Elizabeth Hospital, hasn't wavered in her insistence to go with her husband to see Vietnam -- though warned about the abundance of still-buried land mines and to expect mosquitoes, leeches, heat, diarrhea and street thieves.
"I hope this helps him. I don't know what he's looking for, but I hope he finds it," Mrs. Cartwright said softly. "I think this will be closure for him."
Their tour guides come from Military Historical Tours Inc. (MHT), an 11-year-old Alexandria, Va., company formed by a retired Marine colonel.
Using satellites, military maps and battle records, guides will lead the Cartwrights to spots he wants to revisit within a 30-square-mile grid he once patrolled around Tam Ky.
Officials with the company -- one of several offering battlefield tours for veterans -- say interest is keen in Vietnam travel, more than two decades after American troops left. The increase is attributed both to the growing number of aging Vietnam vets with more free time to travel, and to the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnamese governments in 1996.
MHT guides can take about 95 percent of their clients back to exact locations they want, said Patrick Mooney, MHT's vice president and general manager.
"This year, we'll have taken nine tours to Vietnam by October. Each year, it gets bigger," Mr. Mooney said. "It's not just for men. It's families -- husbands, wives, sons, daughters, widows." Most go back, he said, "to exorcise some of the ghosts of their service."
DOES ANYBODY CARE?
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The letter from Roscoe Cartwright Jr. and some of his buddies ran Oct. 20, 1965, on the front page of The Cincinnati Post and Times Star under the headline: Does Anybody Care?
Our platoon has a problem: a lack of mail. The friends that were so concerned when we first arrived in Viet Nam have since forgotten us. Only our parents seem to care, so they write.
Is there any way that you could have someone write the guys in our platoon? We want to know really what those at home think is happening here. What do some of your readers think?
There is very little to do in the evening and a letter more often would be most welcome. If you could get anyone to write to us we would do our best to answer them.
Crew chiefs 1st Flight Platoon, 117th Aviation Company, APO 96312 San Francisco, Calif.
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Getting on with life
Roscoe Cartwright -- 55 and living with Deborah in a house with a pond and a pool in the Clermont County hills above the Ohio River -- has neither hidden nor dwelled on his Vietnam experience. He left the Army after nine years, met Deborah six months later and married her 27 years ago. They raised two daughters, and he found a career as a boilermaker building power plants.
On a wall near his home's stone fireplace hangs a shadow box showcasing his military medals -- two Bronze Star Medals, two Purple Hearts, the Combat Infantry Badge; 14 Air Medals, each symbolizing 25 hours flying over hostile fire (as a crew chief on a helicopter in 1965-66), the Vietnam Service Medal, the Cross of Gallantry.
Hanging opposite is a large painting of the black wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
"Ninety-eight percent of Vietnam veterans -- you're looking at me," he said. "You come home, raise a family and get on with life. . . . But there are painful memories."
For 18 years after returning from Vietnam, he buried the memories. Deborah remembers, "He didn't want to have anything to do with support groups or reunions or to talk to anyone about Vietnam." The memories wouldn't always stay buried, he said.
"You could be driving down a road and something -- a tree line, maybe -- would remind you," he said. "You could go for days and months not thinking about it, then go for weeks thinking about it."
Finally, in the late '80s, he attended a reunion in Washington, and, through someone he met there, hooked up later with a tank commander he'd served with in Vietnam. Their conversations helped lead to his willingness now to return to the battlefield.
"We talked a lot on the phone. He helped me along the way, explaining a lot of things I didn't remember," Mr. Cartwright said.
Born in Over-the-Rhine, he moved to Norwood in fifth grade. He attended Norwood High School until 1961, finishing his education in the Army. After his time as a helicopter crew chief, he returned to the states and attended Officers Candidate School at Fort Sill, Okla. By 1969, he was back in Vietnam as commanding officer of F Troop, 17th Cavalry, 196th Light Infantry.
In October 1965, he and some buddies wrote to the Post & Times-Star, asking people to remember their mail-starved 117th Aviation unit. The newspaper reprinted the letter under the headline: "Does Anybody Care?"
"The gifts just rolled in -- the cookies and letters. . . . We got bags and bags of mail and passed it out to others. About four or five of us got the thing organized, and about 500 to 600 people benefited from it," he said.
"Like my father said, "The only people who realize there is a war going on are the people who have sons over there.' " People saw it every day on television and just got used to it."
Emotionally healing
Returning to a battleground can be emotionally healing for veterans, said Dr. Dewleen Baker, division director of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Program at Cincinnati's Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
The veteran usually has only the elusiveness of memory with which to relive his war experience, and "no way to do any correction," Dr. Baker said.
"If he goes back, he'll see it has changed a lot, that life goes on. What once was a big battlefield, and potentially very horrific, might be a rice field," said Dr. Baker, also an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati.
A return trip "can fill in all kinds of gaps in terms of time," for veterans, letting them integrate what happened in the past with the changes they see, she said. Whether she would recommend that a veteran make such a trip depends on the individual, she said. "It could be good for some. But some would likely be getting in over their head," she said. "If (a veteran) has been functioning well, he'll probably do all right."
Vietnam veterans "left a country that was hostile, bomb-scarred -- a moonscape landscape," Mr. Mooney said. "Today, Vietnam is a beautiful country . . . it's lush, green, reforested -- which is a surprise to many veterans," he said.
He described a recent trip back by one veteran, a helicopter pilot seeking to return to where he was wounded trying to evacuate Marines. A day's journey took them to the spot along the demilitarized zone, where the amazed veteran found foxholes intact and bullets and equipment scattered around.
"We were able to get him back to that hilltop," Mr. Mooney said. Everyone who returns to Vietnam "at one point is overwhelmed, but around him, he has a support group," Mr. Mooney said. "When they come to a spot of importance to them, the whole group comes along and he's in the spotlight, telling, "This is what happened.' " A few days before leaving on the trip, which is costing the couple about $7,000, there are moments of apprehension that "stir my insides," Mr. Cartwright said.
But he's still going.
"I think there will be a couple rough times, but I think I can handle it."
For information about veterans' trips to war sites, including World War II, Korea and Vietnam, contact Military Historical Tours Inc., 4600 Duke St., Suite 420, Alexandria, Va., 22304-2517; (703) 739-8900.
