Troopship Graffiti Brings Back Memories for Vietnam Veterans

Dozens of veterans recently paid a visit to a traveling exhibit of graffiti that they themselves wrote and drew almost 60 years ago on board the ship that transported them to Vietnam.

A military artifacts expert named Art Beltrone first stumbled upon the graffiti while touring a mothballed troop ship, the General Nelson M. Walker, in 1997.

“It blew me away,” said Beltron. “It was like walking into a time capsule. Everything was still in place — the bunks, the pillows, the sheets. And on the underside of the canvasses were messages.”

The nearly 60-year-old graffiti had each been scrawled in felt tip pen on the bottom of narrow sleeping canvasses by soldiers in the bunk below. The authors, Beltrone said, were working-class young men mainly between the ages of 18 and 19.

The graffiti includes profane images of the late 1960s: whiskey bottles, psychedelic drugs and naked women with bouffant hairstyles. There’s also a complete sonnet by Shakespeare, the lyrics of the anti-war song “Universal Soldier,” sardonic jokes about death in combat, and appeals to patriotism.

There’s even a map of Stevens Point, drawn by a homesick soldier.

“Graffiti, when it’s written, is the most honest expression of that person when he writes it,” said Beltron.

Beltrone was able to save the graffiti, and put it in the traveling exhibit called “Marking Time: Voyage to Vietnam,” which has been on display in Wausau’s Woodson History Center since May.

Veterans who served in the Second Squadron, First Armored Cavalry, which sailed to Vietnam on the Nelson M. Walker, happened to be holding a reunion in Wisconsin recently. They visited the exhibit to reconnect with the graffiti they drew during their voyage.

One of veterans, Dennis Scott, said he loved the ship.

“The Walker, for all her dents and peeling paint, has always made a bunch of us feel like she was more of a mother,” said Scott.

Scott didn’t love Vietnam, however. He still recalls “the rains of the monsoons and the heat of the non-monsoons, and cooking boa constrictors and rotten buffalo.”

Tom Fey learned about the graffiti when he came across images of it the American Legion Magazine in his Kansas home. His wife, GayAnne, remembers that he had let out a “giant shout” when he spotted them.

“GayAnne was in the kitchen, so I really scared her,” said Tom.

Among the graffiti, Tom saw the heart he had drawn with their names, and the fateful date of their wedding: Aug. 27, 1966.

“I got my draft notice Aug. 26, at our rehearsal dinner,” he said. “We were getting married the next day.”

GayAnne recalled that Tom’s father “handed him the letter with a chuckle.”

Tom had forgotten about the heart he drew, but he does remember the General Walker: “Hot. Stinky. So bloody hot — water just ran off of you.”

He also distinctly recalls how his tour in Vietnam fared: “Brand new lieutenant had never driven a track before and he wanted to drive it. He rolled it off a mountain and broke my back.”

Jim Hardy was on the Walker in 1967 when it ran into Typhoon Violet, a storm with winds of 145 miles per hour.

“The waves were 90 foot up about and 90 foot down, so the ship would free fall 180 feet and slam onto the ocean and just vibrate like a giant sledgehammer hit it. And just shake,” he said.

Hardy said he remembers the ship’s restroom was filled with men on their knees, some of whom were praying.

“Praying to get to Vietnam,” he said. “I heard troops say, ‘Please God, get me to Vietnam. I got a rifle and I got a chance.’”

Hardy said that he too loved that ship: “It took care of us. It got us there. It was like an old friend. It wasn’t a piece of metal.”

Looking at the graffiti, Tom Fey and Dennis Scott mostly remember the men who wrote it.

“The book ‘Band of Brothers’ — I think that’s what we are,” said Fey. “We’re closer than family.”

Said Scott: “We’re friends. The best of friends. We love each other.”