A Rendezvous to Remember: A Memoir of Joy and Heartache at the Dawn of the Sixties

by Terry Marshall

  Jack would have approved of the mountain setting, the simple ceremony, and the intimacy of the reception—if not my choice of groom.

  Terry

  Saturday, 13 March 1964, Silverton. Late that afternoon, Annie and I scrunched with Jimmy into the back seat of the Garretsons’ white Riviera—like fifteen-year-olds being delivered to the prom. They dropped their only daughter off at the regal, turn-of-the-century Strater Hotel in Durango, bid their wistful goodbyes, and headed for home. Hand in hand, Annie and I bounded up the broad carpeted stairway to room 226—the honeymoon suite—without looking back.

  An elegant four-poster bed dominated the room, positioned under a mirrored ceiling and bathed in a halo of muted light, the covers folded back. Two mints and a spray of white roses lay between twin pillows, and a pair of thick white robes rested side by side at the foot. The bed itself winked and whispered, Welcome. I’m here for your pleasure.

  We showered and for some minutes stood at the broad, second-story window and gazed out over Main Street. Annie leaned back into me. One by one, the city lights flicked on, highlighting the falling snow, and I slid my hands over her breasts.

  At last we were legal: freed from the moral restraint imposed by society’s taboo against sex before marriage. Not only did it not matter that friends and family knew we were sleeping together, they expected us to. Eventually, we shed our robes, joined into a loving embrace, and, in the comfort of that old four-poster bed, recommitted to each other.

  Room 226 was worth every cent of the $10.70 we shelled out, in cash, for our one-night honeymoon.

  Ann

  Sunday, March 14, 1965, Durango. We caught the midmorning Frontier flight back to Phoenix. That afternoon, we hauled over the rest of Terry’s belongings from his scuzzy cottage, and that night I welcomed him to the Maryland Club Apartments with open arms. Never again would he have to slip out under cover of darkness.

  The next morning, I reported in at Glendale High before seven-thirty and stunned one class after another with the news that henceforth they should address me as Mrs. Marshall, not Miss Garretson. The girls crowded around and examined the wedding ring. The boys let out a few ribald catcalls and then looked on with disinterest. The news traveled fast. Members of my third-hour class raced out and bought me a faux crystal cake plate and a card, signed by everyone in the class.

  After school, at the News-Herald, the whole staff crowded into the newsroom the moment I arrived. We emptied two bottles of champagne and demolished an angel food cake.

  That was it. No pomp and circumstance. No Arch of Sabers. No limo, band, or fancy dinner. A simple ceremony in a place we loved with a handful of friends and family. That’s all we wanted.

  Well, not all. We didn’t get that leisurely honeymoon in Mexico City.

  23

  From Joy to Pain

  Terry

  Friday, 7:40 a.m., 14 May 1965, Glendale. I wasn’t even halfway through my leisurely no-deadlines-Friday breakfast when the phone rang.

  No doubt it was Annie, a quick call before her first class. “Forget something?” I asked.

  “Terry or Ann Marshall, please.” A woman’s voice. Not one I recognized.

  “Yes? I’m Terry.”

  “I’m . . .”—I didn’t catch her name—“I’m with Peace Corps Placement in Washington. We have an assignment for you. For both of you.”

  I don’t know what I said—probably something dumb, like “Great” or “Wow, really?” I listened and nodded and managed an occasional yes or okay, not thinking to take notes. This was a heads-up call, she said. They’d send us a formal letter, but she wanted to make sure we were still available.

  “Yes, yes, of course!” I said.

  After she hung up and I got my wits back, I scribbled everything I could remember into my reporter’s notebook. They’d send us to the Philippines for two years. Together. We would teach English, either elementary or high school—they weren’t sure which.

  First, we’d train for ten weeks in California—classes 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., six days a week, Sundays off. Tagalog language lessons four hours a day. Teacher training three hours a day. Philippines history and culture another three hours. Also, classes in US history, world affairs, and health care—how to survive in the tropics. Plus PE—we’d have to run a mile and ace the Red Cross swimming test. Training would begin June 19. After training, they would fly us to Manila.

  The Peace Corps at last! But we had barely a month to get ready.

  I made it through the morning by shuffling papers and jotting notes for next week’s stories, but I couldn’t concentrate on work. After lunch, I slipped across the street to the town library. I couldn’t wait to find out more about where we’d be for the next two years. No books on the Philippines, but the encyclopedia offered a cornucopia of exotic scenes: rugged mountains, stunning waterfalls, pristine beaches. A major volcano. Pineapple plantations, coconut palms, and ancient rice terraces; water buffalo and wild monkeys; half-naked hill tribes and leaf houses. Man, this was the tropics!

  I left work early to make it home before Annie did and met her at the door. “Happy anniversary! Dinner out tonight? With champagne?”

  She gave me her what’s-up-now-Terry? look.

  “Two months ago today—our first full day as a married couple.”

  Over dinner—and two margaritas each—I told her about the Peace Corps call. We talked for two hours at La Cocina and stayed up most of the night, imagining, dreaming, spinning out the possibilities that lay ahead, planning how to close out life in Glendale in a month.

  Manila! Now, there’s a honeymoon!

  Ann

  Sunday, May 16, 1965, Glendale. For weeks I had put off writing to Jack. Friday’s Peace Corps call gave me the spur I needed. I wouldn’t tell him that endless rows of faded yellow barracks popped onto my mental canvas when Terry said “the Philippines”—based on childhood recollections from army friends who had lived there. My unspoken reservations were best kept locked away, especially since I was so excited about our upcoming challenge.

  But warriors loved to get mail from home. Jack would be happy to hear from me, and he’d be delighted with our news. Even though our romance was over, he would celebrate my happiness almost as much as if it were his.

  I dug through my shoebox of his letters, found a snapshot of him, and propped it by the typewriter. Jack sitting in his Sting Ray, dwarfed by the tank behind—his tank. Big smile on the man with his muscle machines, doing what he loved. A mere three weeks after the wedding, while Terry and I were wrapped up in each other, buoyant with hopes and plans, Jack had plunged into war, fighting the Vietcong. In the jungle. At least he had his tank. He wouldn’t be slogging through the muck, dodging bullets from AK-47s, risking trip wires of primitive but deadly booby traps we’d seen on TV.

  The previous night’s CBS news had given us glimpses of the national Vietnam War teach-in in Washington, where thousands had assembled to debate the war. American intrusion in Vietnam was deepening, as Jack had feared—and so was antiwar sentiment. No question which side Terry and I were on. We had to oppose this war, end America’s meddling—and bring Jack and his fellow American advisers home.

  But I couldn’t figure out how to even start the letter: “Dear Jack”? Too intimate! How about just plain “Jack”? No, too drastic a demotion. Jeez, how do I address you, dear Jack, now that I’m a married woman? Not so many months ago it had been “Dearest Jack” and “My Dearest Jack.” I could no longer think those words, let alone write them.

  I settled on “Dear Jack” and wrote a newsy letter, the kind I’d write Mom. “Thanks so much for the crystal bowls—Mom has stored them safely in my bedroom closet.” I told him about the Peace Corps. How ironic, I thought, that we would wind up on the same side of the Pacific—on such different missions. “We’ll teach high school, possibly in Manila. If you ever have leave time, you should plan to come see us.” I wanted to hear from him, to know what life was like on the front lines, to know he was safe. �
��By now you are in Vietnam, and every day as I read the news, I wonder what your part is. Do write, Ann.”

  Argh. The letter was too lightweight, but how did you write to a man who was dealing with life and death twenty-four hours a day? A man you loved as I loved Jack? Everything I wrote seemed trivial by contrast. I sent the letter anyway.

  Terry

  Monday, 24 May 1965, Glendale. It was official! We were in the Peace Corps. A letter from Shriver himself confirmed it. We each got a letter dated May 20. Training in Sacramento would start on June 27—not June 19 as they’d said on the phone. That would give us an extra week to get ready. We needed it.

  We had to return an acceptance form within ten days. Then Shriver would write again with more details and plane tickets. He added a PS: “This invitation is contingent upon your passing your medical examination; therefore, we advise you to have your physical immediately.”

  After mailing our acceptance Tuesday morning, I called Dr. Roberts. He worked us right in, and we sent the medical form the next day. Both of us were in tip-top shape. Cleared to go.

  Ann

  Wednesday, June 2, 1965, Glendale. I shuffled home from school, mentally spent but grateful to have only five days left in the school year. I tossed the mail on the end table, changed clothes, and sank onto the sofa, resting a bit before fixing dinner.

  As I thumbed through the phone and car insurance bills, I made a mental note to have our mail forwarded. To Manila! Terry would take care of that. A postcard from Dad, one of those free motel cards—Hospitality House Motor Inn, Arlington, Virginia, 5 minutes from downtown Washington, DC. Dated Sunday, May 30. Postmarked Monday.

  Mom and Dad were there for Bonner’s wedding. Good for him, finally committing himself after so many girlfriends. I wanted to be there—to wish him well and reknit the family unity unraveled by my marriage to Terry. I wanted to welcome this new woman into our family and get past my anger for how he had abandoned Gretchen. But I couldn’t. Too much work to close out the school year. Too little time to gear up for the Peace Corps. Too expensive to fly to Washington.

  I meant to skim the postcard—Dad’s notes were always friendly bits of neatly scripted news, his way of telling me he cared about how I was—but this missive jumped off the card:

  Dear Sis:

  This is the day before the wedding! Bonner got word yesterday that Jack was killed in action. It sure takes the joy out of the occasion. Bonner went up to Pennsylvania last night to see Jack’s father.

  Love, Dad

  That was it: forty-one words on a postcard. Jack was dead.

  Terry bounded through the door that evening. “Sorry I’m late. Got tied up with an interview over at—whoa, what’s up?”

  I was hunkered on the floor in the corner of the kitchen. Terry knelt and took my hands. “What’s wrong? You sick? Hurt?”

  I nodded, trying to take a deep breath. All I could manage was a gurgled sob.

  He pried the postcard out of my hand. Tears rolled down my cheeks and neck.

  24

  Echoes of Vietnam

  Ann

  Early 1990s, Denver, Colorado. No one ever told me directly how Jack died. Or where exactly. I pieced it together over the years from letters I received from Bud, Jack’s father; from the newspaper obituary and miscellaneous clippings Bud sent in his final years as he dispersed mementos of his only son to people he knew would care; and from a handwritten letter Major Raymond Battscalf Jr. wrote to Jack’s mom two weeks after Jack was killed.

  Major Battscalf, the adviser to the 4th Vietnamese Cavalry, arrived on the scene the day after Jack died. He interviewed Jack’s men and wrote the official army report. Battscalf knew Jack—he had been Jack’s English instructor at West Point. Tributes posted on various West Point websites, including a long, glowing one from my brother, added a few more pixels to my understanding of that terrible day.

  But the fact is, I have no on-scene record of what happened. No war correspondents were on hand. No photographers or moviemakers. Jack died just a little more than a week after I had labored over my final chatty note to him. That twenty-eighth day of May 1965 was before the war heated up: six months before the Battle of Ia Drang Valley, almost three years before the battles of Khe Sanh, and Huế, and nearly a full decade before the South Vietnamese army’s last stand at Xuân Lộc in April 1975.

  In the scope of the Vietnam War, the battle that killed Jack was a minor skirmish—a small force of Vietcong dug in with antitank weapons in a tiny village near Quảng Trị.

  Jack’s troop went in to clear the village, but Jack, their American mentor, wasn’t with them when the battle began. He’d gone to Da Nang that morning for a meeting with his fellow US Army advisers, and when he got back to Huế, his troop had been dispatched to engage the Vietcong near that hamlet. I knew Jack. I can see him in action:

  I’ve got to join my men. How do I get there? That was Jack. Determine the facts. Then act. He got the coordinates. His troop had taken their tanks and armored personnel carriers. He couldn’t hail a taxi into battle or drive a jeep pell-mell into the jungle, so he finagled a Huey for a lift to the action and dropped to the ground as it hovered. I can picture him, bent low, sprinting to the command APC, scrambling up, and dropping in beside the Vietnamese commander. They were a team, he and his counterpart.

  Where’s their firepower? No idle talk. They calculated enemy positions. Called in an air strike and then another. It was dusk, the light fading. Jack signaled him, Let’s take ’em! He swung up behind the carrier’s machine gun. Targeted a nest of persistent shelling. Raked the dug-in VC with fire. Waited. Watched. Hit them again. He zeroed in, concentrating on the task at hand. Focused.

  The VC didn’t return fire. He had them pinned down. But he was exposed, hunched over the machine gun. From his right flank, a machine gun volley sliced through the dimming light. “A burst from this gun walked up the side of the carrier,” Major Battscalf wrote.

  Walked? Absolutely not! This was war, not some Sunday stroll. Do bullets from a machine gun ping off the armor? Zap? Sizzle? Ricochet? Walked is too gentle. In my mental image, the burst from the machine gun tore into and ripped and thundered and clawed and shrieked up the side of the carrier.

  Did Jack hear it? Of course. He was trained to be aware, to anticipate the unexpected. But bullets hit too rapidly to react to. It was too late to swing his gun around. Then, according to Battscalf’s report, “A bullet struck Jack just below the bottom of his armored vest.”

  The bullet struck him. Blasted his unprotected underside. It struck him and sent him reeling, blood spurting. Or gushing. The armored vest protected his muscled chest, maybe the upper part of that chiseled stomach. But the enemy hit him below the belt.

  By that time, it was too dark for a Huey. Besides, the battle raged. The nearest medical help was in Quảng Trị, an hour and a half overland. An armored personnel carrier wasn’t an ambulance. Its top speed was forty-two miles an hour. But that was all they had.

  They headed for Quảng Trị, Jack losing blood. His breath faltered. I can hear his final thoughts, Damn, I should have anticipated that SOB . . . I should have had him.

  He was dead on arrival at the Quảng Trị aid station.

  I learned of Jack’s death on June 2, 1965, two days shy of one year after I’d skipped commencement to travel Europe with him. On that day, June 4, 1964, I had left a forlorn Terry on the steps of Hallett Hall. In June 1965, it was Terry trying to comfort me. But what could he say about the death of his former rival? What could I say to my husband about my loss? Do you mind sleeping on the sofa for a while, Ter? I’m too torn up about Jack. Obviously not. I was a married woman. The man I needed to mourn was not my husband.

  Terry sympathized. He held me. Patted my shoulder. Mumbled, “Damn, I’m sorry.”

  It was so inadequate. But he couldn’t know how I felt. Nor could he fix things. He’d never met Jack. He had no idea how close Jack and I had been, how much I really did love him. I’d never told a
nyone, especially not Terry. No one knew how close I came to marrying Jack—not even, I suspect, Jack. On that day in 1965, I grieved silently, but I didn’t mourn.

  Not then.

  Terry

  Spring 1993, Washington, DC. The polished black granite slabs of Maya Lin’s wall at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, are silent on the details of the deaths of the 58,307 Americans killed in that war. The wall bears only their names. No hometown or rank. They all had death in common, but names alone tell us nothing of the uniqueness of each person.

  The wall doesn’t say “Captain Jack Sigg” (he was promoted before he went to Vietnam). Only his formal name is listed—“John C. Sigg”—though Annie always spoke of him as Jack.

  They hadn’t finished installing the wall before Annie and I and our two kids moved from DC back to Colorado in 1983. But on a trip there in 1993, I made two rubbings of Jack’s name, carved on panel 1E, line 127. One for Annie. One for Bud.

  Annie was meeting with one of her clients at the time, ironically a US Army lieutenant colonel charged with testing antiballistic missiles. Her job was to help the army with public communications. In the end, try as she might, she didn’t stray too far from the corral after all.

  Ann

  Friday, August 23, 2013, our home in Las Vegas. After nearly five decades of marriage, Terry and I began recreating the past, working on a memoir to understand the Mad Hatter’s ride that caused so much turmoil, heartache, and angst for all three of us—Jack, Terry, and me.

  For years after Jack died, I kept my grief airtight. And then I went to the library at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where I borrowed an antique reel-to-reel tape player to digitize—and relive—Jack’s taped letters. My goal: exhume buried memories of Jack to help tell our story. For four days, six hours a day, Jack came alive, forever twenty-six and “shivering with joy and hopes” for the two of us. “I want to spend the rest of my life . . . ,” he says, pausing a full ten seconds to regain control of his voice, “with you.”