Vietnam veteran writes novel, donates proceeds

by Frank Lee

operations@thenewsleaders.com

Michael P. Maurer lives in Sartell, but for the veteran-turned-writer-and-poet who recently gave a presentation about his wartime experience, it’s almost as if he had never left Vietnam.

Perfume River Nights is a novel he struggled nine years to write because of the emotional toll the war took on his mind, body and soul, and because he wanted to do right by his comrades-in-arms, especially those who didn’t get to return home to the United States like he did.

“More than a war story, Perfume River Nights is the tale of tragic events and the heroic quest to know ourselves and find our way,” according to Maurer, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran.

On Oct. 12, Maurer gave a talk about his life and his book to an audience at the Stearns History Museum in St. Cloud.

“Three hundred thousand of us were wounded,” he told the jam-packed audience. “That loss rippled through the communities and our families, created scars and grief that persist today.”

The compelling presentation he gave at the history museum’s Breakfast Club was his account of his Vietnam experience as both a soldier during the war and as an in-country resident some 30 years later.

To put the loss of life into context, Maurer quoted Robert Kennedy during his presentation to the museum’s club members, who sat mesmerized and silent as Maurer talked about the war’s death toll.

“Robert Kennedy, when he was running for president in 1968, said something that helps us see the meaning of those figures,” Maurer said. “What he said was this: ‘Our brave young men are dying in the swamps of Southeast Asia. Which of them might have written a poem, which of them might have cured cancer . . . which of them might have taught a child to read? It is our responsibility to let those men live.’”

Maurer said almost 17,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War in 1968, and that it was seven more years and 30,000 more American lives lost before the last U.S. soldier was killed in Vietnam.

“I know those young men Robert Kennedy spoke of. I’m one of them,” Maurer told the audience, an older group of people, most of whom certainly lived through those tumultuous years and times of the Vietnam War.

Maurer served in Vietnam as an infantryman with the 82nd Airborne Division in the late 1960s. So many years later, in 2003, the University of Minnesota graduate moved to Vietnam before settling in Sartell.

“Perfume River Nights is a story about those young men – how they experienced combat and are changed by it,” Maurer said. “It is the culmination of my 50-year effort to save those guys . . . guys who long ago were dead. . . . I’m still trying to save them.”

America’s involvement in Vietnam escalated throughout the 1960s. Maurer and his fellow comrades faced difficult combat conditions. Emotions were pulled in various directions, from compassion, fear and aggression, according to Stearns History Museum officials.

“Perfume River Nights is for the men who died beside me,” Maurer said. “This book is for the 60,000 who died before their dreams or potential were realized. This book is for the friends and family who continue to mourn.

“We fought in that river, in and around it, and its tributaries. We drank its water. We bathed in it. We killed in it. And we died in it. The river holds our stories.”

According to Stearns History Museum officials: “As a decorated veteran himself, (Maurer) knows firsthand what soldiers went through in Vietnam. His words, both spoken and those penned in poetry, offer hope, healing and understanding.”

“As an 18-year-old, it was my responsibility to decide when to shoot and when not to shoot,” Maurer said. “I had to make split-second decisions whether to shoot or not to shoot – there was no one beside me – decisions that would determine who would live and who would die.”

President Richard Nixon informed the world in a televised address March 29, 1973, that the last American troops had left Vietnam.

“I have laid on the ground and in holes with dead men and dying men. I’ve had men beg me to save them, and I’ve had men beg me to kill them,” Maurer said in his presentation, which included admissions of being grief-stricken and confessions of survivor’s guilt.

“And I’ve killed men.  . . . I’ve killed men . . . and it took me a long time before I could admit that to myself, much less stand in front of anybody and admit that to them, but I’m telling you this morning because it’s part of who I am.”

According to a Public Broadcasting System account of the Vietnam War: “As the deaths mounted and Americans continued to leave for Southeast Asia, protests erupted on college campuses and in major cities at first, but by 1968 every corner of the country seemed to have felt the war’s impact.”

Maurer is still sickened by how many people died.

“Nearly 17,000 of us were killed in 1968 in Vietnam, nearly 90,000 of us were wounded. On average in 1968, 2,000 of us were being killed or wounded every week – every week,” Maurer shouted full-throttle. “How did we endure that? How did we allow that to happen?”

Proceeds from the novel’s sales benefit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. That memorial (aka “The Wall”) is “a symbol of America’s honor and recognition” of those “who served and sacrificed their lives in the Vietnam War,” according to the VVMF.

Inscribed on the black granite walls of the memorial in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated on Nov. 13, 1982, are the names of more than 58,000 men and women “who gave their lives or remain missing.”

“It was important to me to write honestly, no matter how painful it would be,” Maurer said. “And there were many days during the 13 years of writing the novel that I sat at the computer and cried. How does a soldier survive doing the things that infantrymen have to do and hold onto some sense of self-good?” Maurer asked the audience rhetorically.

“I wanted to write about love, hate, loyalty and friendship – the things that pulled us together and the things that tore us apart.”

For more information about Sartell resident and Vietnam veteran Michael P. Maurer, or his Perfume River Nights, visit www.michaelpmaurer.com.