There’s a hilltop there in Vietnam, deserted, cold and bare –

            Except for one old rotted cross that few men know is there.

These words are from a poem written by Army veteran Marvin Reed in memoriam for his friend, Jim Skomski, who at age 22 was killed in Vietnam in 1969 during an ambush attack upon their infantry patrol.

There have been many nights in the past several years when Reed has stared down at a small pile of photographs scattered across his kitchen table. A few are of Skomski and himself standing together.

The photos are faded with age, but whenever Reed looks at them, he remembers lives that ended too soon and recalls deaths that lingered too long. His memory holds tightly onto a terrible time that he never could have imagined on that day when he answered the call to serve his country.

Reed was drafted into the Army in 1968. He met Skomski, who was from Chektowago, a small town outside of Buffalo, New York, at Fort Dix in New Jersey. Skomski had been studying to become an electrician and was married at the time.

From Fort Dix, both young men moved on to Fort Polk, Louisiana, where the hot, humid and swampy environment was to prepare them to fight in the jungles of Vietnam.

“I was in Fort Polk when Jim and I became really good friends,” Reed said. “When we stood up together against a group of other guys who were trying to push us around, we kind of knew that we would always try to look out for each other.”

Reed and Skomski were later transferred to Fort Louis in Seattle, a short stop before traveling to Vietnam as Army specialists of the First Air Cavalry Infantry Division.

There was no easing into the perils of Vietnam. Their initiation into the war was immediate and foreboding.

“As infantry and mortar platoon soldiers, Jim and I were dropped by helicopter into the jungles that bordered South Vietnam and Cambodia,” he says. “We were part of an outfit of about 90 men put into a war zone filled with 1,300 soldiers of the NVA.” (North Vietnam Army.)

“I remember being lowered into this horribly loud sounds of guns firing and bombs exploding and I thought if there is a hell, it must be here.”

It stands there, oh so all alone amidst the mud and mire —

Stained with blood of men who died, no flowers, just barbed wire.

When Reed, who now lives a quiet life in Lehighton with Gloria, his wife of 16 years, sees another photo of himself filling his canteen, he recounts one of his many struggles that Skomski and he had in order to stay alive in Vietnam. They carried a three-day supply of water and rations, but at times they would run out and have to fill their canteens from water holes laden with mosquitoes and rotting animals.

“We were given iodine pills to kill the bacteria so we could drink the water. Jim and I used to have some fun making coffee with that water. We’d throw anything that might be lying around into the pot. Some of that coffee tasted pretty darn good, too, if you didn’t ask about our secret ingredients.”

When he mentions the enemy, Reed explains that the people of North Vietnam never knew life without war since they were born, having had to fight the French and the Japanese before opposing the American military.

“The NVA was very experienced and intelligent,” he says. “If we reported their coordinates, our air attack could wipe them out, so to prevent that from happening, they would get as close as 20 yards away from us to make it too risky for our pilots to drop bombs because they would kill us, too.”

On Feb. 8, 1969, Reed was the front man of a 22-man patrol that included two Green Berets, a trained dog, and his friend, Jim. As they walked a narrow path looking for enemy spotters, the dog began barking when it came upon body parts left over from a previous attack.

“We were in thick vegetation and we couldn’t see squat so we reversed the order of our line to go back. Jim was in the middle of our patrol.”

When asked what happened next, Reed’s voice cracks from tears that fill his eyes.

“I said to Jim, ‘Be careful, buddy,’ not knowing they were the last words I would ever say to my friend.”

The ambush came mostly from the flanks. The enemy opened machine-gun fire upon the middle of the platoon line, or what Reed calls “the killing zone.”

“The NVA attacked the middle, not at the front or back. That way they could kill more of our men.”

Skomski, who had spent just four months in Vietnam, was killed instantly. Reed and the men who did survive the ambush managed to crawl to a position of safety where they could radio for air attack support.

“The firepower was so intense we couldn’t retrieve the bodies. I didn’t even know right away that Jim was killed.”

It’s here sometimes my thoughts are found back to that lonely cross —

I think back of a friend I had and by that cross I lost.

Afterhis term of service expired, Reed came back to Lehighton in 1970. He spoke often with his friend’s father, and that gave him some peace of mind, but outside his hometown, there were demonstrations protesting the war and decrying American soldiers for their involvement in a conflict without a cause and a war that was never won.

Reed still does not understand why so many men in the prime of their lives were sent to fight in Vietnam. He says that there was no threat to our country like there was in World War II.

“We used to say that it was a rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight. You fought for each other, to protect your buddy. There was no other reason to be there.”

Over and over again, Reed would be awakened by nightmares of the North Vietnam Army killing Jim right in front of him. Other terrible dreams replayed another incident in which a captain was decapitated, a fellow soldier lost both of his feet, and another man’s eye was torn out by a blast of shrapnel.

“That night was hard to forget, especially because our own planes fired 4,000 rounds a minute thinking they were wiping out an enemy mortar site when they were mistakenly killing our own men. I have to admit I lost my faith then, too. I couldn’t believe that God would allow such senseless killing to happen.”

As friends, we shared our food and drink, in war our lives were one —

We fought and thought we’d never lose a war that wasn’t won.

He has physical reminders of events that happened 47 years ago too, having just received his 45th radiation treatment for prostate cancer he believes he incurred from Agent Orange, a chemical spray used to kill jungle vegetation in order to expose the North Vietnam Army.

“They say that there lives a little boy inside every man. I came home with no boy left in me and no one to call my friend.”

It didn’t change until a World War II veteran pulled Reed aside at a VA meeting and told him to stop crying about his past.

“He told me to be grateful that I’m alive. He said it’s time to go on and do something with my life.”

Reed got a job working in a garment factory and has come to realize there was much about his life that was worth living for.

His wife, Gloria, has suffered with him through all of his struggles. He says she has literally saved his life.

“She’s my angel. I think about Jim so I can keep him alive in me, but it’s Gloria who keeps me breathing every day.”

American lives lost in the Vietnam War were estimated to be about 58,000.

“That number doesn’t account for the men who came home alive, but are dead inside,” Gloria says.

Recently, three eighth-grade students from a middle school in Chektowago completed a poster project that displayed James Skomski’s obituary, a photo taken of him and Reed and a copy of the poem written into this story.

“The project was the idea of my honors students, Taylor DeAmico, Taylor McMullen and Calie Nazzarett,” says their teacher, Jillian Oswald. “We had the poster sent to the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.”

“When Jillian called me to talk about the project, I knew then I wanted to tell this story about my buddy, Jim,” says Reed.

No, brothers not, but closer still, we shared a life of hell —

Until that day, God called your name and on that hill you fell.

Although he has received two presidential citations and numerous other medals for his courage, Marvin Reed can look at you through his tired yet humble eyes and say he wants no special attention for his service in Vietnam.

“I do not want to be called an American hero,” he says. “I just would like to bring a little recognition to James Skomski.”

But rest in peace, my dearest friend, I think of you yet still —

My mind goes back to that old cross atop that lonely hill.