(Published Saturday, May 27, 2006 10:49:55 PM CDT)
http://www.gazetteextra.com/memorialday_hinkel052806.asp
Gazette Staff
Dan Hinkel was one year younger than I am now when he stood up from a game of hearts to carry supplies from a helicopter at a firebase near Vietnam's border with Cambodia.
"We were sitting there in this bunker waiting to finish this hand of cards," Greg Rollinger said.
Rollinger's halting voice still aches 37 years after his friend stepped into the path of an artillery shell. He tells the story in the present tense. They wait minutes for Hinkel to return.
"The squad leader comes running into the bunker and says, 'He's dead,'" Rollinger said.
Hinkel, forever 23, left behind a fiancee in the United States, a big family in small town Ohio and a name-Daniel Kenneth Hinkel-now etched into line 47 of panel 28W of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
I-Daniel Lee Hinkel-was exercising my constitutional right to vanity by running my name through Google when I found a hit at virtualwall.com, a Vietnam War memorial site.
Private First Class. U.S. Army. Selective service. A Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. July 5, 1945-March 26, 1969.
We are not related, as far I know.
I get my name in the paper a lot for typing words and thinking up metaphors and similes to describe people and things in this piece of this free country. I tell people things. I honestly think what I do is important.
But Dan Hinkel's name is on a memorial because he died serving his country.
On Memorial Day weekend and for the rest of the year, what do we owe the Dan Hinkel who died for our country?
"A nice guy," said Chris Terbeek, who was engaged to Hinkel. They met at Cleveland State University.
Pfc. Daniel K. Hinkel of Ohio relaxes during a break in the action of the Vietnam War. Hinkel was 23 years old when he was killed by an artillery shell in 1969. Gazette reporter Daniel L. Hinkel shares the soldier's story. A-1-8 Chapter, 4th Infantry
"He was a just a real easy-going, life-loving guy," Rollinger said.
"I can never remember him getting angry. Usually, he had a big smile on his face."
Terbeek described Hinkel as an outgoing guy who liked golf and crossword puzzles. He majored in marketing. He stood about 6-foot-1 or 6-foot-2.
When Hinkel graduated, his college deferment ran out and the draft board pulled his number. He "pretty much expected" he would be drafted out of his small hometown of Dover, Ohio, Terbeek said.
"He wasn't very happy about it. He wanted to get it over with quickly and get on with his life," she said.
Hinkel "had no business being there," said Ken McCormack, another Army buddy.
"We all at the time were like, 'What's a white boy with a college degree doing here?'" he said.
Hinkel arrived in Vietnam shortly before the start of Operation Wayne Grey. For much of early and middle March, Hinkel's unit fought a costly battle in the Plei Trap Valley.
"A Company had been involved in a lot of hellacious fighting," McCormack said.
The men felt safe after they moved to the firebase, where they dug into bunkers and played cards as enemy troops lobbed Hail Mary shells like the one that killed Hinkel.
"We felt the safest we had the whole month of March," Rollinger said.
Back in the United States, 8-year-old Cathy Pinter-Terbeek's sister-came home from school one day to find her mother home from work unusually early. Her mother stood crying in front of the bust of John F. Kennedy on the television set. Cathy asked her mother if she had lost her job.
"She kind of smiled and said she wished she had," said Pinter, who is now Cathy Papadopoulos of Atlanta.
Cathy remembers Dan as a nice man who took her to the lake along with Terbeek.
Terbeek married and now lives outside Cleveland. She has another life, but she still thinks about Dan.
"About every day."
"Freedom isn't free" is an incomplete truth.
Freedom is damn near free for almost all of us.
For Dan Hinkel, our freedom was costlier than words can explain. He lost his right to exist.
Hinkel's service shouldn't be politicized. Soldiers don't choose when they're born. They don't start wars, and they don't end them. No matter how brilliant or stupid a war might be, the U.S. needs a military, and that military needs soldiers. Those soldiers serve the purposes laid before them by men employed by U.S. tax dollars.
Those dollars come from you and me.
Dan Hinkel, Pfc. Sean Schneider and all the other men and women we will memorialize Monday died in operations funded by us. They died because of us.
You have the right to free speech because someone-perhaps a reluctant someone like Dan Hinkel-served and died. You have the right to be told the charges against you because someone served and died. You have the right to worship God, no god or ten gods because someone served and died.
How are you using the gifts Dan Hinkel gave you?
Hinkel was not acting out of character when he volunteered to run to a helicopter and pick up supplies the day he died, Rollinger and McCormack said. He jumped up when the squad leader asked.
"We just continued to play our game," Rollinger said.
"He left the bunker, and we never saw him again. The artillery shell had landed right next to him, and he was killed instantly."
Three words on a wall sum up what is lost and what we gain when someone dies serving this country. The words represent an immeasurably heavy sacrifice and an invaluable gift:
"Daniel Kenneth Hinkel."
