War-Torn Vet Finds New Path He Had Earned Two Purple Hearts, But Trip To Vietnam Touched His Own

Mike Farquhar quit high school early to serve a country that didn’t want him when he returned.

For the past 30 years since he was shot and took shrapnel from a mortar round, Farquhar yearned to retrace his steps to Vietnam.

It’s those two-plus years he spent fighting in the jungle that have shaped - and he would argue, controlled - his existence since.

Farquhar doesn’t sleep more than two hours at a time without answering a nervous urge to walk around his house. He can’t sit in the middle of a crowded room - his back must rest against a wall.

Tears haven’t flowed from his eyes since he was a teenager. He had refused to talk about his experiences since leaving Vietnam in 1970.

But as the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War passes this month, Farquhar’s shell is beginning to crack.

It started with a trip in March to face his hell.

“I don’t know if I knew what I was looking for. I just had to see those places I was,” he said. “I wanted to see it again in a different way.”

Gone were the fire bases, tanks, air attacks and ambush patrols for which he received five medals for heroism and two Purple Hearts.

Instead, Farquhar found smiling Vietnamese children elated to receive a Dum-Dum sucker.

Farquhar, 49, joined a group of 17 other veterans who took advantage of Walt Bacak’s crusade, “A Quest for Healing.”

Bacak leads veterans twice a year on 15-day tours to the places where American soldiers fought, died and killed.

“When we came to the first village, the kids had never seen any Americans before. They were scared and they were all crying,” Farquhar said. “But as the day went on, I think it turned out well for both sides.”

The group met some former North Vietnamese who had fought the Americans, including a 63-year-old provincial mayor.

“At first we sat there and nobody spoke. Then a guy from Alaska spoke up and he said he respected them and said they were very good fighters,” Farquhar said.

When that message was translated, the former Vietnamese soldiers “looked at each other and nodded. I think that helped relax things.”

“I talked to this one old (Viet Cong) who was shot through the arm and through the jaw. He asked to see where we were shot.”

“He said, `I shoot you. You shoot me. We even,”’ Farquhar said. “That kind of broke the ice.”

The group met near a hill where 101st Airborne Rangers were based during the war. Five of the group had fought on that hill.

Local residents told the Americans that the province, which is about the size of Kootenai County, had 16,000 soldiers fighting the Americans. Only 4,000 survived.

One American in the group, James “Limey” Walker, told the villagers how he had fought from that hill.

“When he showed them that Ranger pin and told them who he was, they started talking like they knew him,” Farquhar said. “They kept their eyes on Limey the whole time.”

Walker has written a book about the experience on the fire base. It’s titled “Fortune Favors the Bold.”

Farquhar grew up in Coeur d’Alene and remains here, working as a contractor.

His uncle was a career Army man. Farquhar remembers seeing his uncle’s medals when he would visit on leave.

“I guess it had always been what I wanted to do,” he said.

At age 17, Farquhar’s parents agreed to sign a paper that allowed him to enlist in the Army. It was 1967.

“Some of my classmates had joined early,” he said. “I’d say 10 percent of our class quit school and went.”

After boot camp in Washington, Farquhar rode a commercial jetliner to South Vietnam on Oct. 30, 1968.

Farquhar spent his time moving from fire base to fire base, where tanks and armored personnel carriers would be positioned like a big wagon wheel.

“Most times you didn’t find him, he’d find you,” Farquhar said of enemy soldiers they called “Charlie.” “We’d take seven or eight tanks and hunt during the day. Nighttime was usually when they would hit.”

“First came the mortars. Then they’d come in on you in waves.”

A mortar round wounded Farquhar in the arm and back within the first couple months of his first tour.

Just before the end of his second tour in 1970, Farquhar was shot in the arm and also took mortar shrapnel in the back, chest and head.

The twin 40-millimeter guns on Farquhar’s tank jammed during an attack where enemy soldiers had overrun his fire base. He told his crew to work on the guns while he climbed on top of the tank to fire the machine gun.

“We took a direct mortar round to the front of the tank,” he said. “The blast sent me 30 feet into the air.”

The daily routine often included shooting somebody or seeing bodies lying along the road, he said.

“The one thing that bothered me the most was putting a buddy in a bag,” he said. “That hurt more than anything. I flat refused to do it.”

When he got out of the Army, Farquhar lived in bars. There folks would see his tattoos and ask him if he was in the Army.

“Once they found out I was in Vietnam, they would give me a bunch of crap and say, `You shouldn’t have been there. Why did you go?”’ he said. “I would tell them, `You don’t know what it was like.’ “It would be like lighting a fuse. I was in a fight all the time.”

He grew out of most of that, but his quick temper remains.

He still can’t sit in the middle of a crowded room.

“Things always get you from behind, when you are not looking,” Farquhar said. “If they come head-on, you can at least deal with them.”

Until his recent trip, he didn’t know other veterans face the same insecurities.

“In this group, everyone has the same nightmares and nobody sleeps,” he said.

During the trip and shortly after were the first times that he can remember sleeping a full night.

Farquhar several years ago helped Bob Garrison, a Vietnam veteran living in Western Washington, get back on his feet after living as a homeless person.

Now Garrison helps homeless veterans. Garrison’s wife, Terry, paid the $1,700 for Farquhar’s trip to Vietnam.

“Terry said, `You’re going.’ When it came to the day I had to leave, I didn’t know if I could do it. I tried to talk myself out of going.”

Farquhar wasn’t supposed to go alone. He had plans to go with the only remaining member of his fiveperson tank crew - Donald Simon.

Farquhar and Simon found each other 13 years after the war. They remained close friends until Simon died of cancer just before Thanksgiving last year.

“I took a brass plaque to Vietnam and left it there for him,” Farquhar said. “Me and him had been through everything side by side.”

The Vietnamese people greeted the Americans with kindness, especially the children.

“I gave away more money to children than I spent,” Farquhar said. “The kids loved candy. I gave them Dum-Dum suckers. If I go back, I’ll take an entire suitcase of them.”

Farquhar sports a long mustache, which now shows gray hair. His tattoos have faded - except for the new one he got in Saigon, the one he promised his new wife he wouldn’t get.

And Farquhar can finally cry.

“Since going back, sometimes I’ll sit here and lose it. Not a lot of people understand,” he said. “At least I have my wife.”

Diana, who married Farquhar eight months ago, helps as best she can.

“I tell him, `I can’t understand what you go through all the time, but I have two shoulders. So use them,”’ she said.

Farquhar credits the trip and Diana with the first strides in healing - after 30 years.

“This is the first time I’ve ever talked about it to anyone,” he said of his past. “Diana will listen to me when I have a hard time.

“It helps to talk about it.”