Semper Fi: A Brother's Search

Richard Sutter as a boy. (Family Photo)

Second of three articles

By Phil McCombs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 20, 1998; Page A1

ATLANTA – Rob Sutter was nearly 14 when his brother Richard was killed in Vietnam in 1967. The funeral was held the day after his birthday, and Rob came home to find a letter in the mailbox from his dead brother.

His hero.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY," Richard had scrawled on stationery embossed with the U.S. Marine Corps emblem and a small military map of Southeast Asia. "Judy [a girlfriend] told me she saw you awhile back and that you were just like me – how lucky can a guy be?

From left to right, brothers Richard, David and Robert Sutter outside the Atlanta home where they grew up. (Family Photo)

"... Well, the real purpose of this letter is to wish you a very happy 14th birthday. I know I'm early, but I don't know when I'll have another chance to write."

Two days later – July 21, 1967 – Cpl. Richard F. Sutter was shot through the head in a battle with North Vietnamese troops near Khe Sanh. He died instantly, leaving his parents, five brothers and sisters and innumerable friends back in Atlanta to deal with their grief.

For Rob, the pain and anger would only grow.

"Remember you're in my daily thoughts and prayers," Richard had closed that last letter. "Oh yeah! Save a few good-looking blondes for me."

Photos of U.S. antiwar protestors in the Hanoi War Museum. (By Frank Johnston, The Washington Post)

It was still early in a war that would deeply divide and change the nation. Enthusiasm for the fight against communism was strong, and most of the 700 mourners at Richard's funeral in the Cathedral of Christ the King hadn't known him – they were there to support the family of a 21-year-old Marine who'd sacrificed his life in his country's effort to preserve freedom in South Vietnam.

This was a bitter, angry time in America – the '60s of song and fable, of My Lai and Woodstock, political assassinations, troops blocking citizens at the gates of the Pentagon. The day Richard died, Time's cover featured a Newark cabby under a banner that read "Anatomy of a Race Riot." Carl Sandburg's death was reported two days later, and his great antiwar poem "Grass" appeared on the front page of this newspaper:

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work –
        I am the grass: I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun ...
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
        What place is this?
        Where are we now?

"I opened that letter," recalls Rob, now a successful businessman of 44. "I don't know if I cried then, but I'll tell you this: Since then I haven't. ... I haven't released in tears about anything.

"It's been gnawing in my gut."

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