The Light Where Shadows End

The Light Where Shadows End is more than a war story; it is a story about spiritual transformation; about transcending war through love and reconciliation, about healing through faith and forgiveness. Cantalupo is a war hero, and a witness. He shares the intimate details of war crimes and terrifying battles, of brutal inhumanity and extraordinary kindness, of pointless death and enduring survival. His story takes us on a journey into death's far reaches and transcends the field of battle. We return forever changed, discovering life is more than simply living, but an affirmation of hope and a reclamation of home. rg cantalupo served with the 25th Infantry Division as an RTO (radio operator), from 1968-69 and received three purple hearts and a Bronze Star with a Combat V for Valor Under Fire. His books include The Light Where Shadows End, You Don't Know Me, Involving Residence, No Thanks, Walking Water On Earth, The Art of Naming, and The Endurance: Journey To Worlds End. Author's NoteFor almost fifty years, ghosts haunted me in night's dead land. They lived inside my blood, rose out of my heart's graveyard, and reached up from the earth to clutch my throat in terror dreams. Therapy couldn't save me. Nor drugs. Nor alcohol. Nor living on the edge of darkness. Nor tight-roping on the thread of death. I was a war criminal. I fired white phosphorous mortars and called in napalm bombs on civilians using weapons banned by the Geneva Convention. I was a war hero. I saved four men's lives by sacrificing my own. I was awarded a Bronze Star with a Combat V for courage under fire and three purple hearts. And somewhere between these two irreconcilable battles was the wreckage of my life-drugs, divorces, deadly despairs. For twenty years, I wrote and rewrote my story, never finding a beginning or an end. And, over the years, the ghosts multiplied, becoming a company of bad spirits asking me to join them in their graves. In May, 2015, to survive my looming suicide, I returned to the field where I died. I do not know what I expected to find there. Surely not my bones, nor the bones of so many friends and enemies I left behind. Surely not the rice paddy where I lay bleeding, nor the blood-stained elephant grass where a medevac whirled me away. I walked along the edge of Highway 1 as thousands of motorbikes rushed by: The new Vietnam, filled with young people, (70% under the age of thirty-five), with bright hopes and aspirations and an awakening belief in a better life. I sat down by the roadside and wiped away silent tears, my face streaked with smoke, dust, and loss. Trang Bang. This is where we ordered villagers to squat down while we "searched and destroyed" their homes. This is where Nick Ut photographed Phan Phuc, the "Napalm Girl", running naked down the highway, the sticky, gasoline flames burning her skin as she ran. This is where Lonny, Baby San, Devil and I lay dying, dying not for God or flag or country, but simply because we were "the chosen", draftees offered up from poor black, brown, or white families by an upper-middle-class draft board that didn't want to take sons from their own. I stood on the Trang Bang Bridge, gazed down from the railing, and saw my life drift by. Like pages ripped out of "Life" or "Time", I saw my seventeen year-old wife's tattered face, Janice floating past on the rippling surface; I saw my mother's beat expression searching for her son. Not far away, a film crew from Vietnam TV International recorded my anguish. They came to follow my journey toward reconciliation, and have arranged a meeting with former members of The People's Army, soldiers who lived in Trang Bang and fought against me in 1968-69. We sit at a table outside a government building and shook hands. At first, we were awkward, hesitant, reaching across the table to touch, clasp, and let go.