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By Steve Banko

For some people, writing is a hobby, for others, a diversion. For me, writing was a catharsis. It was a safe haven of familiarity in a strange and terrible world of blood, death, and fire that was consuming everything around me.

I didn't learn to write because I was in crisis. I had always had a knack that the grade school nuns called a gift. I had majored in English in each of the three colleges I entered (and that had asked me to leave long before graduation) because of my writing talent. But it was in the candent air of combat that I became imbued with the power of the written word.

Before college, I was a decent student. In college, I was an indecent, drinking fool. That indiscretion and my irresponsibility earned me a ticket to Vietnam as a "grunt" - an infantry soldier. The ticket was issued as one-way for sure, return trip not guaranteed. So in the midst of an adolescence where failure became far too familiar, I was placed in a situation where failure was not an option.

When I got to Vietnam, a pencil and a notebook were constant companions. I knew very early on that written documentation might not be enough to make people understand the surreal world of combat but I had to try. The world of the soldier is a flat one, where the highest peak is mean survival and the lowest depth the death of a friend. I knew almost from the first minute of the first battle that Vietnam was a mistake. Faced with the choice of going to jail for refusing to participate and trying to make the best of a horrible situation, I chose to devote my year in hell to trying to save the lives of those in my charge. I turned 22 during my tour and I was the 5th oldest man in a rifle company of 150. Most of my charges were "men" of 18 and 19. Before they came to me, the biggest decision in their lives was who to take to the senior prom. My job was to teach them how to decide whom to kill from ambush positions. I reasoned that if I could get them through this ordeal then I could create something positive out of such a horrific experience, then I could reconcile my participation in what I knew would be a failed adventure. I was doing a credible job of steering those wonderful kids away from danger and toward real manhood until December 3, 1968.

The day began with 125 GIs making a helicopter assault into a clearing about 85 miles north of Saigon. It ended with 87% of those men killed or wounded so badly they had to be evacuated from the war zone. I was shot twice that day. The first bullet hit me around 11 a.m., just below the right knee breaking my leg. The second one found me at 2:30 in the afternoon. It burrowed under my right kneecap. I was also hit with more than 20 pieces of shrapnel and had my hands burned so badly in the grass fire that swept our landing zone that I would lose all my fingernails.

My real loss, though, wasn't physical. The reality that so many died while I lived ate at my soul. Those kids were my raison d'etre and in the span of five nightmarish hours, my reason for existing was gone and yet I was alive. I was alive to deal with my failure, to ask myself over and over what could I have done to save them.

As I wrestled with the emotional scarring that comes from survival, I found the pen to be a familiar companion. I was not able to give voice to my suffering and my pain but I could commit it to paper. Because of the burns on my hands, writing was painful but I wrote as though the pain could purge my guilt and bring me peace. It didn't. But I didn't stop writing. Soon, the nurses were reading my stuff and I saw their expressions change from sad to happy to tearful in just a couple of pages. For the first time I understood the power of writing. I could take a blank piece of paper and make some entries that would lead my readers to experience the same emotions I was feeling. I wrote with a new sense of purpose, leading my "fans" to the same fear and loathing and terror and anger that swept over me in tidal waves. I would throw in the funny and the happy and the inordinate joy of men in shared suffering and I could see the tears welling up or the smiles curling lips and I knew that somehow, I would do this the rest of my life.

To varying degrees, I have: as a political speechwriter and media specialist for governments; in a booklet of anecdotes centered on holidays I spent in Vietnam; in a series of short fiction I wrote based on many of my experiences in combat.

Each time I sit before the computer and stare at the blank screen, I am filled with equal parts fear and wonder; fear at not knowing it I can make the collage of thoughts look like a cohesive whole, and wonder at the process that allows me to arrange words and help people understand.

Steve Banko is the Field Office Director in the Buffalo of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He oversees a staff of 128 and with oversight and analysis responsibilities in community development, housing, public housing, and equal opportunity. The reach of the Buffalo field office extends to all 48 upstate counties of New York. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Council for Excellence in Government and has taught in the Council's leadership program for senior federal managers.

An accomplished writer and public speaker, Steve coordinated policy development and directed media relations and speech writing for the Mayor of Buffalo NY. He was also the Mayor's media spokesman. . Steve has also served as political analyst for Buffalo's ABC television affiliate, WKBW-TV, as Manager of Communications for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority and Deputy Director of Editorial Services in the New York State Assembly. His fiction and non-fiction writings have been selected for national distinctions and he is the author of a booklet and narrator of an audio tape of essays and speeches titled Memories of War, Dreams of Peace: Echoes of the Vietnam War.

Mr. Banko served two tours of combat duty in Vietnam where he was wounded a total of six times and was decorated for valor on seven occasions. He is an award-winning speaker and essayist on matters surrounding the war and its warriors and has been published in a number of national and local magazines and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the American Legion Magazine. He is the author of dedication statements on the Buffalo, NY and the West Seneca, NY Vietnam memorials and is the 1994 recipient of Buffalo's "Terry Anderson Award" for the Courage to Comeback in recognition of his struggles to overcome alcoholism and post traumatic stress.