One corner of John Hosier’s traveling museum looks a lot like the tent the doctors lived in on the TV show "M.A.S.H." They called it the swamp.
Hosier says in Vietnam, the place you lived was called your hooch. It had a cot, a standing locker, and a footlocker with a lock on it.
The cot on display now in Ludington is not the one he used as a soldier, but it was built in 1965. It’s made up with bedding and a pillow and on it is a mesh baseball cap with the emblem of the 173rd Airborne Brigade -- the unit Hosier fought with as an Army ranger.
Above the bed is a photo of a pet monkey he had during the war.
“We watched Tarzan when we grew up and we always thought it would be fun to get a pet monkey,” he says.
He discovered they’re lousy pets.
“They’re mean. They’re nasty. They’re dirty.”
In addition to the replica of Hosier's hooch, there are thousands of items that make up the traveling exhibit called “through the eyes.”
Everything from guns to typewriters to Vietnamese clothing is on display, a lot of it in artillery crates.
And there are numerous photographs Hosier took as a war photographer. Many are of troops in action while some depict more ordinary moments, like a smiling soldier holding a quart of milk in a white and pink carton.
Unpacking memories
Hosier takes his show to about 20 towns a year. He says his memorabilia is meant to help people whose lives have been broken by the war. At a reception Tuesday night, he urged veterans to get out the painful memories they’ve carried around for decades.
“Share them with your family who you’ve never told them about," he said. "Go ahead and cry. Go ahead and feel that grief and pain you carry in your heart.”
Hosier drew quite a few tears when he spoke candidly about his experience in the war. (Hear an extended excerpt below.)
His team of rangers saw fierce action in the central highlands of Vietnam where they were dropped onto hilltops from a helicopter. On one mission they got off at the “wrong stop.”
“The wrong people were waiting for us,” he recalled. “There were eleven of us. Within an hour, six of us were dead.”
Hosier survived on that hill for three days and went on to become a war photographer.
He and his photographs are in Ludington this week along with the traveling Vietnam Memorial in part because of the efforts of Ron Martin, a veteran who grew up in Mason County and repaired tanks in the war.
Martin is referred to as the project pioneer on the committee that has organized the event. He became motivated to bring the Vietnam wall to Ludington three years ago, after he saw it in Cadillac where he went to pay respects to a friend who died in combat.
Martin found him dead inside a tank.
“What I saw, I Hope nobody ever has to see that” says Martin.
At the memorial in Cadillac in 2011, Martin laid a bouquet of roses in honor of that lieutenant, David Nolan. Later, he got in touch with Nolan’s daughter who lives in Wisconsin. She’ll be coming over this weekend for the events in Ludington.
Exhibits and events are ongoing through Sunday.
