BY DEBI MARTONE
STAFF WRITER
About ten minutes before Sara Balsdon’s English 12 class started at the Romeo Engineering and Technology Center, Romeo resident Bill Sharp was busy preparing for the speech he was giving at 11 a.m. He was the guest speaker Feb. 5 for the teacher’s two morning classes.
Before the second class arrived, Sharp organized his small stack of note cards, even though he wouldn’t be reading directly from them.
He never does. Instead, he used them as a reminder of important topics he didn’t want to leave out.
Sharp speaks to Balsdon’s class every year after the students have read the required book, The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien. Although O’Brien is a Vietnam veteran, he wrote his book about the war as fiction.
Sharp said he agrees O’Brien’s book is 70 percent unrealistic so he gives the kids the non-fiction version of being in Vietnam – his story of being there as a young man, all of 18 years-old like so many of his fellow soldiers.
When Sharp starts to speak, the students become frozen in their seats. Some students should be in another class that hour but they have joined to listen. They have heard about Sharp’s speech. They have heard about Sharp’s story. Word of it gets passed on from students who have heard it before.
“It’s powerful,” one of the students is overheard saying.
Sharp begins by explaining the particulars of where he was stationed and how he ended up in Vietnam.
“I joined the Army six days after my high school graduation,” Sharp told the class. “I was 17. My mother had to sign for me.”
Sharp had been offered a scholarship to Georgetown University but he and a group of three friends decided to join the Army together
instead. After boot camp and training as a weapons expert, Sharp was on the ground in Vietnam three months after his 18th birthday.
“When I was 18 I was shot for the first time. I was just a kid,” Sharp said.
With eyes fixated on him, Sharp gave the students an up close and personal account of his years in Vietnam. Even though the students just read O’Brien’s mostly fictional version, Sharp tells them the real story – unglorified, honest and real.
Within one short hour he leaves out nothing from his experience. At times he takes a short pause. He has given this talk numerous times but each time he is overwhelmed. He lived it but most of all he lived. He speaks of those who did not.
“All of us did not come back. We were, in some cases, expendable,” Sharp said.
Sharp talks about his final return home and changing into civilian clothes from his Army uniform in a public bathroom and leaving his uniform behind.
“I was done,” he said. “It was over for me.”
The effects of fighting in Vietnam were actually far from over for Sharp, who spoke of lifelong flashbacks from dehumanizing jungle warfare.
He showed scars from being shot twice in the legs, from shrapnel in his back and from being hit with napalm on his forearm.
He suffers from exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam and said he coughs up blood to this day.
By the time Sharp spoke of being spit on and called a baby killer by his fellow Americans who were demonstrating at the airport when he returned, some of the students were crying.
Balsdon doesn’t invite Sharp to speak to her class year after to year to upset or scare her students but rather to educate them.
From a literary point of view, Sharp offers a chance to compare fiction and non-fiction. Extensive classroom discussion and follow up assignments are had, including writing thank you notes to Sharp, who said he reads and keeps every one.
But Balsdon said she also feels it is important for the students to hear what most books don’t tell about the war.
“It is an important story to tell,” Balsdon said. “And it is a hard story to tell. His speech is usually the most significant part of this class in the kids’ senior year.”
Sharp answered questions from students before the class period was over.
“If you could go back would you change anything?” One student asked.
“I would not change a thing,” Sharp answered. “I did things I will never forget but I did what was asked of me.”
“How long did you get to rest after you were shot?” Another student asked.
“I didn’t,” Sharp said.
When the bell rang, the students either shook Sharp’s hand or hugged him before they left the classroom. Some thanked him while others apologized.
Sharp said talking to the students emotionally exhausts him every time but that he will continue to do it so the Vietnam War will not be forgotten.
“I don’t want it to be reduced to a paragraph in a history book,” Sharp said.
That afternoon, just as he does every time he give his speech, Sharp met up with a friend to unwind, to gather his thoughts and to do something he enjoys. He has already arranged to have the following day off from work – for rest.
