Stephen Ham
Born: Salina, Kansas, 1948
Served in Vietnam, U.S. Army
2d Battalion (Combat Intelligence Battalion)
2d Infantry Regiment Mechanized, 1st Infantry Division
101st Airborne Division, 17th Assault Helicopter Company
Lai Khe, Iron Triangle, and Camp Eagle
Intelligence Analyst, 1968-69
From the Artist:
When I arrived in Vietnam, my orders were for the 1st Cavalry, but they canceled these and sent me to an experimental unit called the Combat Intelligence Battalion; it was the only such unit ever formed.
My job was to collect and monitor intelligence at the battalion level in the field. I served with many different units, mostly infantry and machanized infantry. In October, after days in the mud in the middle of a firefight, I decided to die clean. Several weeks later the Combat Intelligence Battalion was disbanded and I was sent to the 101st Airborne, where I flew recon with the Kingsmen: Death and Desctruction 24 Hours a Day—If You Care Enough To Send the Very Best, Send the Kingsmen.
My Dead Vet cards are different from my paintings; they are greeting cards or letters from the dead: I'm a medium for the dead and I'm processing their pain. In Dante, the gate to heaven is found by plunging into the depths of hell. This kind of art puts us in touch with something deep within, something genuinely human; there the community is created, isolation is broken.
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