'I gotta go back'

POST FALLS — After Gary Dagastine finishes repairs and replacing parts on two recumbent bikes, the man asks what he owes.

Dagastine pauses and says, “50 bucks.”

“Oh, you can do better than that,” the man says.

Dagastine grins, walks away, into his house, and returns a moment later with a receipt. The man looks at it. He nods.

Dagastine, he explains, wasn’t charging him enough.

“That’s better.”

Moments later, two women stop by to pick up equipment that will allow them to repair bikes at an assisted-living facility.

Next, a van rolls to a stop and a man gets out and asks if Dagastine, owner of Northwest Recumbent Cycles, has a graveyard he can sift through.

Dagastine directs him to the section of old bikes near an outbuilding. A few minutes later he returns, empty-handed, says thanks and heads on his way.

Finally, a free moment, and Dagastine sits down.

But the Post Falls man prefers being busy. He likes chatting with friends and strangers. He loves his wife, Beth, who has long battled multiple sclerosis.

It keeps the 75-year-old from thinking too much. It keeps some of those feelings and memories of the Vietnam War at bay.

But it’s hard to forget. The Navy veteran can’t. He remembers well an 18-year-old named Daryl Eugene Smock, from Nebraska, who died Nov. 20, 1966, on their destroyer near North Vietnam.

“He was a new guy, the new guy on the show,” Dagastine says, shaking his head.

In late April, he was one of about 100 veterans, most from the Vietnam War, from North Idaho and Eastern Washington who traveled to Washington, D.C. on a two-day trip organized by Inland Northwest Honor Flight to visit war memorials.

The sendoff and return at the Spokane Airport was amazing, he says, with hundreds cheering for them and holding signs that read, "Thank you."

“We were all shocked,” he says.

But that was the easy part.

When he visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, he was overcome.

“I was walking up there to the wall, it was just like somebody was squeezing, squeezing, squeezing,” he says.

He found Daryl Eugene Smock’s name near the black wall's center, panel 12, line 97.

“The closer I got to the center of the wall it was just like I can't explain it, pressure," he says. "And then I got to him. As soon as I saw him it was just like, well, it sucked me in."

Dagastine, who served seven years in the Navy, and 38 years with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, is as tough as they come.

But that day, at that granite wall, with Daryl Eugene Smock’s name before him, he cried.

The young man’s death happened when they were in rough water and taking on nonessential supplies from another ship.

"They sent over a cable," Dagastine says. "We should have never accepted it. You don't ever have a cable going between two ships."

The cable broke free. It hit and killed Smock and injured others.

It is a regret Dagastine still lives with.

Smock was still a seaman apprentice when he died.

“I think what hits me so hard is Smock just got out of boot camp. I don't think we made it to the gun line with him. And he gets killed," Dagastine says. "If it was somebody older it wouldn't affect me so bad. I mean, we hadn’t even had a chance to take him downtown drinking yet.”

Dagastine had numerous tours of duty in Vietnam. He lost friends to the war. Some were classmates from high school in Santa Cruz, Calif.

"Too many," he says.

Worse, he believes some may have died from friendly fire - from his destroyer.

“That's what I'm having trouble with," he says.

Dagastine wrote this on his Facebook page:

I know we are responsible for some of those names on the wall because friendly fire in war is unavoidable but I just can't accept that. How do you ever apologize to those we put on the wall? Can they hear our prayers? Can we ever be forgiven? I know it's war and forgivable but everyone of them was a son or daughter, husband or wife, brother or sister, mother or father and we ended that branch of the family tree.

Dagastine hoped, as time passed, it would get easier to come to terms with war and those who died in it.

It doesn't.

"The older I get, the harder it gets," he says.

So he stays busy with his bike business. He looks after his wife. He tells jokes and laughs.

It keeps his focus off what happened nearly 56 years ago.

There is a chance, he says, he can perhaps defeat those demons that won't let him forget.

He wants to return to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He wants to stare at those names. He wants to move on. But first, "I gotta go back,” he says.

Perhaps as a guardian who serves as a guide to other veterans. Or on his own. Whatever. He just knows he has to go back.

Once more.

"I gotta go," he says. "I mean, I'm not gonna heal unless I go back."