Chapter 1

My name is Jack O’Shea. Most people call me ‘Captain’ or ‘Captain Jack’. I was born in 1946, the son of John and Angelene O’Shea. My grandfather was the son of Irish immigrants, his wife, my grandmother, was a Chiricahua Apache Indian. I say Indian because she called herself an Indian, not a ‘Native American’. Grandpa had left home when he was 15 years old and joined the U.S. Cavalry. He returned 6 years later with an Indian wife and enough money to buy a section of land (640 acres) and a sawmill. My mother was pure Italian, born in Rome. She called herself a Roman and always reminded us that we had the blood of the soldiers of the Roman Legions running through our veins. She was orphaned during the war, so we never knew her people. Dad met her while recovering in an Army hospital from wounds received at the battle of Monte Casino. He stayed in Italy after the war ended, married my mom and brought her home as a war bride.

I joined the Marines after graduating college, earning a commission as a Second lieutenant. Soon after finishing ‘The Basic School’, I received my first all-expense paid trip to beautiful Southeast Asia. Thirteen months later I came home for 30 days. I was a First Lieutenant at that time. A year later I was promoted to Captain. That earned me another trip to Viet Nam. I was planning on making a career in the Marines Corps.

I was in country 10 months when that all came to an end. To tell you the truth, all I remember is running to get on the chopper then there was a loud explosion. I woke up in a hospital. The doctor told me I had 17 pieces of shrapnel in my face, left arm and leg. But the one that ended my career was the one that took out my left eye.

While I was waiting to be medically discharged, I was in the Navy hospital at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. My parents along with my two sisters came to visit me. It was the first of January and they stayed a week. I had not seen them in over a year, and it was wonderful. The day after they left, I was notified that there had been a wreck and both mom and dad along with my sisters were killed! My life was really circling the drain. First my eye then my career and now my whole family is dead! What more could happen?

I will tell you more about that later in the story. Let’s get back to the good part, the cheating and the violence.

I had been married for 5 months. Was I happy? Hell No! My wife hated the farm. She hated the isolation. It was 5 miles to the nearest neighbor, about 25 minutes to the nearest town. There was nobody in the house but her all day. I was gone most of the day, so I understood that she was lonely. She had taken to visiting her family up in Memphis a couple times a week, even spending the weekend sometimes with her sister. I was not happy about the separation. My grandparents and my parents had always bragged that they had never spent a night apart. It seemed to me she spent more time in Memphis than she spent with me.