Chapter 1

Da Nang, Vietnam 1969

On Feb 16, 1969, Tet* was just getting started and we were scheduled to leave. At 07:00 we were wheels up on one of those lovely Continental birds with the Golden Tail. As soon as those wheels came up and we heard them lock into place, we let out a yell like you have never heard before...

We were going home finally after 13 months of living in one of the most God awful places on the face of the earth.

Just getting out of Vietnam was a chore. My buddy Jimmy and I left our base at Phu Bai on an ugly old C-123 that happened to be going our way, south to Da Nang.

We had both had a case of the clap and we thought we were good to go, but because it was fairly recent and on record, we had to submit to a urine sample to be checked before we could leave. I was afraid that I might not pass, so I looked up an old friend from the 3rd MAW and got him to pee in the bottle for me. Well as luck would have it, I was clean, and he was not. So all of a sudden there we are running around Da Nang like a couple of chickens with our heads chopped off, trying to get retested so we could make our plane in time the next day.

When we left Phu Bai, we had checked in our weapons and were in Da Nang with nothing but our clothes and not many of them either.

Finally, everything was done, and we went to chow at the mess hall. Sitting around the table with a bunch of guys swapping lies and tall tales about what we were going to do once we got home.

We left the mess hall, went over to the NCO club, and proceeded to get a little drunk, not that you would notice. We staggered back to the transient barracks, to try to get some sleep before we had to fall out at 0500 to get into formation to load up into the cattle cars and get to those freedom birds.

I never thought I would go to sleep, I was so wired.

INCOMING!!!! About 04:00 the sirens went off and the rockets and mortars were coming in. Here we were in a transient barracks, with no flack jackets, no helmet, nothing to protect our soft pink bodies from the shrapnel, we jumped up and ran for the bunker, down a flight of stairs, and across a short open space to the bunker, now you have to have built one of these things to appreciate them. They were 55 gallon drums full of sand side by side and huge timbers on top spanning over the top and then the top covered with several layers of sand bags. There was a wall in front of the opening made the same way and you had to dodge around the end of the wall and get inside to be protected from flying metal.

I was in the lead and Jimmy was hot on my heels, I dove in and turned around, Jimmy didn't come in. I screamed his name, I heard a moan, I stuck my head out and there he was on his back flat on the ground moaning. His feet were closest to me, I grabbed them and pulled him in. Once inside, it was dark, we had no light, and neither of us smoked so we didn't have the ever present Zippo lighter that almost everyone carried.

Jimmy, where are you hit, man?

"I'm not hit," he replied.

"I hit my right shoulder on the timber on the top of the barrels. It almost knocked me out for a second," he said.

I felt for his shoulder and sure enough, his arm was laying at an odd angle. He had dislocated his shoulder.

"Do something" He yelled.

What could I do? All I had for first aid training was in the Boy Scouts and most of that was just tying bandages on each other.

I helped him sit up and his arm looked horrible.

We had both been afraid of having to stay in country with the VD treatment, if it wasn't gone. Now Jimmy was afraid of the same thing,

"Don't let them keep me here! Get me on that plane."

"What are we going to do?" I asked.

He said, "Just jerk it hard."

"Man, are you sure?" I replied

Just do it, I can't stay here. Get me on the plane, and when we get Okinawa, they can treat me there."

"Okay, are you ready, man?"

"Just do it," he said.

I put the my boot as close to his arm pit as I could get with out hurting him any more than necessary, I gently picked up his right arm from his side, and before either of us could chicken out I gave it a very hard yank.

Well, thank the good Lord for small miracles. It seemed to pop back into place. Jimmy was passed out from the pain.

While I was waiting for him to come around, the shelling stopped, and all clear was sounded. As attacks go, this one had been fairly light.

Through out all this, there had been an almost steady cacophony of sound, explosions near and far, rifle fire, automatic weapons fire, aircraft noise, helo's flying around.

When I stuck my head out, there were fuel storage tanks burning. Some small fires were burning on the ground and there were some structures burning too.

I crawled back in and Jimmy was coming around. We sat there for awhile. It was time to figure out what to do...

Going Home...

I got Jimmy up, He held his injured right arm tight to his body with his other arm and I helped him crawl out of the bunker.

The whole attack had been very short in length of time. The sun was just starting to come up out of the South China Sea to the east. It was going to be a beautiful day.

We were going home this morning and we were alive.

We made our way as fast as possible to our Corpsman friend who had helped us out of the medical situation we had encountered the day before.

Jack was a Navy Corpsman we had known since a Caribbean cruise we went on together the year before our tour in Vietnam. He was one hell of a Corpsman, He lived for his Marines, His mission was to keep his Marines alive and get them home. He was not a miracle worker, but he sure seemed like it to all of us. He had been rotated back to Da Nang for some training, and was due to head back to Phu Bai in a couple of days.

We found Jack working on a kid who been in a jeep accident during the attack. He had run his jeep into a ditch trying to avoid running Marines on the road in the dark.

"Hey, Guys what's up?" Jack said, when he saw us come in the clinic.

"Hey, Doc?" "We need some help." I called out to him. (All Corpsman are called Doc)

"Jimmy hit a chunk of wood running to get in a bunker and his shoulder was dislocated." I told him.

"We need to figure out how to get him on the plane this morning, he wants out of here and I'll get him to the Doc in Okinawa.".

The injured Marine wasn't hurt bad, so he told Jack to take care of us, when he found out we had a plane to catch first thing that morning.

We slipped Jimmy's shirt off as gently as we could and Jack taped the arm to Jimmy's side, we tucked the sleeve of the shirt back inside the shirt and put it back on him, it looked like he didn't have an arm, but you had to look close to see anything was out of the ordinary.

Jimmy was in severe pain by now, Jack gave me about 20 really big Darvon tablets. Gave one to Jimmy, we drank some coffee and waited for the Darvon to take effect. One Darvon was just enough to take the edge off the pain. Jimmy was starting to look a little better. Jack quickly fixed up the other injured Marine, and we all decided to head for the chow hall and get something to eat before we had to head over to the cattle cars to ride around the base to get to the civilian air terminal.

Jimmy started to get sleepy in the chow hall as we sat there eating and drinking coffee. He was doing neither, he just sat there leaning against my side so he wouldn't fall out of his chair. To outward appearances, he just looked like he was shaking off a hang over.

After we finished eating, the other Marine left for his duty station, and Jack and I helped Jimmy get to the transient barracks to catch the cattle cars for our last ride in Vietnam.

When we got to the transient barracks, we stood milling around like a bunch of cattle waiting for the cattle cars to show up for us. Jimmy and I tried to tell Jack how grateful we were for all he had done for us, he just waved us off. We all cried a little as we hugged each other one last time as we boarded the cattle cars...

We never saw Jack alive again. He was killed 6 weeks later in a rocket attack at Phu Bai on the Hue/Phu Bai air field as he was running to help a wounded Marine.

By the time we got off the cattle cars at the air terminal, Jimmy was out on his feet. I helped him down to the ground and we sat with our backs against a wall and waited for our unit to be called to board our Freedom Bird with the big Golden Tail.

Finally the call came, Jimmy was completely asleep and there was no waking him. I picked him up slipped him over my shoulder in a fireman's carry and walked to the plane with him.

Some of the other Marines asked me what was wrong with him, I just told them he was passed out drunk from too much partying the night before. I carried him up the gangway and slid him into his seat with the help of another Marine buddy of ours.

We would soon be on our way home to the land of my obsession.

Tall skinny round eyed Redheads...

After the flight leveled out and we were on our way to Okinawa things settled down and most of us visited or sat dreaming about the days and weeks to come.

Jimmy started to wake about mid way to Okinawa, in pain, I gave him some more Darvon, 2 or 3 this time and he was out like a light in just a few minutes.

When we landed some 8-9 hours later, I picked him up and carried him off the plane. I took him to the nearest medical facility and turned him over to the Corpsman and nurses there.

They told me that they would take care of him. I went to get some chow and find a place to sleep in the transient barracks, I wasn't scheduled to fly out until 2 days later.

The next morning, I went to find Jimmy, he was sitting up with his shoulder and arm in a cast, and he told me they were shipping him out that morning on a medical transport.

He was going to get home before me. Sometimes you just fall in it and come out smelling like a Rose.

I wished him well, told him I would come see him in Texas after I got home and settled into life as a free man. I shook his left hand gave him one last hug, we both had tears in our eyes.

I choked back a sob and told him I would see him soon...

I was never to see Jimmy alive again.

My First Redhead...

I went back to the infirmary to see Jimmy off. After he left, I was at odds as to what to do with myself for the next two days. Jimmy and I had our stay in Okinawa all planned out. Sleeping during the day around our duty schedule, which consisted mostly of keep you busy stuff, running all over base standing in line, waiting for some one to tell you to go somewhere else to stand in another line.

We had our evenings activities all planned. We were going to get off base. We were at Camp Butler, and go across the street to the village and partake of some of life's baser pleasures. I thought back to a time when I use to listen to Winston and Oscar, the pea pickers and their song. "I won't go huntin' with you Jake"

Well, that had been our plan, but for some reason, I didn't feel like going into the village alone.

So, I decided to stay on base and just chill out, besides wearing a double layered vulcanized condom, to protect one's most prized possession didn't seem like it was worth the effort. Besides, the barracks were going to be empty and I probably could find time to take things in hand and delay the need for another couple of days.

After evening chow, I went back to the barracks and found a book out in the day room, went back to the rack and decided to read until taps. I didn't get very far into the book before I started daydreaming about my "Obsession", what I was going to do once I found one...

I thought back to a time of relative innocence, I was a 8th grader in a Catholic school, and I wanted to get a Vespa motor scooter in the worst way. I had found one used for only $200 it was a GS I think. Now I knew where one could be had, I only needed one other thing. Money.

My parents told me if I wanted it, I would have to earn the money myself. My Mom helped get me my first job, it was cleaning an office for a Lawyer once a day right after school, mostly just sweeping, taking out the trash and some light dusting of the legal books etc. For this labor, I received the princely sum of $50 a month. You have to remember that this was when the minimum wage was $1.25 per hour, so it was good pay for a minimum amount of time.

I found the other job myself, I went to the local Safeway Grocery Store and approached the manager and asked if he had any openings for a stock boy or grocery sacker/carry out boy. He promptly hired me on the spot and told me to show up on Thursday night, right after school, to work my first shift. 4:30-10:00PM.

I showed up that first Thursday afternoon, went into the break room and stopped dead in my tracks. There were three or four of the lady cashiers there getting ready for their evening shift, and one of them literally almost knocked me off my feet. It wasn't that she was so extremely beautiful, she wasn't, but she was very striking.

I am 6'5" and at that time around 170 lbs I was also a little bit behind in my school, I had missed a grade, so I was bigger than all the other kids. This lady was all of 6' tall, very very slender, her breasts were almost non existent, just two little bumps, and legs that started just below her chin and seemed to go down forever. She didn't have a lot of curves, but what she had were distributed well, her most striking feature was her milky white skin and her flaming red hair. It surround her head in a halo of fire. She looked up at me and smiled and nodded, I introduced my self to everyone, and found out that her name was Grace.

She was very well named, as she was the personification of all things graceful, she seemed so calm and self assured, she moved though the work day like a queen and we were all her loyal subjects.

At least that is the way I felt, the reality as it is, most of the time, was very different. But I wouldn't find out about that until a short while later.

I was 14 and I was in LOVE! All I could do in school each day was sit there and think about Grace. I was sure that she didn't even know I was alive.

Since I now had two jobs, my Mom relented and advanced me the money to buy my scooter. Now I was a man with a plan, I could come and go as I wanted, and I had the means to do so.

In reality, I didn't do too much planning or too much running around. I had spent to many years in the Boy Scouts, and I was working on my Eagle. I wanted that rank badly. I was not very prone to doing anything that would screw that up. So I guess you could say I was a pretty responsible young man. At least that is the way I saw myself.

As time went by, I couldn't wait to go to work. I would do my work and by some means or another, I would always be sacking groceries behind Grace in her check out lane. She would talk to me like I was an adult, ask me questions about school, or the Scouts.

Of course she knew that I was a good Catholic boy, as the Mother Superior and two or three of the Nuns from the School convent would come in on Friday evenings and do their weekly grocery shopping, and I always seemed to be the one that helped them. Mother Superior was a great person, and she loved to tease me and she was very good at it. She had six older brothers and she had learned how to control men early in life.

Grace, would sometimes gently tease me too, but it was Okay, it was all in fun, and I enjoyed the attention from her.

One night a couple of months after I started, I wheeled into the lot at the store, I was coming from Baseball practice which we had in the last period of the day, I hadn't been able to go home and change, so I was in my gym clothes and had my bat and glove with me.

I saw a car pull up behind where I had parked and saw Grace get out, she was weeping and the man in the car was screaming at her. I stood there kind of dumb founded. I didn't know what to do, even if there was anything I could do. I knew that something bad, had happened, for Grace to come to work in tears. After the car left, I walked up to her and asked if there was anything that I could do to help.

"No Honey, there's not much anything anyone can do to help." Grace replied.

I didn't know what she meant, we started to walk toward the store, when she started to sag toward the ground, I caught her up and put an arm around her waist and helped support her so she could walk and we went into the store to the break room. Once in there I could see she had a bruise on her cheek that had been on the side away from me, so I hadn't seen it right away, her eye was starting to swell up too.

I looked at her more carefully, and saw evidence of many blows to her arms and legs, she looked like she had been used for a punching bag. I was totally stunned, I had never seen such violence done to another person in my life, I immediately became angry beyond all reason.

"Grace, tell me what happened?" I asked her.

"No, Honey, it's better that you stay out of it. I'll be Okay, please help me to the rest room, so I can fix my face and cover up some of these bruises with make-up." she said.

I helped her to her feet, and half carried her into the women's bathroom and left her there. I went back to the break room to wait for her. I didn't know what to do, but I knew something had to be done to put a stop to who ever was hurting her.

When she came out she looked normal, no sign of any bruising at all. She smiled at me and the room lit up. Every time she did that I was just struck dumb, and almost speechless. Just thinking about it today almost fifty years later, she still leaves me completely in awe of her.