Dear Charlie

Dear Charlie,

It’s been 45 years since you peered over the rail of the top bunk before “lights out” and told me you were going “in country” in the morning. 

You were just a boy with a shaved head that night under the glaring light in your skivvies’; lightly muscled yet white as a porcelain vase.

We heard later your squad did not make it back.

I’ve thought of you often looking down at me from that bunk and how I could tell you didn’t want to go.

I think of you when I think of all the guys sloshing through the jungle exhausted just waiting for a bullet or booby trap.

I think of you when I remember reading the bulk of infantry sick calls in Nam were for immersion foot. Ya’ll’s feet stayed wet so much when you’d remove your socks the meat would come off with them.

I thought of you the night I got drunk with the Vet in the wheel chair and he told me he wished the explosion had killed him.

You see, a buddy and I joined the Navy because we were on the last draft and didn’t want to ground pound with an M16 for the “Man” who we knew was lying.

Students had died at Kent State. I’ve always felt like they should have received a medal.

There was a black and white movie when I was a kid about the Sullivan family in WW ll.  Six brothers from the same family died in the war. They passed a law after so nothing like that could happen again.

So I figure if you had a brother at least your family didn’t lose him or them too.

Sometimes I think of the farmers during the Civil War … just the small farmer; No slaves,  just him, his wife and kids trying to scratch a living out of the land with their bare hands … that day when the two soldiers showed up riding from across the field and you ended up riding off on the old mule never to return.

Sometimes I think of you when in my dreams I see the merchant in the tri-cornered hat and knee britches marching awkwardly out of town because even he knows the bite of taxes and the redcoats armed and glaring in the streets and bars.His store eventually bending to the gravity of age until the old porch collapsed and the boys broke out all the windows in their youthful ignorance.

I love you, Charlie and I’m sorry. I don’t think the day will ever come when boys and girls don’t have to go to war. I’m just grateful I can sit here this Memorial Day weekend and write this.

So I think of you now, Charlie … lying there beneath one of the thousands of white headstones with the small flags flapping like a bird's wings in the garden of our remembrance.

Can’t help but rue the price of freedom.

Can’t help but think of you when it’s time to go to work, teach my sons, kiss my wife’s forehead.

May our grief be a testament to your sacrifice? Might our remembrance include your family and friends? Might our hearts swell with pride when we stand in that voting booth? May we choose with profound ethic, reasoned thought and a hope for a future built upon the graves of all who have given the ultimate sacrifice?

“Thank you” seems so little to say, Charlie. So I’ll say it but promise you that I will live each breath trying to repay all of you and those who love you that still walk the earth and all those that will go again into the jungle and desert and wood.

God bless you, Charlie. God bless America.

Evacuation of Saigon

A couple of buddies from Deck Division and I took 10 days leave and flew a “mac hop” (Military Air Command) to Taiwan. Okinawa was boring with just beach and Quonset huts on a remote side of the island.

We’re eating breakfast one morning, reading the Stars and Stripes and my buddy Geddis hollers,

“The freakin’ Blue Ridge is headed to Nam!”

A little panicked we make a mac hop out of Taipei to Okinawa, spend a couple days there in one of those Quonset huts, fly to Subic Bay then camp on the forecastle of an LST for 48 hours till we see a huge convoy of lights in the distance.

We jump a Chinook to the Blue Ridge to meet the Chief who yells above the scree and whop of the monster Chinook’s props,

“Where the hell you yahoo’s been”

“Taipei on leave, Chief” we all scream back.

He jerks his thumb toward the superstructure and yells,

“Stow your gear and get to battle stations!”

I blaze into the red glow of the ships bowels, slide down the ladders top speed, stow my gear and race back up the ladders two at a time to the starboard sponson deck where the small boats are being released from the davits in a rolling sea. There's  a steady rumble I at first think is thunder only to realize later it’s bombs erupting in Saigon as the North Vietnamese release hell on the citizens and military there.

We’re 7^th Fleet Amphib Command so surrounded by a convoy. Ships lights and helos light up the tossing sea, riddled with white caps. The whop of all the helos is deafening. I’m jacked with adrenaline as 3^rd Class Boatswain Eber reaches the headphones out to me and yells,

“Thank God, I been at this for hours. You take over for a while!”

I put on the headset and get blasted with the wildest array of yelling and props and noise I’v e ever heard in my life much less Navy career and it hits home.

This is f__king war, We are at war and people are dying and I been raising hell in Taipei.”

So we “turn to”. Daylight and we drop the boats into a still tossing sea. Hueys are trying to land on our helo deck made for one bird at a time. Turns out they have run into the abandoned  Air America airport and commandeered these helos. The grunts didn’t have time to fuel but left the keys trying to do what they could to help cause we’ve abandoned these people and all of us know it.

There’s a heavy brood just underneath as we work our asses off. No room to land they are trying to land in the nets and crashing. It’s a cluster and dangerous as hell so they start throttling in one direction and diving out the other side.

Helos come crashing just feet from where they have gone in. There are women and babies and kids along with regular army and some questionable characters of all types.

We’re fishing them out of the water under guard and spiriting them forward to the enclosed forecastle after searching them. Both on the sponson decks and main we’re piling up all manner of firearms and blades.

Next morning I hear they are going to push a dead helo off the deck into the drink cause folks are still trying to land in the nets. I run topside to see some 2nd Div guys pushing a helo over the side. When it hits there’s a WHOP you can hear from the bridge 200 feet up.

Theres a pile of weapons chest high and as big as the “paint” on the basketball court. There’ M16s, AKS, handguns, machetes, switchblades … you name it.

A huey touches down and off comes a young woman carrying a baby. She’s got on elephant bell bottoms and a sequined t-shirt. The baby’s screamin bloody murder. A green uniform is next. I figure him for ARVN ( regular South Vietnamese Army) There’s old men and women, kids and some street thug looking characters.

We’re hearing they are shooting civilians in the street.

At “midrats” that night (midnight rations) the scuttlebutt ( rumor) is that the President of South Vietnam is coming in on a helo at dawn. I gotta see this and don’t have watch so at dawn show up on the after deck.

 Another Huey plops down and out pops this diminutive guy in officers khakis and cover with two briefcases handcuffed to each arm that look like they’re about to pull his shoulders out of socket. He’s poker faced and sweating like a pig staring straight ahead as a Chief guides him into the aft hatch and out of sight.

Word is later the briefcases were filled with gold bars from the South Vietnamese treasury.

Later that day I’m working main deck midship and everybody starts hollering.

“HELO!” there’s been a lull after a couple days. Suddenly this Huey comes barreling in faster than normal. My nether regions  draw up and I’m already ducking when that damn helo bounces off the deck and lurches forward and the whop whop is pierced by a crash like a semi “t-bonin” somebody. Overhead there’s a shew, shew shEW SHEW SHew shew and another crash. We all knew to hit the deck. My elbows were bloody from hitting the nonskid surface. The props on the helo had connected with the aft tower and chunks had gone spinning forward until they ricocheted off the deck into the sea or caught in the railings.

Later I was called to the galley with a few guys. They’ve filled up 30 gallon aluminum trash cans with spaghetti and we haul those up to the forecastle ( pronounce foke sl). Marines are standing guard at the port and starboard hatches. Our grunt torques the hatch open to reveal a freakin sea of people.

They’re jammed in pretty tight.  Turned out we had 200 folks in there taking them to the Phillipines. All those faces looked up at me; all asian, young and old, big and small. Babies crying, folks coughing , they were laying in the angle irons, squatting, standing. When they realized what we were doing, many began to rise and move toward us. I’d seen hunger in Asia. I’d never seen hunger in this many eyes at one time.

The grunt told them to back up and clear a space. He’s holding the M16 across his chest close as we sit the grub down.  Thing is, grunts usually sort of bark at you. This was different … like he was talking to a naughty little brother.

As I’m ducking back through the hatch I cast a glance. I swear it was the girl in the sequined t-shirt with the bell bottoms. She’s holding that baby like the marine’s holding that M16. Her eyes are glistening as our gaze meets. I had to pay attention because you’ll brain yourself passing through a hatch so had to look away … at least physically look away.

In some ways our gazes locked forever. I see her sitting there cross legged sometimes, looking up at me. She was about my age. I’m no genius but it was pretty obvious she’s just living for that baby. Makes you wonder if it was a soldier’s baby. Makes you wonder a lot of things.

Something else froze in time out of that mash of days and turmoil; Nuyen Van Thieu steppin out of that Huey hanging on to those briefcases for dear life.

Somehow I don’t think he was hanging on for the sake of those people in the forecastle.

The general consensus is we shouldn’t have been there. Of course hindsight’s 100%. Thing is if you’re going to back a country; if you’re going to commit, then I’ll fight for that girl until there’s nothing left of me.

Wish our guys didn’t have to die for those briefcases though.

50, 000 service personnel died in Viet Nam. I for one will stop this anniversary. I’ll go down to our local Viet Nam wall, bow my head and say thank you. I’ll also say I’m sorry … to all those soldiers, sailors and airmen … and to that girl.