Vietnam was the defining war of my generation. As much as rock and roll, sexual freedom, the role religion was going to play in my life and a host of other revelations, Vietnam was always there like background music.
I served in the U.S. Army from March, 1964 through March of 1966. Those two years were neither good nor bad. I did my time, always managed to have some kind of side hustle, followed the rules and kept my nose clean. I ended up a sergeant but had no desire to make the service a career. I have no regrets for time served and a lot of good, silly, memorable and poignant memories of my time in khaki.
This summer, I watched the Ken Burns documentary series on Vietnam for a third time. Each viewing was more revealing than the last time. It reminded me once again of how I dodged that bullet but left a cache of ‘what if’s’ and ‘only’ to fester in my mind for a lifetime.
While I was stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco and looking for adventure, I volunteered to go to Vietnam. Fortunately, or unfortunately, at the time, the Army was getting more than 500 applications a month for that overseas duty. A week before my discharge in 1966, the Army pulled out that long since forgotten application and promised me that if I reenlisted, they would guarantee me a plane ride there within the month. I politely declined their invitation.
When I began my post-retirement career as a writer, I decided to recreate that chapter in my life when the pre-Vietnam / post-Army scenario played such an important part of my growth and development. While I never served in Vietnam, one of my first novels featured a protagonist who did serve time there and took me along for the experience.
Love in the AShau was a semi-autobiographical, fact and fictional account of my own experiences during that period of my life. I tried to capture in words the visceral and emotional journey it had been for me.
The story began when I dropped out of the University and immediately got my greetings from Uncle Sam. My next two years had been decided for me and I had no choice. After a cursory physical (and ignoring my flat feet) it meant gathering up at some federal building by the capitol and a good-bye to civilian life as I knew it.
Then just before dusk, began a long and monotonous bus ride from
Minnesota down to boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I could still feel
those emotions welling up in the middle of the night as I thought about my
sweetheart and all my friends safely ensconced in their beds, dreaming of their
bright collegiate futures ahead of them. I had derailed my own college career
and was tumbling into an abyss of the unknown.
What kept me going for two years was the illusion of that first romantic entanglement, harboring wonderful fantasies of our future together and then ultimately experiencing the painful realization that it was never meant to be.
Watching that Ken Burns documentary unearthed my journey in the military all over again. For reasons that gradually began building in my subconscious, I came to realize that writing that novel was an exhilarating as well as purging experience. It was a journey back in time that had become a soul-cleansing experience.
Then, sixty years after the fact, I returned to my old barracks at the Presidio of San Francisco. It was part of a journey arranged by Brian and Melanie to celebrate my eighty years of pondering life’s ‘what ifs?’ Our journey began where my military life was born and ended on the beaches of San Diego a week later.
Standing in front of the barracks with my two kids brought up a plethora of mixed emotions. I was still tramping around this planet; a lot of my barracks buddies had passed on. Some were brought down by the conflict overseas; others made their eventual escape back to civilian life and the rest simply disappeared.
Back then, we all slept in the rock-hard cots on the second floor. Some dreamed of home, of overseas duty and a few like myself imagined a storied adventure awaiting in Southeast Asia. Most of those dreams never came true except for the grunt from Minnesota who eventually made it to ‘The Nam’ and came home to write about it. The imagination is a wonderful tool for taking journeys like that.
