What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?

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.

Cotton Panties and Soft Drinks with Straws

Living in Europe is entirely different from living safely ensconced back in the states. There are so many different cultural and historical traditions that have withstood the test of time. Once you’ve lived abroad, it’s easy to see that the world doesn’t evolve around what Capitol Hill has to say…especially now. It’s a much bigger piece of real estate than that. In short, it’s one of life’s lessons that everyone should experience.

This was especially true in Europe during the 1960s when I lived there on several occasions. There was no Starbucks on every corner. Coffee usually meant Nestlé’s instant coffee; just add water and cream. Corner cafés served only tea and cappuccino. The latter was a solid mass of black mud served in a tiny cup under the guise of coffee. If you ordered a soft drink, it almost always came with a straw sticking out of it.

When Brian and Melanie were in college, Sharon and I insisted they do a ‘study abroad’ program. Brian traveled around the world and Melanie went to Ireland. They both came back changed individuals with a greater appreciation for their place in a world outside of Apple Valley, Minnesota.

Scandinavia, in the mid-Sixties, was a world (literally) apart from the provincial, sheltered, prudish Midwestern novitiate I had immigrated from. It was open and accepting of different social opinions, individual sexuality, fuel-inducted free thinking and a world view of themselves. The same was true for the Netherlands.

That environment of freethinking was a bit unsettling for me when I first settled in Denmark but I quickly realized that this lack of judgement to those different from the crowd wasn’t threatening to them at all. The Dane’s open-minded approach to life made examining current social, political, sexual and artistic affairs more realistic and affirming. It was mind-bending and mind opening at the same time.

About two years later, when I returned to Europe for a second time, I spent the majority of my travels in Amsterdam. I became integrated into a community of friends for several months. That city and country had embraced the free-thinking attitudes of the Danes and then pushed it even further down the road of enlightenment. It began for me in some back canal bar when I happened across a solitary guitar player serenading the pigeons gathered around him. We chatted over a couple of beers and soon became fast friends. The smoky atmosphere drifting out of the club probably sped up that process a lot.

John was a student at the local University. He was an aspiring guitar player and a budding architect. He was also struggling to find a major that mattered to his social consciousness and paid the bills at the same time. He was also desperate to move out of his parent’s flat and find his own apartment. We shared great stories of our travels, my time up in Denmark, His desire to go to the states and our collective hope for the greater world beyond the canals of Amsterdam.

One afternoon, I met one of John’s friends who was also his salon companion. I can’t remember his name but the young man was remarkable in his intellectual prowess and yet total lack of social skills. John’s friend wasn’t able to hold a steady job because of his mental and social inability to interact with people. Therefore, he spent most days, reading, writing, and interacting with his beautiful child.

John’s friend lived in subsidized housing just outside of town. His wife was from Indonesia and they had the most beautiful child I’d ever met…before my own kids and grandchildren.

I stayed with them for almost a month in an impromptu, unstructured home life full of questions and comments, pondering the possibilities and forecasting our future. I was their American guide for all their questions about Vietnam, LBJ, unrest on college campuses, current campus fashions, Hollywood movie stars, American capitalism, and our obsession with nudity and (in their mind) the timidity of Playboy magazine.

On weekends, John and I would often travel through the back alley bars and University student union in search of those ever-elusive female companions. These college students loved to interact and exchange ideas with the American traveler and his shy folksy friend.

The women we met were primarily upper class University students wise to the ways of their world and anxious to explore life beyond the canals of Amsterdam. Our conversations gave me a global perspective I’d never experienced before. Our evening socials were a series good natured intellectual fisticuffs, seductive meandering in a safe environment and mind-expanding concepts over cappuccino, coke with a straw and some of the stronger stuff. I can’t remember if the women were attractive or not. It hardly mattered. They were stimulating, engaging and attentive. It was easy to fall in love with them…if only in my imagination.

I’m sure I probably looked like a hobo with my worn jeans, hiking boots and frayed jacket. But the girls didn’t seem to mind. I remember their fashion sense bordered on the simple and practical and yet with a flare of imagination. There was very little of the Carnaby Street or Bibi fashion trends going around at that time. With winter fasting approaching, nowadays we’d probably call it the layered look.

Oh, and I never found out if they were wearing cotton. I’m just guessing on that one. Looking back, I was too engaged in slight exaggeration tempered by intimate soul searching and honest bravado to ever find out. In other words, I was probably talking too much. Some things never change.