Coming Home
Would you like to tell us any stories about after the war?
My birthday is 5 December and on 8 December, I was sent from my fire base down to Cam Ranh Bay to be sent back to the United States… It was about a 110 to 115 degrees in Vietnam so we were in short sleeve light weight uniforms… we flew from there to McChord Air Force Base which is co-located with Fort Lewis Washington… Washington in the middle of December is snowing and there were four feet of snow on the ground at McChord when we landed so it was a pretty pretty violent change from very warm to very cold. We were fed a steak breakfast. We were paid in cash currency; had a big bag of cash and change. We were fed a steak breakfast and given a one-way ticket from SeaTac to where we wanted to go, in my case Los Angeles. Walked into SeaTac, two halves of a story.
First half, two relatively not necessarily terribly bright young males walked over to me said a few disruptive things about my service and so forth and one kid spit on me… and I looked at him and said “you have about a second to get you and your friend away from me or they’re going to take you to the hospital because I’m going to damage you really badly…” Along the way I went through quick kill in the army and unfortunately or fortunately I know some pretty damaging moves. His friend apparently believed that what I said was true and dragged this stupid kid that spit on me away… that’s half the story… Kinda standing there a little tiny bit in shock… you know I’m in army green uniform wiping spit off my face… and I’m 28 years old at the time and a lady who was old enough to be my grandmother’s mother probably in her eighties walked up to me in a black long sleeve dress, pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve and wiped all the spit off my face and said “oh sonny, I’m so sorry thank you for your service” and walked away… I had no idea who she is and I’ve obviously never seen her since… but it indubitably inscribed in my mind the total difference in the societies of the United States of America between young kids who generally speaking didn’t even understand the commitment to the Vietnam issue and therefore reacted, in my own opinion of course, rather poorly to it versus the older people who had either relatives that served in the Second World War or Korea who understood it completely… and understand the US’ commitment to overseas’ activities.
So it’s something that obviously I’m sitting here 50 years later and I still remember it almost as though it were yesterday and I will never forget it so there’s the turnkey thought… on my service in Vietnam and my return from service in Vietnam and… as an attendant to that I will say that several of the Vietnamese people that I met during the course of my tour… were just remarkably wonderful people and… and I’ll feel forever remorseful that – I’m sure their lives turned very poorly when the US association pulled out and South Vietnamese army fell… I’m sure their life became pretty nearly grim on earth…