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part 2 of the story

You’ll Be Sorry

Charles Hayes
(see the previous issue for part one of this story)

    I couldn’t really see what was going on because I was so scared that I couldn’t raise my head out of the grass far enough to see much of anything. It must have been a full two minutes of withering fire before I heard the LT yelling to hold the fire. Still glued to the earth when the LT appeared beside me and told me to contact the battalion or the OP, I reluctantly sat part way up and flicked up the tape antenna on my radio. The LT ran off toward the point. I tried to make contact but got nothing, not even the sound of a squelch. I checked the antenna connection but that did no good either. That left only the battery so I rolled over and shrugged off the radio with the bandoliers of ammunition tangled around it. Always I went out with a new battery and logged in but this one must have been bad so I started un-taping the spare I always carried at the bottom of the pack. That’s when I felt it, a neat round hole in one side of the radio and a large jagged exit hole out the other side. The thing was useless, leaving us with no communications. The LT returned and said that the handler had been hit bad and wanted to know if I could get a med-evac. All I could do was show the bullet holes in the useless radio and mutter a few words. I was so scared and ashamed that I could hardly talk.
    Amazingly there were only two wounded, probably because the attack had been a classic hit and run. The machine gunner had been hit in the lower left arm, a clean flesh wound with minimal damage. A field dressing would temporarily take care of it but the handler had a sucking chest wound and was barely conscious. The corpsman worked on him for what seemed like a long time, almost losing him a couple of times, trying to get him stabilized enough for carrying. He gave long odds on his survival if he wasn’t lifted out but the best that we could do was carry him back to the OP and call for a dust off there.
    Nobody, including the LT, wanted to reconnoiter the tree line. If there were any VC bodies there they could stay there. Besides there were most likely booby traps as well. Somehow we had walked right into the ambush either by making too much noise in our approach or someone on the inside had passed the word about the operation. I wandered about all the drunk marines and pretty girls at the club but what the hell did I know, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. It took the rest of the night but we tied some ponchos together and took turns carrying the handler as his confused German Shepherd remained with whoever walked point. During my turn to help with the carry I listened to the awful wheezing and moans as the handler tried to breathe. Many times we had to stop and let the corpsman work on him. I was glad to get away from that wheezing sound when I was relieved but the next time it was my turn I heard nothing. Knowing that the handler must be dead, I quietly cried and cursed God.
    Near the OP we popped a red smoke grenade in the misty dawn light and yelled out who we were. Once inside, I got the coordinates and called in a med-evac with the OP radio.
    As the chopper touched down another corpsman quickly jumped out and examined the handler lying there on the bloody ponchos. White that showed through his half closed eyes and lips that looked like they had been painted blue on his pale young face formed the vision that would always represent that mission for me. The exposed chest was still and covered with a mixture of dried mucus and blood. What had once been alive and loved by someone was now surely long gone.
    Out in the valley, on a patchwork of different shades of green, the sun was starting to reflect from the numerous paddies and except for the noise and dust from the chopper it was so maddeningly serene that I wanted to scream.
    Quickly and with the detachment of repetition the corpsman looked up at the LT and shook his head. The corpsman and a couple of grunts lifted the handler into a large dark plastic bag laid out on a stretcher and zipped it up. Now handling only cargo, the corpsman and crew chief raised the stretcher, shoved it through the open door of the chopper, and hopped aboard as it lifted off. The whole dust off had taken less than three minutes and I figured that was how long it took to get out of the war that way. So fast that I didn’t even know the handler’s name.

    After the failed ambush I began to slide even more, smoking more pot, drinking more, and giving less of a damn about fighting the communist. What the hell was I doing there anyway. I had known from the beginning that it was messed up but I had thought that if I applied himself I could stomach it and move on. I watched the higher ups for a clue as to what this war was really about. It took very little time for me to become convinced that they had no idea either...other than to advance their own careers. From this conviction I developed a hatred of authority and class that would plague me from then on. Those in authority would throw my life away to gain an advantage in their quest for a bigger, better, and richer American dream. I may have come from poor stock and little family but Vietnam was showing me that there were some things that I could not stomach. Unforgivable things. That kind of unholy sacrifice for gain, dressed in the garments of patriotism, be it personal or national, was one of them.
    I was not alone in those views. All through the war zone similar attitudes were developing. However, I continued to follow orders whereas some others often refused and ended up in the brig. Many times for murder.
    In a neighboring unit one staff NCO was so hated by his men that they faked an enemy attack then cut him down with a machine gun as he ran out his door to hide in a nearby bunker. Many of the murders, called “fragings,” after the fragmentation grenade, were done with hand grenades thrown on or under sleeping victims. Or simply by shooting them during a firefight or enemy attack. It was a terrible thing to do but it all started with the lies and the draft, then developed into a festering boil that eventually, in some cases, could not be contained. The majority of those murders were never prosecuted. And that along with a similar rebellion in the US helped end America’s involvement in Vietnam. But for the young people caught up in it at the time the damage was done. I was one of them. Despite my own feelings about the war, I had tried to comply with the bull shit. Now I only wanted out and away from those who willingly participated in it, lived by it. If I couldn’t get away physically I would do so mentally just as I had done with mind travel in boot camp on Parris Island. But the war was much bigger than boot camp and I found it impossible to get away. Even with the use of drugs and alcohol there was always the next time. The next useless bull shit to put up with, the next wasting of a human being. No longer did I care about who won the so-called fight for freedom. We were all losers as far as I was concerned. The young people like me had a favorite phrase among ourselves that grew out of that desperate loss.
    “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.”
    There was no event or disappointment, including death, that could not be somewhat assuaged with the utterance of that phrase.

    An order came down to the 1st to send a com marine of lower rank TAD or temporary assigned duty to Yokosuka, Japan for seven days. I got the nod and was told to report to the marine barracks at the big naval base and attend a class on some antiquated piece of communications gear. It was just another ridiculous quota that had to be filled. Since I was becoming the old man in grade as a corporal, the new section chief, a Mexican who had made the marines his career, decided I should go. Perhaps also figuring in the mix was that I, despite my attitude, was known to have a bit of intelligence. That would make me a good stand in for the 1st when it came to the technical stuff. As far as I was concerned I couldn’t believe my luck. I welcomed the chance to get out of Vietnam for a week.

    I arrived at the little operations center at the air strip and presented my orders. After waiting a while, I was told to grab my gear and board a jeep just out the door. I rode out onto the tarmac to an area where a big Air Force cargo jet was being loaded with aluminum crates.. Hopping out of the jeep, I went to the little side door under the wing and offered my orders to an Air Force Tech Sergeant standing by the pull down steps. The Sgt. glanced down at the orders and looked up at me.
    “You going to Japan?”
    “I guess I am,” I replied.
    Having already turned his mind to something else, like what kind of chow he would get for lunch, the Sgt. simply jerked his thumb up and said, “Get aboard.”
    Inside the hold of the huge plane there were large wheeled metal slabs mounted on tracks that ran along the deck from the front to the back. They were used to slide the cargo on and off. A couple of small fold down benches made out of nylon straps and aluminum tubing were hung on each side of the bare bulkheads for any passengers and that was it. No windows, only the back doors and ramp large enough to drive armor or semi trucks on.
    As another young marine showed up for the flight the load masters continued to shove stacks of aluminum crates aboard until we were full up with cargo. The doors closed and we took off.
    The hold was dimly lit by a couple of small red bulkhead lights and it was quite cold. After coming out of the tropics and flying for about an hour, I felt like I was freezing my ass off. The crew remained forward in the sectioned off nose of the plane while the other marine and I rolled down our sleeves, propped our feet on the cargo and hugged ourselves to stay warm. We hoped that the flight would be quick. It was not. The other marine got up and started walking back and forth in the space between the cargo and the bulkhead, trying to stay warm. He eventually paused beside a tall stack of the aluminum crates and began fooling with one of the attached tags. He stood there for a long while and I wondered what could be so interesting about a cargo tag. Finally, returning to the strap bench with a look of astonishment on his face, he said, “Man, you know what all this cargo is?”
    I shivered a little, “What ?”
    “Man, these are bodies, KIAs, we’re on a morgue shipment of American dead from graves registration.”
    Suddenly we both knew why it was so cold. I slowly removed my boots from the body in front of me and wondered if it was the dog handler I had helped carry out of the bush.
    The constant whine of the jet engines filled the air as I studied the deck. Without looking up I said, “Fuck it, it don’t mean nothing.” The other marine just nodded and studied the deck as well. The two of us never spoke again until we parted upon landing at Yokota Air Force Base in Japan.
    In my bush fatigues and floppy hat, wearing once black boots that were scuffed tan from use and not really giving a shit, I was put through a rigorous customs search. The young Air Force guard went through every single item that I carried and then searched my person as well before allowing me to move on. I received many a second look from the spit and polished military personnel coming and going at the busy air base but not one person messed with me. I did not bother to salute nor speak. Simply presenting my orders and silently going where directed I almost dared anyone to get in my space. Straight from the cargo of the dead, I didn’t care what anyone thought. What the hell could they do to me anyway, send me to Vietnam?

    It was late at night as I rode a military bus for about two hours through one continuous stream of multicolored neon lights with Japanese writing in characters that were completely foreign to me. As the only passenger on the bus I passed through the outskirts of what I figured to be Tokyo. I followed the coastal congestion through Yokohama and further south to the big naval base at Yokosuka and its Marine Barracks. When I reported in the duty marine showed me to an isolated and unused part of the barracks where I unrolled a mattress, made a rack, locked my gear in a locker, and slept.
    The next day, wearing the same attire and with the same attitude, I was sure that this strict marine unit would reprimand me. Marine Barracks, throughout the Corps, was known for its spit and polish, but the reprimand never happened. Sometimes I would be asked who I was. I would simply say that I was TAD from Vietnam. That was the end of it no matter where I went on the base. Not one person accosted me, though I looked like military rabble.
    I found my class when it started and went to it when I was supposed to, sometimes falling asleep. But even that was ignored because, just as I had expected, it was a typical bull shit quota class on some old piece of gear that was no longer used. The lifer who had ordered it was so out of it he didn’t know that and anybody who did was not senior enough to tell him.
    Everything I did, I did alone. I knew no one and wanted it to stay that way. Occasionally, at the almost vacant NCO club, some sailor would initiate a conversation from the next bar stool just long enough to find out where I was from. Having found out, they would silently smile for a moment and politely excuse themselves. There was no problem with that, in fact I welcomed it, for deep down I knew it didn’t mean nothing anyway.
    Passing through the week of class and learning nothing was a skate since the classes didn’t last a full day. I had time to visit the Great Buddha down in Kyoto and take a train ride to Tokyo. Once I had a steam bath and massage followed by a visit to a little bar in downtown Yokosuka. The owner, a beautiful madam, tried to saddle me with a young beginning prostitute. After drinking a lot and buying the young girl drinks which I knew were only tea I went to a hotel by myself. Prostitutes were no use to me and never had been. Not because I was otherwise adequately serviced, but because they just didn’t do anything for me.
    Those things I did in a couple of days. Mostly I just wandered around, whether on base or off, watching the people and always figuring that they had no idea of the things that existed beyond their bubbles of concern. To them it didn’t mean nothing either. Why should it mean anything to me? But always in my mind I knew that I didn’t have long to sit on the fringe of real life and speculate as I watched it come and go. For the poor white trash of Appalachia it would be back to the Nam where such stuff was ridiculous and never rested well on the conscious to begin with.
    The week in Japan went by so quickly that later it became like a dream that couldn’t be remembered two minutes after waking.
    After reversing my mode of travel used to get there, minus the crated war dead, I found himself back in Vietnam not sure that I had ever been gone. Nothing had changed. Only it was hotter and drier as the summer approached.
    During this time when forced into competition with other marines for advancement I always did well by just simply regurgitating the material that had been fed to me. My attitude never changed but when the facts of the data were posted I found myself at the top of the list, an irony lost neither on myself nor the lifers. The CO of the 1st must have thought that it was a big deal though for it wasn’t long until I was given a plaque proclaiming me to be the marine of the month. Somewhat amused with all the hoopla and the trinkets being passed around, I wondered why this corporal with so much time in grade was getting all this candy. Had they forgotten that I had been turned down for Sergeant once already because I wouldn’t lie and say that I intended to make a career of the crotch. In fact I had been so emphatic in my rejection of that idea that the much surprised lifer on the board who asked the question had to ask it again. When I answered with the same emphatic, “No!”, the lifer, with an angry look on his face, told me that I could go.
    I was probably the senior corporal in the whole company but after the marine of the month thing it wasn’t long until I was informed that I made sergeant and would receive my warrant at a company ceremony the following day.
    The next morning the com section LT, an ex-school teacher from Boston, formed us up and made sure I was presentable. The company commander, an older grey haired captain who was a mustang, which is an officer that has risen through the lower ranks, came out of the company hooch, said a few words and then asked me to step forward. The old captain walked up close and squarely faced me.
    “Corporal Hayes, you have earned this promotion and I am pleased to give it to you. I know that you will not stay in the Marine Corps but I hope that you will use this promotion to inspire you in your civilian life to achieve success wherever you can. Congratulations.”
    I replied, “Thank you, sir,” as I accepted the warrant, shook hands and saluted.
    Looking a little tired and somewhat sad the captain then told the company 1st Sergeant to dismiss us and went back into the hooch. It was done and I, while I treated the whole thing respectfully, knew that the only reason that I had gotten promoted was because it would have been an embarrassment for me to remain a corporal. The old captain was not, nor had he ever been, part of my problem. Because he was old and near the bottom of the back side he could be trusted to not try and gung ho his way to greater things at another’s expense. Just like me, he was simply trying to get through Vietnam and back to the world. I saw it written on his face and heard it in his words and for that I am thankful. Other than that the whole thing meant nothing nor, more importantly, did it change anything.
    I moved my gear into the best part of the hooch with Winsonsky, known simply as Wins, the only other buck sergeant in the section. Sgt. Blume, after shipping over for Staff Sergeant and ten thousand bucks, had rotated back to the states so I took his empty rack underneath Wins.
    Wins was the wire chief. He taught me how to string wire and use a set of gaffs to get up the poles. I was stringing and troubleshooting com wire in addition to filling in the operator slots. The wire jobs took me out in order to keep the landline communications to other units in the valley working. It was work that was done only during the day and it was almost always uneventful.
    Wins came from Idaho and, like me, was from the poorer class. We got along good. We wanted the hell out of the Corps and Nam and that shared passion was enough to make it easy to share the same half hooch. Roderno was now alone in the corporal’s quarters in the other half of the hooch so most of the time we just left the adjoining door open and shared the whole hooch.
    Cpl. Charlie Roderno had come to the 1st a little later than me. He was a tech also but, like everybody else, cross trained in all the com section responsibilities. Younger and shorter than me and a bit on the heavy side, he pulled his weight just as well as the next guy. For someone so young in a combat zone Charlie had a calm demeanor and was slow to anger, a fact that would sometimes make him the butt of cruel jokes that ass hole marines liked to play. That and the fact that he had a wife and baby made Charlie seem a little different than the ordinary jarhead. Recently he had gone on emergency leave to attend his father’s funeral. He had died suddenly, yet through all that grief and responsibility Charlie had remained solid and kept an even keel. Or, perhaps because of those things, he saw a bigger picture than most and it steadied him.
    With my aloofness, I matched well with Charlie and his steady temperament. Maybe that was why we tended to pull together. Whatever the reason, Charlie was the closest friend that I had. We often got high together as we let the crotch and the war go by, talking about other things like philosophy and why we thought things were the way they were. Rarely would we resort to the “it don’t mean nothin” equation. Mostly because Charlie wouldn’t allow it. He would challenge me on it in a way that left me vulnerable and made me look at myself. Because of this tendency to try to get to the root of things Charlie was not the average marine’s favorite kind of guy. Although in a different vein, his analytical interests put him almost as aloof as me. In a marine combat unit such qualities can be very hard to come by and to have one, let alone two complementing individuals of such nature was rare. For me, in a land of worthless endeavor and sham, along with a multitude of other undesirable qualities, my relationship with Charlie had value. And that made it important where no real importance seemed possible. As a result of that it turned out that even I grew a chink in my armor.

    When the war was not heating up around Quang Nam Province life in the 1st got so boring that almost any excitement was welcome. It was also a good time to get into downtown Da Nang to the giant military PX and buy some hard liquor. Charlie and I hitched a convoy into the crowded city. We got off just on the far side of the local shanty town next to the PX and cut across the squalor of the makeshift village.
    Betel nut chewing women, stirring a pot of who knows what, squatted in front of their shacks constructed of junked military material. The pungent smell of nuoc mam or fish sauce was so thick that it would turn your stomach if you weren’t used to it. Peasants, chased from their homes in the countryside, mostly by the US military, saw us with our M-16s coming. With betel nut blackened teeth, they smiled up as we walked by. After we passed they frowned at each other and spit long streams of black juice into the dust beside their fires. There were no men but there were plenty of kids, not even waist high, that crowded around us, begging and trying to reach into our pockets on one side while just as many tried to tug our watches off on the other side. Some of them reached up little packets of 10 marijuana joints for sale, $1.00 mpc. Other kids, in broken English, would hawk their sisters who were waiting among the shanties, hoping that their little pimps would bring some money home for rice. Most were starving. Once healthy people who had proudly owned and farmed their own land were relegated to lives of abject poverty, their land now part of an American free fire zone.
    Charlie and I hurriedly got through this shameful result of the war and past the guarded gate into the PX. We bought a fifth of Jack Daniels and a couple of cartons of cigarettes. After looking around at all the cheap electronics and jewelry we made our way back out to the street and caught another convoy going back south. As we passed the road to the 1st and hill 821, we jumped off and caught a six by or large troop truck that took us back to the unit. We did pretty good, in and out and still had time for evening chow, which we skipped, knowing that the COC bunker would have plenty of night rations later if we got hungry. Instead we secluded ourselves in the hooch, cracked the Jack Daniels, and proceeded to get wasted, eventually crashing late in the evening.

    In the morning I continued to sleep through the explosions and shaking hooch, Tim rushed in and roughly shook me awake.
    “Hurry up and get your radio and flak jacket on, the ammo dump is going up.”
     As the hooch continued to shake from the explosions I hurriedly got geared up while the prior night’s Jack Daniels caused its own kinds of explosions in my head. So far the fire and explosions had not engulfed the 2000 pound bomb bunkers and the 1st was just trying to stand by and hope that it could be contained. I and Charlie, who was no doubt also hung over, were sent to the area closest to the ammo dump to secure the generator and make sure it kept working. We just sheltered against the sand bagged diesel machine, smoked a cigarette, shot the shit, and listened to its chugging while explosions rocked us. Hungover and just another day in Vietnam, neither of us were very concerned because we knew that there were worse things. After about an hour of increasingly heavy explosions we received word that the 2000 pounders were about to go up. We should get the hell out of there.
    Loaded with all that we could carry, the whole 1st battalion swept through the wire into no man’s land under a blazing sun. Moving as quickly as possible with small breaks for logistics and communications, we swept west through the bush until we were about a click or one kilometer out. We started digging and looking for any kind of shelter that we could find. Recognizing the radio from its antenna, some officer stomped up and told me to get a dust off for one of the scout dogs that was dying from heat exhaustion. A dog was considered more valuable than a man but even so, after I told the chopper the coordinates and which direction to come from, he radioed back that they would not come into the area—it was too hot. So what could I do—fuck it, it don’t mean nothing, man nor beast—I rogered the chopper and informed the waiting officer who cursed and stomped away.
    By the time I had found a crater to take refuge in the explosions had grown huge, bigger than anything I had ever seen. Every now and then I would stick my head up to observe the spectacular effect, a huge flash of orange filling half the sky and pushing pulsating waves of oxygen as the concussion and matter expanded outward. Dropping back down into the crater, I plugged my ears, opened my mouth to equalize the pressure, and waited for the blast of the concussion to pass. In the relative quiet that immediately followed I heard little noises, almost like rain drops, hitting the top of my helmet and along the shoulders of my flak jacket. I looked to my shoulders and saw hundreds of tiny pieces of warm grey black shrapnel falling. It was actually raining shrapnel.
    Eventually we had to quit that location too and evacuate to another marine unit further away. The explosions continued for two more days and could be seen and heard from all over that part of South Vietnam.
    Once or twice I had stood and listened to distant B-52 strikes and felt the ground tremble. Now I had a very small taste of what it was like underneath those falling bombs.

    We got back to the 1st battalion area and there was not a thing left standing except the face of the career advisor’s hooch where one went to ship over. That was the place where many lifers got their beginning. I was not superstitious but it seemed like a bad omen because everything else was completely flattened. Pieces of shrapnel, both large and small, lay everywhere. So it was back to the hot and dusty tents with everything in short supply..... until the Seabees arrived to rebuild the base.
    The Seabees came, and along with them better supply. We of the com section bartered old radios for some things and stole other things. One night I was caught coming out of a mess refrigeration unit with a big stick of bologna stuffed in my trousers. The mess private who caught me just took it and told me not to come back. That’s the way it was. If you wanted something you either stole it or traded for it. The Navy Seabees had everything and the marines had nothing.
    Trading and stealing from the Seabees, I, Wins, Charlie, and a new corporal just in country managed to get together enough construction material to rebuild our NCO hooch because the higher ups had decided not to have it rebuilt. Many lifers felt that the com section was too elitist and needed to be brought down a notch so the Seabees only built one large hooch. Everyone lower than a staff sergeant was supposed to stay there. But the four of us, as was often the case in the Nam, ignored the policy and re-built our own hooch anyway. It was a nice place decorated by blow torch seared plywood walls. A nicer hooch than some of the higher ups had because we did it ourselves, including procuring the material. No doubt that was the reason that after about two weeks I and the other three were ordered out and into the crowded big hooch while a couple of lifer Ssgts. who weren’t even from the section moved in. I had been on the edge for a long time about my commitment to the war and the corps. That pushed me over the line and a hatred grew inside as I and the others pulled the combat duties that the lifers avoided. They would set inside their confiscated hooch, misfire their weapons, and almost shoot their toes off. I knew that the green machine had lost me no matter what bonus was offered. When they asked me to ship over I would tell them to stick it up their ass.
    Not long after we were kicked out of our hooch I had a chance to do just that. I became short enough for the pitch. The career advisor called me into his office to lay the bait and contracts out which were the standard $10,000 and promotion to Ssgt. plus choice of my next duty station. What a lie I thought. I would get the money and the rocker stripe but the next duty station would only last long enough for a transfer back to the Nam to take place. I felt so good about being short enough to receive such enticement that I didn’t even tell the lying bastard to shove it. I just simply laughed in his face and told him there was no way in hell that I would ship over. The guy obviously heard that a lot for he seemed to expect it and let me go quickly.
    Another way I exhibited my attitude was by refusing to wear my sergeant chevrons. Several times I was ordered to wear my rank but I simply said that I would, then ignored it. After a while they just stopped trying to get me to do it.

    It was July 1969 and I had been in WESTPAC or western pacific for 10 months of my 13 month tour. My attitude had deteriorated significantly over time. I was on the edge a lot, getting into fights with other marines, many times over nothing. Maybe it was time to use my R&R or rest and relaxation. I had a choice of Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, or Hawaii. Only the married people who wanted to see their wives went all the way to Hawaii and most of the other places didn’t speak English so I choose Sidney, Australia.
    For six days I left the war in Vietnam and took in the different life in Sydney. The feeling my absence from the Nam and the Marine Corps brought about was overwhelming. I passed TVs parked on the streets of Sydney so pedestrians could watch the first man on the moon one July afternoon of 1969. I only glanced at it for a moment and had a few words with a spectator before moving on. It meant nothing to me and only brought about an angry feeling. Big deal, I thought, but it won’t save one dumb son of a bitch in Vietnam from the bullet that’s got his name on it.
    At first I mostly just wandered around luxuriating in the clean clothes and the reduced stress. At an event that was somehow partly sponsored by the American government, I met a girl. There wasn’t an abundance of them but I had gone with the attitude that I was going to come away with a girl. My own efforts had not gone well and this event was specifically for Australian girls that wanted to meet American servicemen. Luck for me there wasn’t an abundance of GIs either because sitting right behind me at the introduction, waiting for me to turn around, was young Alicia Mays. She was a pretty redhead with nice legs, short hair and a touch of freckles under deep blue eyes. About the same age as me, she had a modest demeanor and moved with a quiet confidence on a trim fit frame of average height.
    Alicia lived with her parents in a suburb of Sydney called King’s Cross. It was a working class neighborhood not unlike the same in most American cities. The one time I went there to meet her parents I was treated nicely. They asked me to join them for afternoon tea and I was a little surprised when I was served a fried egg and toast with my cup of tea. I did not realize that afternoon tea included a snack as well. They talked some about America but the subject of Vietnam was avoided. I liked her parents and could see that those good people were simple working folks who did not warmonger like many of the Americans. Also it seemed that in Australia there was less class difference and consequently a stronger social bond among its citizens.
    Alicia showed me many of the sights of Sydney but, unlike the temporary girlfriends of many servicemen on R&R, she did not stay at my hotel. However we spent much time there making out and having room service bring drinks and ice plus whatever we wanted to eat. Sometimes we would use the dining room but most times we were out and about or in the hotel room that had a nice balcony with a view of the city and harbor. Despite a couple of romances of prior years I was still rather sexually inexperienced. Alicia seemed not to mind, only checking my clumsy moves of seduction. We usually met at the hotel lounge in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day and evening together. Always late in the evening Alicia would take a taxi home.
     The few days of R&R with Alicia flew by and when it came time for me to return to Vietnam it was one of the hardest things that I had ever had to do.
    Before I left I gave her a pearl necklace that the shopkeeper who sold it said would really stun her. The guy had said that it was the type of gift an Australian would give to his fiancé. With lots of money left over and nowhere to spend it, I was glad that I could buy it because Alicia had in no way tried to use me. Truly she was interested in me for what I was. She had always been nice to me as well, sharing her city, and keeping me company during my brief period of freedom, even taking me to her home and parents which was unheard of for Nam soldiers on R&R. When I gave her the necklace the last time I saw her she was stunned. A beautiful string of cultured pearls, they misted her eyes as she accepted them and whispered a thank you. I kissed her goodbye, told her I would be back, and, with a heart as heavy as I could ever remember, left to catch the shuttle to the airport.

See the next issue of cc&d (3/21) for the 3rd and last part of this story!

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