Forty Three Years and Counting

Amored Personnel Carriers, APC's, sit on the road together awaiting orders, Republic of Vietnam, 1969

I turned 18 in May of 1967 and graduated high school one month later. I had a job. I had been working at a grocery store since before I turned 16. Now, school was out and I went to work full-time.

I had a car. My dad made this big thing about transportation and how it was necessary for survival and taught respect for it. That meant your feet, your bicycle, your car or whatever mode you used to get to where you wanted to go was to be of great importance and taken care of.

Now I don’t remember any particular thing or lecture from him about this, I just still have it ingrained in me that transportation was important. Maybe this is why I travel a lot. I'll be leaving on Wednesday for a trip to Atlanta to attend a reunion of the unit I served with in Vietnam, the Triple Deuce.

In high school, I did most of what I had to do to get by. I passed everything. Usually, it went down to the last minute with some report or paper or test I had to take. Threatened often with being withheld from the next grade, but I never thought I wouldn’t get through it.

Graduation, Proviso East High School, 1967

I dated a lot earlier on. I met a girl where I worked. She was a year older than me and went to my school, but the student body was so big that I never saw her at school until I met her at the Jewel. That was the big grocery chain where I worked. It was in the neighborhood where I lived.

We went steady until she graduated and then split up for a short while. We ended up dating again on and off, but I dated other girls too, and between my job, my car and my girlfriends, I was a busy guy.

Sometime in 1969, Republic of Vietnam

Talk about living in the now! That was it. My life was simple, sweet, fulfilled. I didn’t read the paper or talk about the news. We had TV but I rarely if ever watched a program besides Ed Sullivan as he would showcase a current popular band that we were hearing on the radio. He would have them on live to do a song, I remember watching the Ed Sullivan Show a few times, but never the nightly news. You know, groups like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. They were seen for the first time on Ed’s show.

As a new arrival, I was given the most dangerous job, APC Driver

Sometime before I finish telling you this story, it will occur to you how dumb I was. It occurred to me as I sat in a rice patty 12,000 miles away from home. It is raining and seems to never stop. Even then, I could have achieved awareness of the rain, the soil, the plants. I was aware of nothing at that time in my life.

I was inducted in April of 1968. April 12th. The first in a series of dates and times of year that turn my life inside out every time they show up on the calendar. 

My health suffers. My stress level soars. I tremble and live on the edge. I didn’t know that was why until many many years later, but I know why now, around this date, I feel like crap. April 12th, 1968. I say it and I want it back. I can’t help but wonder how I’d handle it today.

Thanksgiving 1969, L to R; Underwood, Sinn, Hietmeyer, Spadoman and Wilson

I remember taking a bus, actually the same bus route we used going to high school when I was taking the bus to school, before I had a car. In those days, you rode the city bus to school for a quarter. That was the student fare. It was the regular Madison St. bus that went from my neighborhood, right past the high school, to the Forest Park induction facility office.

Nui Ba Den, The Black Virgin Mountain. The only relief amidst an ocean of rice patties

There, we were given breakfast by a very nice bunch of old ladies. Moms, I’m sure, of other soldiers, or wives and widows of Veterans, making sure we were well fed and sent off properly. I want to believe that they were crying for us on the inside. I want to believe they knew what fate lie ahead for us all. I still had no idea. I still have this shame for not knowing, not realizing, being so dumb, so out-of-touch with the gravity of it all.

I am jealous of those who actually thought about it beforehand and decided to go to college or dodge the draft all together by going to Canada. Even those who got married and fathered children either on purpose or accidentally knew more than I. Can I find peace? Can I get rid of the shame? Will I ever heal?

Miller applies the Spadoman moniker on the 4-1 Track

We got on a bus which took us to downtown Chicago and the huge draft induction facility. I think this was on Jackson Blvd. We got off the bus and got in line. A long day of doctors prodding and a lot of time spent in your briefs standing around with a bunch of other guys in their briefs. All as natural as can be, all in order, all just the way it would become as the way the Army does things. 

I was assigned to a Mortar Platoon

By the end of the day, I was in the Army. In one of the lines, we picked up this piece of paper. It was green and in a plastic sleeve. There were a few pink sheets interspersed with the green ones. I got a pink one and the guy behind my wanted to trade, he got a green one. I found out later the pink guys went to the Marines, the green ones were for the Army.

The day went on into night and by 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning on the 13th of April, we landed in Shreveport Louisiana. It was my first airplane ride. I don’t remember a thing about it. We were given a pill as soon as we got off the bus. We were told this was saltpeter and it was to inhibit us from wanting to get laid. I don’t know what it was really, probably a salt tablet, it's hot and humid in Louisiana, or maybe it was saltpeter, I was too busy to think about getting laid.

Ready to move out, yours truly top left

We had been up since early the day before. I think I might have dozed off a few minutes here or there but I don’t remember. All I do remember is that we had been treated politely up until that point. After arriving in Shreveport and getting on another bus, we were broken down to the lowest common denominator. Stripped of self esteem. Stripped of values. Stripped of our souls. Taught how to kill but not how to heal.

The guy on the right is Tilsch, monsoon season, Vietnam 1969

From that moment on, I can remember only a handful of nights when I have slept all the way through without the help of drugs, alcohol or exhaustion. Was the Army that smart to be teaching us and helping us to get used to the fact that we would not have one peaceful night after they send us to Vietnam? I still wonder as I edit this. It’s 1:04 AM on April 12, 2011. Forty three years later and counting.

Peace

Amazing. I had to go back and edit the posting as I didn't add the word Peace at the end. My trademark, forgotten for one night.  Please forgive me.