Day One

Day One seems like so long ago but it has actually only been a little more than a year since I began this tour in earnest. For the six or so months leading up to Day One it had been a thought rambling through my consciousness, building steam with each new contact, each new discovery and each new layer of training and experience. Or, perhaps it was born out of my own experience in and off country back in 1967. I’ll try to lay out the chronology in some detail:

February, 1965…I was doing poorly in college the first time around and seeing the writing on the wall, I enlisted in the Navy thinking it was by best chance to serve yet stay out of the fray. A couple buddies, John and Gary, decided to wait for the draft and take their chances. Following boot camp and technical school I got a Destroyer out of Norfolk, Virginia. It was literally the next best thing to an automatic pass on the war. Pacific fleet for sure, east coasters, never.  They did get drafted, Army bound and pliant. As fate would have it, they went to Germany and I wound up in Vietnam anyway. Go figure.

2 September, 1967…first day on station for Operation Sea dragon, just north of the DMZ, tasked to interdict shore traffic and shell strategic coastal targets. A typical day would have reveille at 0600 for those not already on watch, spending the hours from 0800-1600 working in the engine room (at about 150 degrees Fahrenheit in that tropical setting, a little free time after evening meal  and back to our bunks for some fitful sleep. Several times each day we would hear the klaxon calling us out to battle stations at any hour of the day or night. Way too frequently in the middle of the night.

 13 September, 1967, took enemy fire. Two direct hits with enough damage to send us back to Olongapo City in the Philippines for three weeks of repairs. If you've never experienced Olongapo City, there is no need to tell you here. If you have, you’ll never forget it.

Back to ‘Nam and a short trip up the Mekong Delta for some river operations (tricky in a 391 foot long tin can), back to the DMZ, and back to “the World" in January of 1968.

It could have been a lot worse. While it was a lot of work, uncomfortable, intense and unpredictable, it was nothing like the daily grind of the average grunt in country with none of the psychic baggage that so many brought home with them. My memories weren’t so much repressed as they were just irrelevant, and remained in the  background for a very long time. Then something happened and there was a shift, small at first but significant, eventually taking me beyond anywhere I thought I would go. More next time.