Now I don’t care if you believe this or not… I know what happened to me and I know what I believe because of the experience. If you get something from this story, good for you, or if you choose to write me off as a nutcase, that’s fine too. Just don’t criticize me for something you know nothing about.

There ARE Angels among us!!!

After returning from my second tour in Vietnam, I did not wish to go home on leave. I weighed only about 140 pounds, I drank constantly, and I was angry. I felt it best that I returned to our squadron’s home base for a while before going to visit my parents.

There was no other reason to go home other than to see them, and I believed they would understand if I told them I had “to be part of a detachment.” This was not a lie because I had volunteered to go ahead of the rest of my squadron to the base to receive equipment while everyone else went on leave. I had about 48 hours to get back to the base, so I decided to try and locate an old drinking buddy who was stationed in the San Francisco area.

I went and got a room at a hotel by the Oakland Airport and caught a bus to San Francisco. I was in my dress uniform as it was a requirement in those days. Military people were not allowed to be out in public (while traveling) unless they were in their full-dress uniform.

The black bus driver grinned widely when I got on the bus and said I wanted to go to San Francisco. He drove into the ghettos of Oakland and laughed when he said, “you need to get off here and catch the San Francisco bus.” I did, and it quickly became apparent that the reason he laughed was because it was not likely I would get out of there without being robbed or even killed.

I stood at the bus stop thinking… “two tours and I am going to get killed right here in the USA”… within hours of getting home. I watched the vultures begin to circle. I was standing on a corner and no less than 50 people on all sides of the intersection were looking at me. I looked behind me to see several people approaching me from the liquor store. I decided I would put up my best fight, so I began to posture when I heard a voice behind say, “what are you doing here boy?”

I turned to see a little old black woman standing on my right. I was startled… “where did she come from?” I thought. I looked down at her and told her I was going to San Francisco, and the bus driver dropped me off here. She looked disgusted and said, “…you just relax boy… I will get you out of here.”

And it was with that statement that I looked around. It was the weirdest thing. The several would-be attackers now roamed at bay about 10–15 feet away as if there was an invisible barrier. They stared at me but did not approach. We stood not talking for about 10 minutes before the San Francisco bus arrived. We both got on and we sat together.

I was half drunk and was “broken.” I was “drained”… numb and I felt sick all the time. I had been spat upon by a beautiful young lady when leaving the base. When I first saw her, I smiled and had an immediate fantasy about her welcoming me home and taking me home with her. Instead, she called me a bunch of names and spat on me.

Under other circumstances, I probably would have punched her out, but I was too broken to react. I simply walked away. Being spat upon and the experience in the ghetto did not seem to faze me… again, I felt numb. I really didn’t want to be in the US… it was not my country anymore… this was one of the lowest points in my life.

My homecoming had not gone so well to this point. In fact, there was no homecoming at all… no reception, no recognition of us even being home… we just slipped away from the base as quietly as we could. Most guys were immediately shuttled to the airport to escape as fast as possible. Others hid and got into some “civies” to hopefully “blend in.”

After a short time, I realized she was looking at me and was studying me hard. I looked at her and as she looked deep into my eyes, she said, “…you’ve been in that damn war haven’t you boy?” I told her yes.

She proceeded to tell me about how wrong the war was… because the government had no intention of winning it. She was angry about how the US was sacrificing its “finest” for political games. She said it was not like her war… WWII. She talked about the boys she had known in her neighborhood that had been killed in Vietnam. She said, “…what is going on is just not right.”

We rode on further then she asked me where I was from and if I had a “mama.” I told her where I had grown up and told her “yes,” my mother was alive. She then asked, “…you just got back from that war and why aren’t you going home to see your mama?”

I told her why I was not going home and she got angry with me… “…you take care of what you are supposed to do then you get your butt home to see your mama!” I told her that I had planned to call home to tell my parents I had arrived and she got real angry with that… “you don’t get it boy… your mama won’t know you are OK until she can SEE that you are all right… a mama knows and she needs to see it in your eyes to know for sure that you are OK!”

I promised I would go home as soon as possible.

We arrived in San Francisco and walked out of the bus station and into the crowded streets together. She stopped and turned to look at me… straight in the eyes. I looked down at her and it was as if I was looking at someone I had known for my whole life.

She took both of my hands in hers and squeezed them hard, shaking them to ensure she had my attention. “Now you listen to me boy. I know you’re not feeling good inside, and I know you have hard times ahead, but you hear me and you hear me good… you will be OK. Do you understand me? You WILL be OK!”

She stood looking at me for what seemed like a long time, squeezed my hands very hard again, and said in a much softer voice, “you are going to be OK boy… you WILL be OK”… “now you go home boy, your mama needs to see you.”

She let go of my hands, turned into the crowd, and disappeared. After only a few seconds, I came to my senses. I realized I needed to say thank you or at least goodbye, so I took a few steps to catch up to her, but she was gone. “It had been just seconds, and she could not have gotten very far,” I thought, so I ran to find her. I searched the entire block but she was gone… in an instant.

At that time, I had no idea of what was going to come. I would go on to do a third tour… I felt better in Vietnam than I did in the US. I was ashamed of what my country had become. I was angry that the communist-backed peace movement had manipulated the American people… so much so that they were willing to accept defeat in Vietnam… a defeat that would result in tremendous loss of life.

I felt like “I have a new home.” The anti-war America had nothing to offer me. At that time, I thought about what was to come… the reality that after my third tour there would be no more war and that I would have to return to the USA and face the people who now disgusted me.

That I would have to face going to a place I hated for what it had done to me and my brothers. That I would have to return and control myself and my behavior… that I would not be able to lash out violently against the evildoers (in America… not Vietnam) that had caused so many American and Vietnamese deaths.

That I would have to shoulder all the wrong that had been done by those who had “stopped the war.” That I would have to accept that America made a hero out of the TRAITOR Jane Fonda. That I would have to accept that the “peace people” (the anti-war movement) thought of themselves as heroes and that the country in general did also, when in fact, we had won the war years earlier.

Back then the North Vietnamese were ready to raise the white flag of surrender in ’67 and ’68. They were ready to raise the flag until they saw the “peaceniks” take to the streets, and Jane Fonda went to visit the north to say, “I wish I could shoot down an American plane.” The Vietnamese leadership, when they saw all of this, knew that the US would defeat itself… that all they needed to do was to dig in and fight a guerrilla war systematically killing as many Americans as possible. That they would eventually win.

The result of all of this is that people like me would have to live with the fact that the “peaceniks” have American blood on their hands… that most of the guys who died in the war died after the peace movement got organized… so I would have to look at these arrogant evildoers who viewed themselves as “doing good” for stopping the war when in fact, they had caused tremendous damage.

I went on quite a bender when Saigon fell. I got angry with the mounting suicides of Vietnam Vets. I shouldered the burden just like all the other Vietnam Veterans while the Communist “peaceniks” went about creating a false narrative about Vietnam to ensure that the truth never came out.

(Read my story: The US Won The Vietnam War, Twice.)

I did deal with all of this. Yes, I got angry when I thought of it, but I controlled myself. I got angry when people in college told me not to put my military service on my resume nor should I tell anyone in job interviews that I was a Vietnam Veteran. America had decided that Vietnam Veterans were dangerous and crazy… that they were “baby killers,” and I was told that the better I hid my status, the better off I would be.

I did not take their advice. I’m certain that that decision affected my job prospects at times, but I was damned if I was not going to stand proud and be who I was.

I did fight back and did things in response to what took place but that is the material for another story… read the story titled The Monroe County Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

I am old now. I have survived and learned a lot. I have done and accomplished more than most people. I think I did so because I knew in my heart that… “you are going to be OK boy… you WILL be OK.”