Chapter Fifteen, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Golconda When I finished my delivery to the assembled passengers, the staff crew and the audience repaired to the back of the Lido deck. The World Discoverer’s (‘Lindy’) fantail was one flat teak surface, polished clean with brushes...
Chapter Fourteen, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE AGUIAK The Basque finished her rendition of the Mouseketeer song. Don plopped down on his bunk with a very pleased look on his face.
Chapter Thirteen, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER THIRTEEN MAKING WAY TO THE PRIBILOFS Filipe brought the Zodiac close into the steel hull. Three adventurers—dirty, disheveled and nearly naked—in the bottom of the craft. My watch, the canvas bag, `and my jockey shorts were all I had saved from the island. Don...
Chapter Twelve, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER TWELVE Down to the Sea I awoke to find the fire burned out. Not even a plume of smoke came from the pile of ash. I sat up and rubbed my eyes and face. We had the Bic and my Stryker flint if re-ignition were necessary. If we remained atop the island plateau for...
A TIME TO EVERY PURPOSE …..
Dateline: Lake Geneva September 6, 2017 Opinion/Editorial A TIME TO EVERY PURPOSE UNDER HEAVEN It’s not a hard time for your country. It’s a hard time for a lot of poor people, a lot of underemployed people struggling more with self-identity than income, a...
BENTLEY arrives
The name Harvey had always been special to me. I knew my owner and partner in life, who I now refer to as my human, had named me after a giant rabbit in some old movie, even though I was just on the cutting edge of cat perfection. The name had worked very well for me,...
Chapter Eleven, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER ELEVEN The High Cliffs of Russia Dutch moved the bottle of Bacardi back to his lips, runnels of tears falling from his cheeks. I pried the half-empty bottle out of his clenched hand. I propped it back into a cleft between two nearby rocks. “Stop blubbering and...
Chapter Ten, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER TEN The Isle of the Tsar of Russia The slow stuttering trip out of the current and into the island’s lee took less time than it seemed it should because of the back current. Dutch had held to a dogged steady pace, stroke after slow stroke, swimming out in...
THE SEVENTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days has September
There was nothing more to be said to Captain Carter, so I handed the handset back to Fusner. I wondered why we never heard from battalion about anything except occasional and outlandish orders to move somewhere, occupy wherever that was briefly, and then move on. The...
Chapter Nine, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER NINE Down to the Bottom of the Bering Sea I moved down the corridor with a purpose. Don stopped at his cabin door. I turned back to him with a snap. “Where are you going?” I demanded the things I had unloaded from my ditty bag almost...
Chapter Eight, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER EIGHT The Pass of the Isle of the Tsar of Russia Instead of going to my own cabin, I headed directly down to Botany Bay’s number 36. There was something about the way in which the Basque woman had looked at me earlier, which was drawing me back. Don had stayed...
Chapter Seven, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER SEVEN Hull Down in a Following Sea I moved through the throngs of passengers now populating the corridors of the ship. Murmurs of “doctor” came from some of them, as they reacted to my surgical scrubs. I had removed my coat. The temperature maintained inside...
Chapter Six, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER SIX The Island The washroom door swung open. Felipe stepped through the entrance, dropped a pile of dry clothes on the floor, and then looked at my nakedness. I had nothing cover myself with. He stared for a few seconds, looking openly at the roadmap of my...
Renewal 2017….
Dateline: Lake Geneva August 30, 2017 Opinion/Editorial RENEWAL The Eve of Destruction was a song written by a man named P.F. Sloan in 1964, and the musician Barry McGuire’s recording of it made it hugely popular in 1964. That was fifty-two years ago. The first stanza...
Hello America……
Hello America….. Can we get something straight? I mean really straight, for those who’ve read any history whatever or gone to school and taken any history, sociology or anthropology courses? America was never established, created, planned, designed, born,...
Chapter Five, Arch Paton: The Bering Sea
CHAPTER FIVE The Landing at Little Diomede Island The cushions were pulled from me in the middle of the night. A night that was not a night, aboard a cruise ship that wasn’t a cruise ship. I reacted badly. As the cushions were being jerked from me, I slipped under...
Chapter Four, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
The bar on the Lido deck is where I settled in for the afternoon run out toward the Diomede Islands, just off the Seward Peninsula. Passengers were drinking like proverbial fish….
Chapter Three, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
I learned from Don, my bunkie and fellow de-frocked PhD, that the ship was never referred to as the “M/S World Discoverer.,” which was the name painted in black across her white prow
THE SEVENTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The river was a good four hundred meters away, and it was impossible to miss. The jungle between the swept river bank and the side of the cliff we’d made our way over from was dense but impossible to get lost in because of the ever present penetrating sound of that...
Chapter Two, Arch Patton: The Bering Sea
I stepped aboard the expedition ship, leaving the city well behind me and wondering whether I had made a wise decision in taking this assignment.
THE SEVENTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
The Skyraiders came in again and again, each run spaced ten minutes after the last, according to my Gus Grissom wristwatch. They came in low, right down the river, opening up on whatever they saw there, then pulling up and making their way back around. All of that...
Chapter One, The Bering Sea, Arch Patton
The airport at Nome isn’t an airport at all. It’s a hangar at the end of a long concrete pad. In summer the sun shines all the time. Twenty-four hours a day. There is no luggage claim.
Arch Patton, The Bering Sea, Prologue
Joshua Boatwright sat patiently, sipping from his small espresso cup, unsure of how he had come to be where he was; tucked into the back corner of the lobby of the Sheraton hotel in Crystal City.
Will Humility be the path……
Dateline Lake Geneva August 23, 2107 TO INHERIT THE EARTH The world defines humility as a lowering of oneself in relation to others, a state or the act of being humble, a freedom of pride and arrogance, and having a modest opinion or estimate of one’s own worth. It...
Kristallnacht emerging…….Editorial, August 16, 2107
KRISTALLNACHT August 16, 2017 German factions of the Nazi Party worked for years in order to create a way to classify Jews in Germany, and in nearby countries, as something different and less than human. This program to separate, and then denigrate, an entire social...
What did I fight for……….Eve of Destruction
I didn’t fight for this. I fought against an enemy in Vietnam that I thought was challenging the right of all men and women to be free and express themselves without being forced to do what a small minority wanted them to do. I didn’t fight for this. I...
THE SIXTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 days Has September
The smell of blood would not leave me. A coppery tasting mess of cloying sweet aroma that was invisible, yet overwhelmed every other sense. The sound of Stevens’ body being wrapped inside a slippery wet poncho to be left, like that of the others, along both...
Cats, Gardens and Bombs……..
It’s easier to write about cats, the garden and even what’s going on at the local coffee shop than what is going on across America. To watch the mass media portray America’s reaction to its president threatening nuclear war is quite abashedly...
THE SIXTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
The night was coming on fast, what with the west wall of the valley rising up only a few yards to our backs. The question was not whether we would make a rapid advance down the valley to attack an expected and hopefully unprotected enemy rear, but how and when we...
You are My Sunshine……Editorial
Dateline Aug 2, 2017 Lake Geneva Opinion/Editorial YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE Is there any chance that some kind of good fortune will be showered down upon the United States? Ever since the press, the media, or whatever the monolith of this “news” thing is, took over the...
THE SIXTEENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
The Righteous Brothers began their song called Unchained Melody and, as the first words of the lyrics squeaked out of Fusner’s tiny radio speaker, life came to a stop for me. I just sat there and listened.
The Journey of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days. The efforts to bring it into being and the dangers of it, as well as the potential benefits. My question is “will artificial intelligence wander?” We wander, as humans. Much of our work and life force is...
Befuddlement….
Befuddlement…… That single word best describes the New York hot shot deal-making professionals who came out of the Manhattan sticks to go to war with the Washington D.C. elites and Virginia beltway bandits. They designed a grand adventure. The money was...
THE SIXTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I looked at Nguyen. His features remained as impassive as ever in the face of our dire situation. We could not get to the end of the bridge without being carried down past the tank into the rapids below that led deep into enemy held territory unless Kilo Company had...
Is This Land Your Land…….
Dateline: Lake Geneva June 28, 2017 THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND This is not an article about choosing the right to die, or anything to do with that issue. No, this article is all about some people hastening other people’s death, without their permission, by deliberately...
What about Me?
What about me? This simple question may actually be the most fundamental behavior ruling question of our time. The entire world is headed toward one single clamoring bid to gain some sort, any sort, of attention. The explosion of communication industry tools and...
THE SIXTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
It was full dark by the time the Gunny departed for the old air field with two full platoons and parts of the other two. I’d made a deal with the devil to get back a dead body which went against all logic but for no good reason I could think of made a strange sense to...
Meaning of Life, Editorial
Dateline: Lake Geneva June 21, 2017 Opinion/Editorial THE MEANING OF LIFE A long time ago a television show came on the air discussing life on earth, its meaning, and the billions of beings comprising what has come to be known as this thing called intelligent life. In...
THE FIFTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days has September
Fusner found me with some difficulty, as I’d gone pretty deep under the camouflage provided by the packed down plant debris that served as the jungle floor. Although the stuff allowed me to hide from the gunships above, it did nothing in providing any kind of cover. A...
A Pen in Hand, a Gift of Value,
June 10, 2017 Funny how the simple gift of a pen can inspire. The motivation to go on. Do you sometimes go in actual search of that… Or merely sit or lay and wait for that? Let go and let it be a God kind of thing? While I was doing a bit of that, the mail...
THE FIFTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
Jurgens stood where he was, arms slightly outstretched, but he made no other move, his expression unreadable except for a faint tick arching his left eyebrow up slightly every few seconds. “We are the same,” Jurgens said, splaying his fingers out, like his statement...
THE FIFTEENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
There was no recoil as the Browning fired. The recoil was absorbed by the fixed tripod attached to the top of the Ontos. I’d never fired such a weapon. In training I’d fired a short burst of an M-60 but it had been a stuttering jerky experience fired standing in the...
THE FIFTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I came awake instantly. Crashing roars, with distant but shaking explosions, moved me out from the cleft down along the side of a mud wall I’d been sitting up against. I blinked my eyes in fear and nervousness. I was in a cave. I was in the cave. The cave made by the...
THE FIFTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
The Skyraiders came out of the low level pre-dawn light, the sun still out and down earth somewhere on the other side of the valley’s eastern lip. There were four of them, and the drone of their big powerful propellers and engines built from a faint buzzing to a...
Travels to Winfield, Kansas for the Rendezvous
This past weekend I traveled to Winfield Kansas. Purpose was to scout the area and assure myself and our fans this is the place for the Vietnam Combat Veteran Rendezvous in July. Winfield is a comfortable small town, 50 miles south and east of Wichita on vis KS-15....
THE FOURTEENTH NIGHT THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
Nguyen moved ahead of me, as we departed the perfect overhanging concrete bunker-style encampment the others would be preparing behind us. The mild wind, rushing water of the nearby river, and the mud sand under our feet would all be pushed into the background once we...
THE FOURTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The Sandys came sweeping down the river, obliterating all other sound, the roar of their engines and propellers lifting my spirits in spite of my being trapped at the tank with a dead good kid and a living bad noncom. I hugged the edge of the tank’s right tread, the...
THE FOURTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
I’d made it across the river, even after struggling to drag Barnes to the bank. I was dressed back out and had my gear and my .45, none of which was in bad shape. My self-inventory had been done before the big fifty-caliber had opened up again. My team, positioned...
THE FOURTEENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
There was no question that I needed a plan. The company had no equipment for crossing any stretch of water that I knew of, and since the NVA had gotten a full blown battle tank down the river, or some road paralleling it, the likelihood of a U.S. Navy Seabee unit...
THE FOURTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I knew that our real registered position was known to the two Army batteries we’d used for fire, and Cowboy and Hobo had to have our position fairly well marked, but the jets coming in would not be quite so accurately informed.
Perceptions….. STURGIS, 1993
STURGIS It was 1993, and I was headed from Albuquerque to Madison, Wisconsin. I was driving a 1989 Range Rover with my family. After half the second day on the road we came upon flocks of Harley bike riders going the same way. Tens, hundreds and then thousands of...
Coming Together….
The totality of coming together as a culture only happens very sporadically and with outside forces driving differential elements together like the fuzing of atoms. From the fuzing of atoms come a great release of energy or another form of matter entirely. What is...
THE FOURTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
A fifty caliber machine gun opened up in short bursts again, but this one wasn’t pouring in tracer rounds from the hill further down south on the other side of the river. We were too close for the tracers to begin to light up from this one, and not far enough away to...
THE THIRTEENTH NIGHT THIRD PART, Thirty Days Has September
Casey should have been restrained by force, if necessary and held until resupply arrived, no matter how long that took, but that wasn’t going to happen. Casey wanted to go on the mission down to the river and confront the tank. In the dark. With a small band of men...
THE THIRTEENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I had to put my binoculars down, as the Skyraiders came in much faster than I thought they would from the higher altitude. Seconds before I’d looked in the direction the Sandys were dropping down from, and seen the end of the day’s sunlight glint off something near...Subscribe to FROM THE WILDERNESS
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