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...
Is the Enemy Everywhere…?
Dateline March 31, 2017 Lake Geneva, Wisconsin For some reason I cannot write well this night. I am working on another segment of the Vietnam odyssey, Thirty Days Has September, but came to the river in the bottom of that valley and then lost my way. Not then, but...
THE THIRTEENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
The day would not end. The hike to where the objective was supposed to be, that Sugar Daddy’s forward reconnaissance team said wasn’t there, was one of overwhelming fatigue and staggering inattentiveness. The first sign that something was wrong with the company came...
THE THIRTEENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
Our return to the company was without incident, although Casey would not shut up. His incessant chatter was more than bothersome, because it couldn’t be listened to for long without the listener realizing that something was seriously wrong with the man. Some of what...
THE THIRTEENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
Dawn was breaking somewhere over the high parapet beyond the hill to my back, although the jungle down in the valley only glowed slightly with the coming of the light. The rain was gone. There would be sun. The radio handset hung down from my right hand, the dangling...
THE THIRTEENTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
I was wrong and I knew it by the time the company had proceeded less than an hour into its rain-flushed mud-slogging move into an impossibly dark night of trying to break through abusive jungle bracken while attempting to be careful not to set off any booby-traps.
THE TWELFTH NIGHT THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
The Gunny left me with my watery coffee, squatting in the soft-glistening dark. Our company commander was going to the rear to get a silver star, which was no small decoration, or at least it had been discussed that way while I was in training. He was going to get it...
THE TWELFTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The hill was more of a water and mud-driven mess than when we’d all taken the Vietnam “E’ ticket Disney ride down it, only moments earlier. I wondered, struggling to gain footholds against unstable rocks under the mud if the whole side of the mountain wouldn’t...
THE TWELFTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
There was nothing to be done about the grenade at the moment, because there were other things that had to be done. I had to make sure that the artillery registrations I’d made earlier with Fire Base Cunningham for bringing rounds in along the lower edge of our...
IN GOD’S WAY
Walking along on a street called Ke Nui in Hawaii, I found myself lost on this back road in a developed area on a small island where it’s almost impossible to get lost. But there I was. My cell would not work, and I was getting tired of walking around in shower shoes, things not meant for hiking long distances.
THE TWELFTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
I climbed the hill, switching back and forth, heading for chunks of outcropping rock and then toward the density of a protruding stand of low-lying bamboo. It was the Hill Trail climb my platoon at the Basic School had dreaded once a week in Virginia training…
WAKE UP AND SMILE, Rid Yourself of Fear
Fear abides, and lays there waiting in all human beings. If you wake up in the morning with faint feelings of unrest and nervousness over nothing at all that you can put your mental finger on, then be aware that you are joined that feeling this morning by most of the rest of humanity..
THE TWELFTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
My attention was drawn by AK-47s firing. I could hear the fire reverberating back from far up the valley even as I took cover and prepared to move out. My full attention, however, was immediately focused back to right where I was, when the Russian-built fifty caliber...
Let Him Lead
Let him lead? Really? I mean really? Just where did that question, answered in the positive, ever have a place on the American scene? Did Bill Clinton get to lead, or did he have to fight and compromise on just about every issue?
THE TWELFTH DAY, 30 Days has September
The first spotting round of the fire mission came screaming in. I didn’t care if I could see or hear it in the rain, or the fact that clustered down under the overhanging cliff behind the berm, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to properly observe anything anyway. I...
THE ELEVENTH NIGHT THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
I crawled toward where I thought the cliff wall was in the darkness. The rain was unpitying and the drums were driving me insane, as the sound was magnified, bouncing back off of the cliff face. All of a sudden, I was out of the rain and the jungle floor turned into a...
THE ELEVENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I finished the letter home. It wasn’t my best work because I kept nodding off. Nodding off but not sleeping. I nodded through the letter, forgetting about what I was going to tell my wife, instead going into detail about how much Casey reminded me of Kramer, the major at the Basic School who’d hated me.
On the Road Again, Hawaii, February 11, 2017
Dateline: Hawaii February 11, 2017 The coffee bar finally opened and I have a paper cup of Kona Coffee for $4.75. The cup is one of those new ones that is integrated. A to-go cup that doesn’t need one of those little sleeves to protect my hand form the heat. I...
On the Road Again, Hawaii, February , 2017
Dateline: Honolulu, Ala Moana Center and International Market Place We arrived in Hawaii yesterday February 8th and spending first morning visiting a few of our favorite shops in these two awesome Venues, Ala Moana Center and The International Market Place The...
THE ONE WHO KNOWS EVERYTHING
Dateline: Honolulu, Hawaii February 9, 2017 I was just standing there at the base of the clock on the second floor of the Ala Moana Shopping Center. I was passing time by leaning against the post that holds the four directional facing clocks. I had one hand up to my...
THE ELEVENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
There was no hooch for Captain Casey. The remnants of his tent lay scattered about the sand, a testament to the power of the Chicom 82mm mortar rounds that had impacted, taking Billings’ life with them. Only Billings’ bloody poncho survived, along with some...
THE ELEVENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days has September
“There’s a lesson to be learned from this and I’ve learned it oh so well,” was coming out of any number of small radio speakers when we marched across the perimeter and into the temporary encampment Captain Casey referred to as his command post. I walked in the lead...
THE ELEVENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days has September
I took my binoculars and played with the focusing knobs to bring in the landing zone far below. I was trying to get a clearer view of why there was stuff piled up around the edges of the zone, but I couldn’t make out what they were. The Gunny walked over and took out...
Audio of Unwelcome, a Harvey Adventure
In the forest, Harvey comes across a formidable foe and he is compelled to protect Gwennie Harvey’s eyes snapped open, but he didn’t move from under the tree. There was only one kind of animal whose presence would cause the forest to go silent with dread. The one kind...
THE POWER OF ROME
When the minorities rule. It happens all the time, you know. Minorities, either passing themselves off as the majority in some slight of hand or vote, get into power. And then they do minority things.
THE COLOR BLACK
The power of America has never been greater and the lives of American’s have never been better. The American military has never been stronger and the economics of the world turns on the power of the American dollar to this day. None of that was true or close...
THE RAGING QUEEN
Pouting. The president is pouting. Over how many people did or did not attend his inauguration. He’s stated unequivocally now that he is not going to release his taxes as he’d promised. That was this morning, between pouts. This nation is about to be...
THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT
So what can we do? Oh, there are the protests, and there is plenty of justified bitter vitriol to write and pass on. But, really. What do we do, those of us who are taken aback, feeling left out and worried right down to our cores that the country’s one...
THE BLUE DANUBE
I went on YouTube and found 2001 a Space Odyssey. Then I scrolled until I found that scene where the spaceship was slowly turning in space to align itself with the space station. The Director of that film brilliantly selected a simple waltz called the Blue Danube, to...
DEEP ABIDING FEAR
Finally, in the Chicago Tribune editorial section, an editorial was featured that has most of us former agents and White House workers cringing. The public does not understand. It isn’t Donald Trump’s tweeting
THE FINAL FRONTIER
When Eugene Cernan took his last step, the last step of any man to walk on the moon, it was a step backward. Neither he, nor any of those adventurers would ever have considered that we, as a nation and a species would step back from a forthcoming age of great...
Coming in From the Cold
How does one who comes in from the cold (that’s what spies used to call coming home from a mission) explain to fellow Americans that they live in a perpetual state of blissful euphoria punctuated by bouts of fake fear? How does one, who’s ridden the...
THE ELEVENTH DAY, 30 Days has September
I felt a large hand grip my left bicep, as I stood gazing with Fusner down into the hypnotic A Shau Valley below. The hand gently guided me backwards. I didn’t resist, turning to see the man I already knew the hand had to belong to. “Why do you suppose this clearing...
THE TENTH NIGHT THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
There was nothing to be done but to sit with Keating’s body. I’d wanted to carry it myself but the guys would have none of it. Surprising me, Stevens said it all with a strange statement, coming from a noncom in a unit that hadn’t tolerated officers well, to say the...
THE TENTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I wasn’t quite right and I knew it. Even with the rags pulled from my ears I could not hear much of anything. The noise had been too great. Counting wasn’t working either because this night was not about getting through, it was about living through. Living through, I...
THE TENTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
I ate ham and lima beans while the mosquitos ate me. The repellant backed them off but there were plenty of FNG mosquitos to replace the ones who flew away.
THE TENTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
I lay in my hooch, dug into the side of the hill through the effort of using Fusner’s entrenching tool. The hill was too slanted to lay against without a step being carved into its side. Fusner was just down from me,
THE TENTH DAY, 30 days Has September
The shelf running just down from, and alongside the top of, the mountain’s descending ridge eventually played out. The company once more trudged through the jungle under a barely seen double canopy of heavy brush
THE TENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I went to work on my stuff, just outside the exposed rock area where the choppers had come in. The area wasn’t that large, having hardly the footprint of an average small home back in the real world.
THE NINTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I waited, my body spread face down and flat on the jungle floor. It would have been a time of rest and relaxation if an attack by unknown numbers of wily, capable and well-armed opponents weren’t also waiting somewhere out in the night.
THE NINTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
I lay prone on the jungle mat of fallen leaves, fronds and smaller branches. I couldn’t tell how deep the mass under me was, although back at the hole we’d blown earlier, the jungle floor mat seemed like it was almost a foot thick. It was better than the mud. We had...
THE CHILDREN
Getting ready? Getting ready for national leadership that does not believe in the advances of science in computers, the Internet, email, or most anything else? Well, Donald Trump rails against all of those things. Get ready for worrying about nuclear war again. Donald...
JUST A HARD-WORKING JOE
Getting ready? Getting ready for what you now might see coming but maybe not? The ethics thing was a just a beginning. Ryan is in as Speaker, both houses are republican and Trump is about to become president. So you wanted all those people to lose their medical...
GOOD TRUMP MOVE
When Donald Trump does something that appears to be good, well, I write about it. I do not think he’s a bad or evil man. I simply think he’s about as daffy as a cartoon character. What did he do? He went up against his own republicans in making idiots out...
THE NINTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
When the company came to a slowing halt, I was more than ready to rest. The straps of my pack burned where they pressed down over the narrower suspender straps that held up my web belt. We’d made it back close to where the company had veered north and gone to the aid...
THE NINTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The West Pointer Captain Mertz’s plan to stay waiting for resupply, and take credit for the kills and any wounded NVA left behind, made logical sense. I knew that neither I, nor any of the Marines in the company, gave a tinker’s damn about who got credited for anything.
GLACIAL PERIOD
Are we looking forward to a Glacial period? America has focused all the attention of this part of the universe on itself and one man in particular. Not a man of the New Testament or Old. Not a man of philosophy or advanced education in any science. Not a man...
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