THIRTY DAYS HAS SEPTEMBER has ended, AND THE STORY PROCEEDS…
The “The Cowardly Lion” is in progress
The Cowardly Lion is what the survivor of the novels had to become in appearance and presentation in order to return home from becoming Junior and survive in a culture where none of the tools he used so effectively to control life around him and survive had any applicability.
Those actions he learned created habit patterns that had to be shed like a snake’s molting skin.
The criminal punishments and social abandonment the American culture dispenses on people who use violence to accomplish their goals or even survival are draconian in nature. The tools, the habit patterns, and the predatory behavior Junior had grown to become part of had to be abandoned, although never forgotten.
To discover what happened to the companies of Marines and Junior himself the book The Cowardly Lion must be read from beginning to end.
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THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter I
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter I The words “stay with us” burned their way into my consciousness, as I fought to comprehend the awful condition of my body and even my state of existence on the planet. The words kept repeating, as I tried to see through a distorted return...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter II
I awoke in bits and pieces. I blinked my eyes up at the ceiling, which was made of some strange greenish plaster, with light bulbs swinging slightly from wires hanging vertically down. I realized, hazily, that I was in some sort of hard-roofed tent. I tried to move my...
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter III
I.C.U. was nothing more or less than a long single room with three beds in it. There were no windows, no television set, but, I noted as I was wheeled in, there was the ubiquitous large clock mounted on the wall over the doubled doors that had split down the center to...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter IV
The room was silent, as the three colonels shifted and arranged papers in their laps. The major held up a single sheet of thick paper and began to read, as the staff sergeant readied her hands over a small electronic device that sat on the tiny top shelf of her...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter V
THE COWARDLY LION Chapter Five There was night and day in the I.C.U., only the night was brought about by merely dimming the existent lighting enough so that the pain drug clock could barely be seen. Visitors did not come at night. Doctors only came if emergency care...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter VI
THE COWARDLY LION Chapter VI Shoot appeared from seeming nowhere. I hadn’t noticed the doors swinging at all. He helped my brother back to a vertical position and gave him a towel, and then went to work cleaning up the mess on the floor. “So sorry,” my brother said...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter VII
THE COWARDLY LIONChapter Seven I went on my Sippy diet a few days later, while also being proud of myself for not giving in to the morphine shots coming every three hours instead of every four. General Masters visited all the time, and even went to the extra effort of...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter VIII
I was awakened by the pain and by the noises being emitted from within my room. I stared over at the figures of Pus, Kathy and Barbara, gathered together as they worked to set up an additional bed and get all the connections correct. Barbara was the first to notice...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter IX
I watched Japanese television. I didn’t understand almost any of it, but Shoot had clued me in, early on, that the Japanese had no qualms about showing bare female breasts on their regular programming. That part of Japanese television was okay. Rory had come and gone...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter X
The flight was nothing more or less than a disjointed series of buzzing noises, vibrations, and brief bouncing bouts where my plastic cocoon swayed out a few inches from the metal bulkhead, and then gently smacked back into it. I was aware, but unaware, both at the...
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XI
There was no delay, no time given, no quarter extended by my body, nor begged for by my mind. I’d never detoxed before, although the pain had become an old bad friend. The codeine tablets in my nearby metal drawer, twenty-three of them, got me through the night and...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XII
My daughter was a very definitive curly blond thing that was simply delightful at every point of her five-month existence, and for some unknown reason, in spite of my shattered condition, colostomy bag, and scant physical presence, she found me to be the apple of her...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XIII
The .45 was in the box it’d come in when the commanding general of the base at Quantico had awarded it to me. My wife had put it up, and as far back on the top shelf of our bedroom closet, as she could. She and Pat had taken Julie to the shopping center for some...
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XIV
I’d been home for a week before my first contact came in from Oak Knoll, but it wasn’t from the medical side. It was from Johannson, the Marine Corps liaison officer both Mary and I’d dealt with when I was in the ward with the other prisoners. The call came in at...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XV
My wife drove Mickey’s 442, since she wouldn’t let me drive, as we made our way to Highway 280, then 80 across the Bay Bridge, onto 580 to head back south to where the hospital was set back on Mountain Boulevard some distance from the MacArthur Freeway. “Why do all...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XVI
Getting a full Marine Corps Class-A green uniform together took more work than I expected. My report date was for the next day, as there were no free or lull days in Marine Corps life. I had been determined to be available for duty and ordered to my duty station....
THE COWARDLY LION. Chapter XVII
I walked outside the office and onto the gravel trail leading up to the parking lot I’d come down from earlier in the day. I heard a motorcycle start up behind me. I stopped and turned. The motorcycle drove slowly up to me on the gravel. I stepped off to one side....
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XVIII
The trip to Yerba Buena Island wasn’t remarkable in any way, except for the fact that I remained entranced with the passing scenes of difference and beauty that the entire San Francisco basin always offered. Pat drove her low-powered Pontiac to the parking lot and I...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XIX
I was surprised by the obvious difference in the way I was received at the gas station from previous visits. I knew it was the uniform, as well as the Saran treatment that kept me from looking like a weakened Hunchback of Notre Dame creature. Mickey’s friends, those...
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XX
I walked into the room, turned, and handed the orders to my wife, tossing the useless envelope it’d come in onto the couch located across our small living room. “Hand-delivered by a Naval messenger,” I said, not knowing what else to say, my mind already beginning to...
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XXI.
The crowd was stirred up for the coming run, as Danny Ongais climbed into the GTO and belted up. Mickey and his helpers, many more than had been around before, gathered behind the car and pushed it to a place just a few feet from the starting line. The near-identical...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XXII
It was hard to imagine, much less witness, that everything my wife, daughter and I owned could be fit into the interior spaces of a 1966 GTO. Nothing was attached or tied on the outside. I’d been raised in a Coast Guard family where the frequent moves were paid for by...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIII The trip onto the base was quick and easy, although getting through the gate for the first time without having to travel ten more miles to Mainside to sit, qualify for, and get a base sticker, was a bit problematic. The two guards were suspicious of the...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XXIV
Piaget, the man who owned, with his prisoner brother, the San Clemente Hotel, was a font of information and assistance, although arcane in attire, language usage, and personal style. “Do you have a first name?” was one of the first things I asked him when we got a...
THE COWARDLY LION, Chapter XXV
The day wore on, my time spent playing with Julie, watching her sleep, and trying most unsuccessfully to write about what had happened to me in Vietnam. How to tell a story and have it accepted in a time when no such story was going to be received by anything other...
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XXVI
This Chapter is dedicated to Jim Flynn The entire mess of paperwork that transferred the GTO to Slate and the 1969 Volkswagen bug to me took almost an hour. The Volkswagen was brought out from the back of the dealership and parked for me to drive. The GTO had...
The Cowardly Lion, Chapter XXVII
Craig and I rode in his 1960 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible. He’d driven in and picked me up outside my apartment, as he lived at the bachelor officer’s quarters on the base. We didn’t drive from there in silence, but we drove without talking. The Bonneville’s...
The Cowardly Lion, Volume Two, Chapter I
My first day working with the Home of the Western White House, as the Cotton Estate was becoming known everywhere in and around the town of San Clemente, wasn’t a workday at all. After reporting in to the remarkably strange and alienating H.R. Haldeman, there was...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter II
The uniform shop in Santa Ana was located on the main drive passing through the center of the rather over-populated and kind of ragged city. San Clemente was much smaller, tighter and kept its streets, sidewalks and plant life in much better shape. Of course, San...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, CHAPTER III
I spent the next four days working out, as best I could. I had the endurance to run five miles straight, but I hadn’t regained the speed I one had before being shot and operated on so much. My fears about the coming academy stretch were active, particularly at...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter IV
Chapter IV I pulled away from home in the Volks, only wanting to escape back onto the stretches of beach I realized I was finding some solace driving, if not doing anything else productive. Vietnam had come again out of nowhere. Nguyen, reaching forward from the past,...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter V
Chapter V Chief Murray and I stood, looking at the specially equipped and painted Boeing 707, with a big American flag painted brilliantly on the vertical part of its tail, until Kissinger, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman disappeared into its side door. The plane was called...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter VI
The front hubs on the Bronco had obviously never been turned before. It took all the strength I had in my wrists to slowly move the hubs a hundred and eighty degrees. Finally, they were turned. I got back in the Bronco, backed up, and faced the six-foot-high berm of...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter VII
The one thing I’d come to understand about whatever it was I was supposed to be doing for the Western Whitehouse, at first with Haldeman and now no doubt with Mardian, was immediacy. When people in their positions wanted something, they wanted it right now. Physically...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter VIII
I left the compound as I’d come in, feeling about the same. Although the Beach Patrol part of my life with the San Clemente Police Department was unsettled, it was at least predictable and there also seemed to be no inherent danger in working with the personnel, the...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter IX
The driver of the Lincoln limo was a man I didn’t recognize from the compound, but then I wasn’t surprised. I circulated among but knew very few of the men and women who constantly flowed in, through and around the Western White House and its grounds. I was so low on...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter X
I entered the Union Bank Building elevator, the building itself located on the grounds of the Fashion Island shopping center in Newport Beach. The building was just another square high rise but the elevator buttons pointed out one uncommon irregularity. The address I...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XI
My mind was racing, as I faced the man, my body now only exposing one side to him. I was in San Clemente, California where there was no war, where I was marginally respected for things I had little understanding of, and where I enjoyed my wonderful wife and fantastic...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XII
The din coming from the interior of the party house was deafening. I moved inside, stepping to the left in order to keep my right hand free, and also allow Gularte to be a second target instead of both of us potentially being taken as one. There were about a dozen...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XIII
Tom Turner was the next reserve officer to be ‘trained’ by me. We rode together peaceably until right after dark when Bobby Scruggs called to tell us about a report of a strange couple doing strange things on the northern edge of “T” Street Bridge beach. The call...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, CHAPTER XIV
I drove the Marauder to the pier in silence, neither Gularte nor I saying a word, even as the vehicle, much heavier than the Bronco built for the off-road job of patrolling the beach and incidental structures, made a smooth surface out of the rough wooden slat...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XV
Gularte was waiting at the beach unit when I arrived at the city parking lot, my Volkswagen’s engine knocking a bit, which had me worried, but not unduly so. The thing was still under warranty, although I had no replacement if it might be in the dealership shop for...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XVI
I left Mardian at the pool, since I’d given him everything I had about whatever it was I was supposed to know, but really didn’t. The money was invisibly held into the middle of the clamshell holster meant to hold and conceal a Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum, 4 inch...
THE COWARDLY LION,Volume Two, Chapter XVII
I finished the shift with Herberich and Gularte. Nobody got shot, and they sort of bonded in that single time together. Not with me, but with each other. I understood, in the back seat, that I wasn’t really bondable material. I had my wife and daughter and that was...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XVIII
Detective Hoodoo instructed Gularte and I to depart the beach scene, as he and the ‘team’ of lifeguards would handle the situation from then on. He’d already given that order but neither Gularte nor I had moved. Instead of re-issuing the earlier command he...
THE COWARDLY LION,Volume Two, Chapter XIX
The beach was abandoned, at the point where it preceded south from the state beach but not yet a part of the Trestles Beach portion. There the point stuck out into the ocean to create the conflicting broken sea environment that led to sometimes legendary surf, which...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XX
I waited patiently for Gularte, sitting in the afternoon sun, rubbing my useless government pen with the fingers of my left hand. The pen wasn’t totally useless I knew, as its presence where it was found was very likely a valuable clue. Was the person who lost it not...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XXI
In the morning I got up early. My Marine green alpha uniform was all laid out in the other bedroom, the other bedroom that wasn’t Julie’s. All that was missing was the rows of ribbons I’d removed after being on the base over a month in the past. I went back into my...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XXII
I left the Seven Dwarfs at the restaurant, wondering if a group having so much fun forming up to play private investigators, could possibly be at all effective. Gularte drove, while I prepared myself for the coming meeting. I had little doubt that Haldeman was going...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XXIII
I tried to sleep in the morning following my meeting with first Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and then Chief Cliff Murray. I was troubled, yet it was too early to get up because my getting up would awaken my wife, and then Julie, both of whom deserved to sleep in because...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XXIV
Gularte and I struggled in attempting to do anything but hang on to the sturdy, but very slippery chrome railing. There was nothing else to hold onto as the boat was being continuously beaten all along the port side of its hull by the pounding surf. “Down,” I yelled...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XXV
The lifeguard boat ran with the wind after making the turn to round the end of the San Clemente Pier, the only thing standing between the fast moving craft and the harbor opening into Dana Point’s yacht basin. The helicopters, Coast Guard boats and the yacht itself,...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XXVI
The open sea beckoned us toward it, as I stared at the ever greater rise and fall of the bow. It seemed to be whispering “come my pretties,” as if somehow tied right into the wicked witch’s delivery from the Wizard of Oz. Gularte made it up from the main cabin, just...
THE COWARDLY LION, Volume Two, Chapter XXVII
The ride back into the harbor entrance at Dana Point went smoothly, the wind and waves were at our back and there was no traffic of boats or lines of fisherman along the sea walls to impede our progress. The sound of the dual MTU diesels, thrumming away underneath me,...