Yep, those are aircrewman wings on my chest. Flew as a door gunner with HMM-164, but did some other stuff before and after as you'll find out here. And you're right, those are pretty grungy utilities -- sweat-stained from the shoulders down. Man, it got hot there! But I always figured we had it pretty good in the 1st Marine Air Wing compared to the poor mud grunts in the field like my brother. Heck, back at base there was warm chow, cold milk, fruit sometimes, and San Mig in the club. We lived pretty high on the hog, all right, and I stayed in Nam from December 1966 to August 1968.

Above's the last stripes I ever earned in the Corps. Our dad went all the way to the top, but of course he was a lifer and first saw service as one of the old ''China Marines'' with the 4th Marine Regiment in Shanghai in the early 1930s. He spent 17 months in the South Pacific, starting with Guadalcanal, and finally retired out in 1954. I was only in for the short haul and ended service when I was 26, but Dad always said you never ''quit'' the Corps, and he was right.

That being the case, might as well start back at the beginning of my life as a Marine. (Mom would have said that started the day I was born since I grew up on Marine bases, but I say ''rug rats'' don't count. If you want to know about my life before Parris Island, you'll have to check out my early life.) So let's see ...

On 4 Aug 1965 I signed enlistment papers to serve four years in the United States Marine Corps. Coming from the East Coast, of course, I thereafter enjoyed the munificence and hospitality of the genial folks at Parris Island MCRD (Platoon 376) who knew exactly what to do with a 20-year-old lump of civilian flesh. The fact of the matter is that I enjoyed every minute of it, though the DIs would not want to have heard that. The memories of PI are still fresh in my mind (something about the experience seems to have sharpened everyone's recall), and two instances remain favorite TINS stories:

During the first week of training we spent an evening learning to execute proper hand salutes. Now in our platoon we had two good old boys -- twins -- from back in the hollers of West-By-God-Virginia who were named, and I kid you not, Homer and Gomer. (And this was before the days of ''Gomer Pyle, USMC.'') The DI had separated them the first day by the length of the squad bay, but on the same side, so that they couldn't communicate with each other. (My own rack was in the middle of the opposite side of the bay.) Well, after some instruction the DI ordered us to snap and hold a salute while he went down the line to inspect the results. Coming to Homer (or Gomer, who cares?), the DI found him holding a very smart salute -- with his left hand. ''Son, why are you saluting with your left hand?'' ''Well, uh, I'm left-handed, sir.'' It went from bad to worse and the DI finally moved on, shaking his head. He eventually reached Gomer (or Homer), who wasn't aware of what had happened down at the other end of the bay. Another left-handed salute. I think it was the following evening, upon responding to questions from the DI about how they'd ever managed to pass the entrance tests, that one of them disclosed that they'd never taken any tests. (A recruiter with a quota problem?) These old boys were so dumb that it really made you wonder about all the old jokes regarding mountain inbreeding. In any case, they departed Parris Island shortly thereafter.

While PI forged us into a team and into (novice) Marines, one ugly but perhaps predictable incident also stands out that, for me, momentarily sullied the honor of my Corps. Our platoon's top man at graduation (who is awarded a set of ''dress blues'' in addition to promotion to PFC) was a nice enough guy whom everyone liked, but who had broken his leg mid-way through training and couldn't even run the final PRT with us. Normally in such cases the recruit would be ''held back'' to complete full training with another platoon, but not in this case. His father (and I won't mention names because I liked the son) was a Navy Admiral, and ''rank has its privileges'' never had a better exemplar. Not only was his son not held back, but some fairly blatant pressure was obviously brought to bear down the great Naval chain of command. We could tell the DIs were pretty disgusted, too, but knew enough to keep their opinions to themselves. Not one of us blamed the kid, though; he was all right, and seemed embarrassed, too.

We didn't get the normal leave after PI, but instead went directly to an Infantry Training Regiment (ITR) at Camp Lejeune, N.C. where we learned how not to kill each other with hand grenades, flamethrowers, bazookas, and the like. (Remember how much fun that was?) It was also at Camp Lejeune that I first saw the rigorous training undertaken by members of Force Recon -- a real eye-opener, and of all the world's forces I've always held them in highest esteem.

On 7 Dec 1965 I finally started leave -- home for Christmas! -- and on 29 Dec reported for Aviation Ordnance School at Cherry Point MCAS, N.C. The fact is that in 1965 the Corps was desparately hurting for such people and needed to gear up for the larger war in the offing. A number of us who'd gone through PI and ATR together now found ourselves in the same school. It was pretty obvious we'd been hand-picked since almost all of us had a couple years of college (for me it was Cornell's School of Engineering), had left for one reason or another, but had scored well on the standard battery tests. So they threw us into a heavy load of cram courses to learn everything we could about air-to-air missiles, bomb racks, fuses and the like, and certified us masters of our trade on 31 Jan 1966. (Yeah, right.) We immediately joined operational squadrons of A-4s and F-4s at Cherry Point to practice (and begin to really learn) our craft. My two best friends at the time were John Rucker (who shortly thence went to Quantico and took a commission) and John J. Perseo (of New York City, who stayed in the Corps as an information specialist).

It was thus I became a member of VMFA-531, MAG-24, 2nd Marine Air Wing and on 1 April 1966 was appointed a PFC by LtCol R.L. Wildey, Commanding Officer. It was a great squadron. The old salts had been with it during the previous year in DaNang (when it had been one of the first Marine air units in Nam) and were like ''big brothers'' to us newbies. In July we deployed to ''Rosy Roads'' (Roosevelt Roads NAS, Puerto Rico) where we learned to drink Ronrico 151 rum (badly) and to swim off urchin-infested beaches (again, badly, to my sorrow). And it was at Rosy Roads that some wags fixed the F-4 of a pilot who'd just received orders to Nam -- upon deploying his speed brakes for landing, the nicest streamers of toilet paper you can imagine came trailing out behind his aircraft.

On 1 Oct they made me a Lance Corporal, the appointment this time signed by Major F.D. Topley, Commanding, and the next month we deployed again, this time to Yuma MCAS, Arizona so the pilots could practice bombing. (The rest of us discovered that border towns in Mexico weren't much different than areas of old San Juan.)

It was also about this time that I took the Armed Forces Comprehensive College Tests with some thoughts of going to Quantico myself. I learned that the tests went OK (scoring in 94th percentile or better on all) about the same time that I learned an emergency billet had opened up in Nam for my MOS. The choice wasn't even a close contest, so on 29 Nov I started leave. My original orders said I had to report to Marine Barracks, Treasure Island (San Francisco) on 11 Dec, but while home on leave I got a telegram to report to Travis AFB (near San Francisco) by 0900 on the 12th. Yippee! An extra day! (Well, I got ALMOST two weeks' leave before Christmas, didn't I?)

Chu Lai wasn't much to look at in those days. The A-4 squadrons had living areas and airstrips closer and parallel to the beach, while our F-4 squadrons had similar accommodations about half a mile inland. We did have hooches (tent covers over wood frame sidings, with bunkers dug out beneath each and protected with sandbags), but on the flightlines there were only tents (no hangars yet) and the planes were protected in steel revetments filled with sand. The latter was pretty easy to come by since there was sand everywhere -- even in our food when the monsoons blew. And blow they did, enough to wreck the tents from time to time, accompanied by an almost continuous downpour of rain. We worked nominal twelve-hour shifts every day of the week, though days (and nights) were frequently 16-to-20 hour marathons with breaks for naps. As a result, the tents were welcome shelters from the rain where we could light up a smoke and open some C-rats to dine by candlelight. (Sounds romantic, doesn't it?) Marine Aviation was so short-handed of ordnancemen at the time and we were flying so many missions that they commandeered some 0300-type grunts to help us load 500-pound bombs on the aircraft. You didn't need to sign up for any Charles Atlas schools after a few months of that. (We did have a bomb-loading vehicle, but it could only be used on one plane at a time and it frequently crapped out, so more often than not it was simply two guys on each end of a bomb manhandling it into the racks.)

You might suppose, looking at the pictures below, that our living quarters were somewhat primitive. Not at all! Gas generators provided electricity and there were honest-to-goodness bunks for sleeping. We also took great pride in fixing up our hooches with all manner of scavenged materials. In my own hooch we rigged up a home-brew fan (when the weather changed from chilly rain to searing heat), and the interior was made more comfortable in all weather with insulation formed from the foam packing I scrounged from the cases of Zuni rockets. (I also built myself a rather respectable pull-down bar and a storage cabinet from the wood of those cases.) Eventually we even got television, thanks to the ausipices of the Armed Forces Radio and Television network, and after pooling our funds got a little 9-inch black and white TV on which we could see ''Batman'' (ZAP! BAM!) and old re-runs of ''Combat.'' How's that for programming savvy?!

The area around the living quarters was entirely sand, as I mentioned. Steel pallets were laid on the sand to provide easier walkways on the main thoroughfares, and into the sand went used 2.75-inch rocket dispensing tubes (turned up on end). These served but one purpose, as may be gleaned from the name given them by everyone: ''piss tubes.'' (When it's the little things like this that really stand out in memory, it does give one pause, I'll admit.) In any case, a rather humorous story surrounds these amenities which I relate here on condition that no one remind me of it. . . . We'd been living at Chu Lai for several months, having grown accustomed to our ways of doing things, when one afternoon I was availing myself of a tube in sight of the main road that ran between the airstrip and living area. No one gave any thought to such behavior (particularly in view of the Vietnamese nonchalance in squatting for business when the need arose), so I wasn't really thinking about what else I was doing when I raised one hand and started waving it madly in greeting at a truckload of USO performers (mostly females) who suddenly appeared as a pleasant surprise on the road. It honestly didn't strike me until after they'd continued down the road why they began laughing and pointing me out toward one another. Yeah, a real hoot. Look at that dumb jarhead!

Life went on, day by day and week by week, with such regularity that much of the time remains a blurred memory of non-events, broken by moments of humor and terror. While I prefer the humor, as you've seen, the other was there, too. Memory of the first time we came under mortar attack is still fairly vivid, perhaps becaue, although we never grew blase about them, I did not yet appreciate the comfort in knowing that one could determine likely health status by listening to the pattern of explosions as the enemy ''walked'' the mortars through an area (unlike randomly dropping rockets, which can inspire true terror in even the saltiest grunt). There was a ville north of the base from which mortar fire was received on the A-4 side of the field one night. The ville was ''off limits'' for return fire (being a ''friendly'' place), so they managed to crater the runway pretty good as well as hitting the A-4s LOX dump.

I do recall, however, the night we were wakened from sleep and asked about our blood types. A bunch of us were then loaded into trucks and driven to a field hospital somewhat south of the airfield. As it happened, a unit of South Korean (''ROK'') Marines situated as a blocking force against that route for the airfield had been overrun by the NVA and sustained severe casualties. There were so many of the poor bastards in such bad shape that the Navy medical team had run out of plasma. We were led inside the hospital tents and stationed on cots next to wounded ROKs to provide direct transfusions of blood. In my mind's eye I can still see one man's leg, amputated near the hip, as it rested where placed against a tent pole. However, what I've usually told folks about that night, if anything, had nothing to do with the grim medicine, but rather the fact that we were each given one of those ''complimentary''-sized bottles of gin on our departure. (I've since been informed by Red Cross folks that drinking alcohol following blood donation isn't a terribly swift thing to do -- but a pretty quick buzz, nonetheless!)

The ROK Marines were (and still are) great fighters, and it was my pleasure to make the acquaintance of some of them. We used to enjoy swapping C-rations -- I don't know if they really enjoyed the little cans of ham and lima beans (grin), but I sure developed a taste for ''kim-chee,'' which is a sort of national Korean dish made of fermented cabbage, rather spicy and hot. And just in case it wasn't hot enough, their rations always included a little package of dried hot pepper to sprinkle on it for extra zest. (Wow!)

While we ate a fair amount of C-rations (including, early on, ''Ham and Eggs, Chopped'' with date codes on some of the cans all the way back to pre-Korean War era vintage), we had a really fine mess hall at Chu Lai. (It was finding the time to take a break to get there that was the problem.) We ate from our mess kits, afterward dropping leftovers into the ''slop'' cans and dipping our utensils and pans into pots of boiling water. We never gave much thought to where the slops went until some of us drove out to the dump one afternoon. There, seated around small fires, were groups of the poorer Vietnamese civilians re-heating our garbage in discarded C-ration cans. We watched for a while as they culled through the waste, dropping little bits of meat in one tin, vegetables into another, and so forth. The Corps was always good about feeding us ''seconds,'' so after that episode some of us began taking a second helping of steak, a hamburger, whatever, and throwing the entire thing into the slop can. (With the care taken to sort every little thing out, however, I imagine those folks still had a heck of a time with discarded ''mixed vegetables.'')

The Vietnamese people we encountered were a mixed group (as is true anywhere in the world). Most were absolutely charming, if understandably quite reserved (except for the kids!). Others were bitter, again for undoubtedly just cause in their eyes. And a few were downright nasty and devious, albeit amicable at first appearance. Among the latter was the guy who ran a barber shop in a hooch in our living area -- the gentleman who'd cut my hair and given me oh-so-close shaves was killed one night in a raid on the base. He was VC. (When the hangars were first being constructed, one Vietnamese worker was taken into custody after being observed pacing off distances from the road to the hangar site -- nothing like having an inside man when you need to determine mortar fire plots.)

In April I received some orders (signed by our CO, LtCol Dan Johnson) to travel to Danang ''in connection with repair of aircraft.'' One of our F-4s took some pretty good hits and managed to make it to Danang, so I went along to retrieve whatever parts were salvageable for the ordnance shop. Danang sure seemed different than when I'd last seen it -- a truly cosmopolitan place! (Of course I was just a hick from the sticks of Chu Lai and unprepared for the glamor.) My orders were for TAD (''Temporary Additional Duties''), but most Marines know that really stands for ''Travelling Around Drunk'' so we availed ourself of the opportunity to make new friends in the Air Force and Navy clubs, too. We got another bird shot up and forced into Danang a few weeks later, so the same orders were cut for me again on 3 May. Back to the big city. Definitely didn't want to make a habit of this, however, since our planes were often the angels for out-numbered brother grunts and we didn't have all that many of them.

On 31 May 1967, Major F.L. Farrell, Jr., the new CO of VMFA-542, appointed me a Corporal. Ta-da! I was now officially a non-commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps and damned proud of it.

By July I'd been in country over 6 months, so I was given some orders for R&R in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), my first choice. Arriving in Danang, however, I discovered that flights to that destination were filled, so I wrangled a seat to Tokyo instead. Seven wonderful days of luxury in the old Imperial Hotel (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), sightseeing (and watched the James Bond film set in Japan in a theater on the Ginza!), being introduced to the pleasures of sushi and saki (in no particular order), sleeping (!), and, in general, enjoying myself -- including a wild ride in a taxi (which I filmed from the back seat) with a driver who must have dreamed of being a Kamikaze pilot.

While I was on R&R my request for an extended tour was approved. I understand this sounds crazy to some folks, but I wanted some ''payback,'' hoping as well to be transferred to an organization where I could fight back directly. It was all well and good that I was working damn hard and ''doing my bit'' (serving, by then, as NCOIC of the Avionics Shop -- missiles), but loading ordnance and maintaining aircraft while waiting around for the next nut with a mortar to show up some night didn't strike me as the way a Marine should spend the entire war. Well, I didn't get the transfer (just yet), but I did find myself with a revised rotation date of August 68 ''based on one month's Special Leave and six month's Voluntary Extension.'' (The deal was ostensibly 30 days paid, free leave anywhere in the free world, travel provided, for staying an extra 6 months in Nam. As you'll see later, it didn't work out for me quite this way.)

The Avionics Shop did have its moments, however. One afternoon one of our F-4s landed with one main gear up (having had the hydraulics system shot up) and it screeched down the runway on one external fuel tank with a full load of Sidewinder and Sparrow missiles. We raced to it as fast as we could and managed to get the missiles offloaded before they had a chance to cook off. (Burned the dickens out of one hand on the rack cartridges.) A friend wasn't quite so lucky on another occasion when a Sidewinder launched off the rail of an F-4 on the air-to-air pad at the end of the runway. (In theory this couldn't happen according to the McDonnell-Douglas rep because of the ''wheel-well-interlock'' switch which is supposed to prevent such launches when the front gear is down. But it obviously did happen, so the rep and I spent a few cozy hours pouring over schematics until we finally figured out where the aircraft engineers had screwed the pooch.) The upshot was that my friend was medevac'd to the States, minus one tricep and a fair amount of muscle tissue from his chest when he foolishly tried to hold the damn thing on the rail -- it ended up ''killing'' a LOX (liquid oxygen) truck further down the runway.

One of the people involved in that incident was a captain in the two-man aircrew. Again, no names, but among the enlisted personnel he was always known as ''Skippy-Poo,'' in part because of his arrogance and demeanor (he was a hoity-toity from the wealthy 'burb of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and took no great pains to hide the fact from everyone -- enlisted men and fellow officers alike), but also because he was one dumb-ass know-it-all. On this occasion it was (probably correctly) suspected that Skippy-Poo had been diddling with the armament control panel in the cockpit instead of keeping his hands in the air (where the ordnancemen could see them) when the safety pins were pulled from the missile racks. Good rumor has it that on another occasion he almost shot the CO out of the sky with an accidentally fired missile. This is the kind of guy that leaves you not needing to wonder where those Officer Fitness Report entries like ''elevator doesn't go all the way to the top'' come from. Payback came for Skippy-Poo, though. Returning from one mission, his F-4 had received damage that left him unable to open his seat canopy. (Skippy was the RIO -- Radar Intercept Officer -- though these folks were as often called the ''GIB'' -- Guy In Back -- because they sat just behind the pilot.) Guys from the Hydraulics Shop were called out to the flightline to have a look at the problem. Nope, can't be solved here. They towed the aircraft into the hangar (which we had by then), with Skippy muttering to himself in the back seat. In the hangar the boys brought out all the tech manuals in an apparent attempt to solve Skippy's dilemna. Nope, that don't work. Let's try this ... After about two hours they decided to let him out.

Yeah, that's Sergeant Perry in the photo. In September I was given a ''Meritorious Mast'' -- sort of a combination ''kudo's'' and pat-on-the-back in the Marine Corps. LtCol R.C. Marsh was the CO by then, and he signed the Mast which read, in part, ''... made a substantial contribution to the overall effort that enabled the squadron to break all existing MAG-13 records for tonnage dropped in the month of May 1967 (1448 tons).'' There's a lot of words before and after, but it's that fact of which I was proud. (Get some!) The greater honor came in early November, however, when Major General R.C. Anderson, Commanding the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, signed the appointment meritoriously promoting me to Sergeant. If you're a Marine, you know how I felt; if you're not, you'd never understand, so I'll leave it at that.

Some weeks after my promotion (mid-December, I think, but the memory's a little vague here) we prepared to embark for the Naval Air Station at Iwakuni, Japan for a stand-down and to receive new aircrews for the squadron. Our planes were pretty beaten up by this time, as were we. Whatever the date, it was within a few days of the North Korean's capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo. (Suppose I could check the date on the net, but who cares?) In any case, we'd only barely arrived in Iwakuni when word came down in the middle of the night that we should prepare two F-4s fully armed with live Sidewinders and Sparrows. (Being in the military, of course, no one was given an explanation why, though it seemed a mighty curious order in view of our location.) Well, ''Ours is not to question ..., etc.,'' and we quickly made arrangements with the Navy to have live missiles delivered to our flightline. As NCOIC of the shop, I knew darn well we'd be lucky to pull it off, but checked the records and found the last two planes that presumably had all avionics/missile equipment functioning. We loaded up the racks and ran through the checkouts. Everything looked fine on the control panels in the cockpit (i.e.,, the aircraft and missiles were communicating), but I couldn't get tone in the headset for one Sidewinder on one of the birds. (One of the acquisition modes of the AIM-9D causes a tone to be heard in the pilot's helmet whenever the seeker head is illuminated by an infra-red source -- tested by pointing a light on the missile's front end.) Although the status lights on the control panel looked fine, the skipper was insistent that he also needed tone. Well, ... let's see. It ain't the headset. Maybe a bad rail (happened sometimes). Swapped the rail with a known good one and reloaded the missile. Nope. Maybe the missile per se. (The buggers always needed head changes at Chu Lai despite use of protective covers in the revetments because they'd get ''sand-blasted'' during take-offs, causing undesired effects on their tracking!) Load a known good missile at that station. Nope, still no tone. Maybe wiring or bad connection in the wing pylon (from which the rail is suspended). Get the schematics, get an ohmmeter, check it out. Nope, everything looks fine up to the fuselage. Meanwhile an hour has gone by. Continue checking while scratching head and mumbling bad things about McDonnell-Douglas. Finally only one place left in the entire circuit to check -- there's also a fuse box awkwardly located underneath the RIO's seat. Those fuses have never been known to blow as long as I've worked on this aircraft, but jeez, there's nothing else left. I'm in the middle of helping guys from the seat shop get me access to the box when the skipper walks out on the flightline and tells me to forget the whole thing. Great effort, but we won't be going. I'm later told that our squadron's aircraft were intended to be used as air cover for a Navy effort to prevent the Pueblo's being taken into port by the North Koreans (as it was), but the Navy wouldn't let us fly unless we could guarantee fully operational status. So for the sake of one lousy Sidewinder with no tone, Cdr Boucher and the crew of the Pueblo is apparently captured. (And I'm still not convinced that Sidewinder wouldn't have worked just fine if needed -- the pilot simply needed to punch it first if he got tone for any of the other three on his aircraft. Its own on-board seeker would have done the job just fine. And, in any case, there were a total of 8 Sparrows and 8 Sidewinders available for the mission. Hell, that's 16 potential confirmed kills for any Marine aviators!)

Life at Iwakuni after that became rather desultory. The weather in Japan is quite cold at that time of the year, and a pleasant change from Nam. And, of course, we now had rather more normal working hours and ''weekends off,'' so sightseeing became a major activity. One Saturday I boarded an express train and traveled to Hiroshima; while there I toured both a Kirin beer factory and the ''Peace Museum,'' the latter filled with photos and mementos of the atomic bombing of that city at the close of World War II. Despite mutual friendships formed with many Japanese, I have no mixed opinions regarding that event -- I'm thankful it happened. Both because an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have resulted in many times those deaths on both sides (and my father and several other folks in my family were in uniform at the time), and because it's unlikely my wife would ever have been born. When the atomic bombs were dropped, my parents-in-law and brother-in-law had been Japanese POWs in the Stanley Camp on Hong Kong (captured Christmas Day, 1941), and my mother-in-law was pregnant with Adrienne. (Conditions in the camp were horrendous and both her parents suffered from extreme medical conditions.)

Another favorite site near Iwakuni was the Kintai Bridge and castle, the bridge being made entirely of wood and erected about a 1000 years ago. (A photo appears below, left.) After walking across the bridge, a tramway takes one to the top of the mountain where an old castle has been converted into a museum containing many fine examples of steel swords, Bushido costumes, and other artifacts. A pleasant way to pass the afternoon is had by stopping at one of the tea houses at the bottom of the mountain after that excursion.

Becoming known as a ''Perry'' among Japanese civilians was frequently interesting since they were always eager to know if I was related to Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, whom they all seemed to know was responsible for forcing 19th century Japan to open its medieval doors to the West and thus perforce introducing everything attendant to that, including streetcars and electrical power plants. (We are related, but it's distant. And, in any case, I'd much rather be associated with Matthew's brother, Oliver Hazard Perry, perhaps best known for his admonition during the Battle of Lake Erie ''Don't shoot 'til you see the whites of their eyes.'' My wife, of course, being English, has a rather different take on this, but acknowledges that Perry's win was a tit-for-tat when the British burned down most of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812.)

Shortly before Christmas the squadron received orders to Cubi Point Naval Air Station in the Philippines so the new aircrews could receive some additional training. A few of us were left behind at Iwakuni, however, to look after the squadron's property. With the squadron gone, I was the senior remaining NCO when some Naval types showed up in our area to ask if anyone wanted to go to Bangkok for New Year's. They'd really expected to offer a seat to a senior officer, but since I was the only one around (and ''in charge''), I thought ''what the heck'' and talked myself right into that seat -- appointing a corporal to take over in my absence. (Can he do that? I don't know, I did it anyway.) I was the only Marine on the flight from Iwakuni which, en route to Bangkok, landed for a few hours in, of all places, Danang, and on one of the nights it was taking rockets! (Guess the flight crew wanted some of that ''hazardous duty pay'' in addition to the month's flight pay and learned how it was earned the hard way -- grin. Felt a little sorry for the one WAVE, female-type Navy person, though.)

Bangkok was a delight. I went off by myself and got a luxurious hotel room, then set out to see the sights for four straight days and nights. The first day I serendipitously hired a taxi driver whose father's life had been saved by Marines during WWII, so we hit it right off and he offered to drive me around for virtually nothing, showing me all the wonderful tourist attractions. Over the next few days we visited the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the Royal Park (where I had my picture taken with a python draped around my shoulders), and many other sites. One day we had lunch in a park where I enjoyed meeting several Thai Boy Scouts who were engaged in a traditional kite-fighting contest. And come the weekend, he drove me several miles out of the city to meet his several children and lovely wife, who prepared a fabulous Thai dinner in my honor. That evening we just sat around drinking beer, talking, and watching Thai kick boxing on television -- your normal, restful weekend, just like home! Before leaving Bangkok on the final day, I bought some more bananas, pomegranates, star fruit, melons, etc., for friends in Japan (where fresh fruits are rather costly). Purchases were simplified by the fact that in those days the Thai currency (''tikals'' and ''bahts'') were exchanged for U.S. currency (in ''nickels'' and ''dollars'') at the rate of ''twenty tikals to a nickel, and a nickel to a baht''. Well, you won't find that true any more!

As pleasant as life was on my return to Iwakuni, it was soon ended. The news was shortly filled with stories of the infamous 1968 ''Tet Offensive'' from Nam (though, not yet, the forthcoming siege of the Marine base at Khe Sanh) -- perhaps the watershed event of the entire war insofar as public opinion was swayed back in the States. Those of you who were there know the VC/NVA lost every battle, and North Vietnam's Giap as much as conceded to compatriots that the game was up. Imagine his surprise, and delight, when U.S. news media (including Uncle Wonderful Walter) depicted those events as evidence of their ability to win! Yeah, he hopped all over that, and several documents exist to prove that it was due to news reporting in this country, and resulting public opinion, that persuaded Giap to focus on public relations here as a cornerstone in a renewed effort to win the war. (For the uninformed or incredulous, please do take the time to visit several of the links provided at the top of my site.)

At the same time my extension orders finally arrived, so I departed Iwakuni for Danang and some mysteriously named destination ''Special Landing Force Bravo.'' You may imagine my glee to find it was not some posting at Chu Lai or Danang. Instead, I boarded a helicopter for a ride out to the USS Valley Forge (LPH-8), aboard which a contingent of Marines were assigned as SLF Bravo. I was through with F-4s and fixed wing ordnance. Here I was to become the group's NCOIC for helicopter ordnance -- guns and rockets and such, oh my! (Always loved The Wizard of Oz, so forgive me.) The deal was that Marine battalions and helicopter squadrons rotated aboard the ship every few months and flew their mission inland from aboard ship. I, in turn, got to fly with the helo squadrons as a gunner since there was really little to do to maintain the equipment aboard ship.

Life aboard a U.S. Naval vessel was rather different than previous assignments, and somewhat different for the Marines than for Naval personnel. We had our own living areas aboard ship (including my rack -- one of four vertically aligned), ready rooms for the aircrew, operations room up in the ''island'' (where everything was illuminated in red light at night -- both to preserve aircrew night vision and to conform with the ship's blackout condition), and ate by ourselves (long before the ''swabbies'' were awake) in preparation for daylight operations.

Two other favorite areas of the ship were the ''fantail'' (the open rear area of the ship beyond the hangar deck) and the area comprising the PX, barber shop, et al. Getting to the latter involved the usual chore of clambering around the ship up and down ladderways and over bulkheads (carefully avoiding, most of the time, bruised shins on the steel partitions), and, in general, trying not to get lost in the maze of alleyways and decks.

When not flying, I had my own little daytime ''hooch'' (a Conex box, actually, as seen in the next photo below) which was located on the hangar deck and which served as the ordnance shop for whichever helicopter squadron was aboard at the time. Here I could smoke, drink fine Navy coffee (and it is the best in the world), write letters, and read books. And best of all, it was adjacent to a wide open area on the side of the ship, so that I had only to step outside my box to enjoy fine views of the South China Sea and other ships afloat in the area.

There were busy times aboard ship, too. I was still with SLF Bravo when Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 164 (HMM-164) arrived aboard with its contingent of CH-46 ''Sea Knight'' helicopters. They, like other such Marine helicopter squadrons in Nam, had always been equipped with two M-60 machine guns for missions -- mounted port (left) and starboard (right) in the fuselage for the gunner and crew chief, respectively. To get some truly heavy duty, respectable firepower, however, this squadron was to receive dual .50 caliber machineguns -- a really big shooter. So we received a contingent of guns from a Stateside depot, still packed in greasy cosmoline from Korean War times. We uncrated the guns and spare barrels and set to work cleaning them in gasoline (in halves of 50-gallon oil drums provided by the Navy).

When it was time to test-fire the guns, we rigged up dual mounts on the railing of the ship's fantail and blasted the heck out of the ocean (and the occasional boxes and other debris thrown overboard by the ship's cooks -- they wanted to see if we could hit anything.) At one point during the tests, a sailor asked if he could try shooting. I agreed and installed a new spare barrel for him, showed him how to grip the trigger (a butterfly-type arrangement at the end of the gun), and told him to have at it. I was standing behind him when I suddenly noticed rounds apparently arcing out of the barrel to the right. I told him to stop firing, but guess he didn't hear me (that and another gun producing a heck of a lot of noise), or else he was frozen in place, and kept his hands on the trigger. I reached around him and twisted the belt so no more ammunition would feed, and only then could see that the barrel had split for about a third of its length along a hidden defect. Neat. And we're all lucky we were just using ball ammo for the tests, else it might have been worse. (Our usual .50 cal ammo loads for missions was 1-2-2: one round of tracer, two rounds of HEI -- high explosive incendiary, and two rounds of ball ammo. The HEI rounds were sufficiently robust to penetrate the engine block of a truck before exploding, and were damn good against fortified positions.)

The only drawbacks to the .50s (by comparison with the M-60s) was the weapon's size and weight and the amount of ammo reasonably carried for it. The .50 is a much larger weapon (the barrel alone being about the entire length of an M-60), and very heavy, as is the corresponding ammunition. (For civilian readers, imagine the difference between a crayon and something a bit larger than a heavy duty magic marker.) All this stuff had to be trundled up to the flight deck and installed on the helicopters by the gunner before missions.

The armory's site also gave me good advantage one day to witness the downfall of a really obnoxious boatswain's mate. This squid had several ''paintchippers'' (sailors whose jobs also entailed continually chipping off old and applying new paint everywhere aboard ship) who worked for him, and he drove them nuts. One afternoon two of our helicopters were returning to the ship low over the water. They'd picked up bags of mail in Danang for the Marines and ship's Navy, then picked up a team of Marines at an LZ and headed back, but had received some damage. Thinking they could make it safely anyway, they headed out over the water. But upon reaching the ship, the pilot of one helo realized he didn't have enough hydraulics left to muscle his way up to flight deck level. After several attempts, he set it down in the water with enough forward pitch to keep it moving. (The ship had also slowed to a few knots.) The grunts all jumped into the water to reduce weight and he tried again. No go. Then the mailbags went (accompanied by great groans from an audience of sailors). No go. Finally the crew chief and gunner dismounted the .50s and, after throwing the guns and ammo over, jumped out themselves. Still no go. The pilot finally shut it down and he and the co-pilot jumped into the sea (the pilot closely avoiding decapitation as the still spinning rotors hit the ocean when the helo turned on its side). Looking back in the trail of the ship's wake one could now see bobbing, in successive order, grunts, mailbags, aircrew, and pilots. While all this was happening, the boatswain's mate, meanwhile, saw his opportunity to be the hero of the day. Yelling to his paintchippers he climbed into one of the large ship's rescue boats. Continuing to scream instructions, while standing up, he ordered them to begin lowering the boat from the davits. The crew manning the ropes on one davit got a little ahead of the other and suddenly the boat is suspended by an extra 15 feet of rope on one end. Oops! The boat rolls to one side and the mate is thrown into the water. He comes up after a minute and starts treading madly. Now he's looking directly at me, gesturing, and shouting something. I look over my shoulder and espy a life preserver affixed to the bulkhead. Ah, that must be what he's screaming about. I look back and he's still swimming pretty good. I think about all the hard times he's given those poor squids. I think about it some more. I cup one hand to an ear, lean over, and yell ''Sorry, Mac, I can't hear you!'' (Everyone was safely picked up shortly thereafter, as I could clearly see was imminent, by motor launches from the escort destroyers.)

Another shipboard incident wasn't so benign. We were flying back to the ship from a mission one afternoon when an immense pillar of smoke was seen on the horizon. Switching frequencies, the pilot learned that there'd been an accident on the flight deck and several people were severely injured, many in the water. An Army helicopter had apparently visited the ship carrying a general and his staff to coordinate plans with the Marines. During preparations for subsequent take-off, the Army pilot, unfamiliar with the Navy LDO's hand signals, had mistaken the latter's command to deck personnel to remove the chocks and tie-down blocks as a signal that he was clear to depart. The front wheel was still firmly attached to the deck when he applied rotor torque and his bird lifted up on one end, pivoted around the front wheel, and crashed back into the deck. The crew, general, and staff were all immediately killed in the explosion. Several more persons on the flight deck were also either killed or wounded in the initial explosion, resulting fire, or when the ammunition began to cook off. Several men, some severely burned, jumped overboard. (There are several places where the safety nets are absent.) The ship couldn't launch helos because of the mayhem on the flight deck and we were the only thing aloft, so we went in to start picking up survivors from the water. Got some guys back aboard (using our winch and cable through the ''hell hole'') when suddenly the doggone cable frayed and clogged the winch. The poor guy who was then in the collar at the end of the line was really severely burned, but managed to hang on as our bird lifted him out of the water and set him on the flight deck where corpsmen were waiting. Bad afternoon.

One unanticipated benefit of my transfer to HMM-164 was that it was first going to split into two segments, while the Valley Forge went to the Philippines for resupply, before regrouping at Marble Mountain. One segment would be going to Phu Bai (a few miles south of Hue) and the other to Dong Ha (almost on top of the DMZ). My own first orders in this new outfit were to accompany the ship to the Navy's facilities at Subic Bay (the Philippines) and scavenge material, then rejoin at Marble Mountain. Hot deal! (Don't know why the old man was cutting me so much slack, but only assumed he must have liked something about me.) Anyway, we made a high speed run to P.I. (with my previously envied bunk position near the stern now pulsating like some crazy motel room's motorized bed), and I arrived at Subic Bay in time to wander off to see some old friends with VMFA-542 at Cubi Point NAS (across the bay -- I'd seen the ''Flying Tiger'' F-4s in the air as the ship approached Subic).

The Philippine Islands are one of the more spectacularly beautiful places on earth, as you might glean from even one photo below, left. (My mother's Conant side of the family, from which I get my middle name, has had longstanding connections with P.I. as can be gathered from my grandfather's journals if you follow the link at the top of this site, and at one time currency in the P.I. was counted as so many ''pesos Conant'' after one member who'd been the first Treasurer when the U.S. took over the islands at the close of the Spanish-American War. Those connections have been maintained thanks to my brother's marriage and my two beautiful nieces -- and when are you girls going to fix me some pancit?!)

My own interest in currency in the P.I. was enhanced when I learned that I could get 1000 Japanese yen for one U.S. dollar from the money changers who ran booths just outside the gate at the naval base (this at a time when the official exchange rate was 360 yen to the dollar -- and these days, of course, we're lucky when it hits 100 yen to the dollar). Boy, did I buy some yen. With a few friends still in Iwakuni, a little small-time currency black marketing netted enough for a few really good times.

The main gate at Subic also led across the Olongapo River (swimming in which is to be avoided at all costs even with diptheria shots) to the city of the same name. Even the backside of San Juan and Mexican border towns couldn't begin to compare with this place -- garish, crawling with U.S. sailors and Marines, streets filled with crowds and colorful ''jitneys'' (garishly decorated mini-buses), and over a 100 ''joints'' to choose from. My favorite joint, though I can't recall the name, is the one in which I had my photograph taken on stage while the ''performer'' snagged a burning cigarette from lips. Was I sober at the time? Probably not, though the photo (in my scrapbooks) doesn't tell. There's a scene in the movie Night of the Intruder (about A-6 pilots during Nam) in which the stars carouse in one of these Olongapo hot spots. Absolutely believeable. And the craziest thing about all these establishments was that every one seemed to have its own martial law force, replete with private uniforms, submachine guns, etc. Like something out of a badly done spaghetti western (The Better, The Worse, and the Navy?!)

It was great to see everyone again even after a few short weeks' separation. (They'd even lost their ''sea legs'' by then!) We settled into normal operations at Marble Mountain and into new living quarters, remindful of the amenities at Chu Lai but with a superior mess hall (and free ice cream day or night!).

My armory was now set up in one back quarter of a large hangar, so there was considerably more room in which to move around at times I was there. More frequently, however, I cajoled slots as a gunner every chance I got, and so managed to spend most days flying.

I greatly enjoyed the flying and, to be candid, perhaps much more so because of, rather than in spite of, the other forms of excitement to which it inexorably led. (Heck, there's even an adrenalin rush in shooting the guns at empty ocean when the bird flies low and fast over the wavetops.) Tight, fast turns just above the treetops were always the most fun even though it was then hard to pick up on anything quickly with the eyes. Most flying between LZs, however, was done at higher altitudes to avoid unneccessarily drawing fire.

One of my greatest regrets is that I did not think to take along a camera on 99.9 per cent of these excursions, for the Vietnamese countryside, where not heavily war-damaged, was truly beautiful, particularly in the mountainous regions of I Corps where we flew (for civilian folks, that part abutting North Vietnam). As a result, I have very few photographs in my scrapbooks of that spectacular scenery (and, sadly, none at all of myself decked out in helmet and flight gear at the guns). On the other hand, I can console myself with the fact that I probably couldn't reliably attach legends to any such photographs since most of the time I didn't know where in the hell I was, and was happy just to be along for the ride. (One had to assume the pilot and co-pilot knew how to read a map -- us guys in back just figured it out by looking out the window. ''Hey, look, we're headin' toward Happy Valley again.'' ''Oh, yeah? Great.'' Sarcasm can be a wonderful stress-reliever.)

Some places were more interesting to ''visit'' than others. One of the hairier was a Marine artillery battery perched on the very narrow ridgeline of a rather tall mountain -- so narrow, in fact, that the only way to resupply it was to drop the aft ramp onto the ground and roll stuff in and out while the rest of the helo hovered in space several hundred feet above the valley floor. A good time was had by all.

For some protection we wore ''chickenplate'' flying into hot areas -- sort of a larger, fancier version of a flak jacket. The plate was in two halves which covered the chest and back, held together by Velcro straps, and heavy as the dickens. Just how heavy can be inferred from a little story. We'd put down at An Hoa (or Hoi An -- always confused the names) to grab some food in their mess hall. I went back to the helo and was standing beside it, enjoying a smoke, when an ARVN trooper walked up and pointed to my chickenplate which was resting against one wheel pylon. He couldn't speak English, but was clearly pointing to it and himself, grinning, and asking if he could try it on. I said ''Sure'' and motioned with my hand that he was free to go ahead and give it a whirl. He reached over and grabbed the straps by one hand and tugged -- expecting flak jacket weight, I suppose. Then he tried it with both hands. Finally he stood before it, bent his knees, and gave a mighty jerk. It did come off the ground then, but his struggles suggested there was no way he was going to get that thing over his shoulders. So I helped. When we finally got him decked out, the bottom of the plate was just about touching the ground -- but that was probably because his knees were so buckled that he couldn't stand straight. We both grinned at each other. What a hoot! He was a determined little guy, though.