In the days of our youth, 1960’s, Johnny Lambert and I were good friends. He lived in a home on a shady street two blocks away from us. We grew up in the shadow of the Esso refinery at Baton Rouge, which my dad had called the third-largest oil refinery in the world at that time.
Johnny and I were best buddies through junior high, and most of the years through high school. Long about senior year, we began drifting apart. But after graduation we really drifted apart.
Johnny went to Vietnam; I went to LSU.
Johnny was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, not far from Saigon. Here's a pic of one of the R&R moments there:
Many years passed by. The war got hotter than a July firecracker for a few more years, and then we kinda slid outa there somewhere between ’73 and ’75.
By the late 1970’s, I had gravitated up to the Blue Ridge. I had drifted through a few sales jobs. Being a worthless English major, I settled into a carpentry mode as my line of work, since it was in my family history. So I was bangin’ nails, which is pretty much what I did for most of my breadwinner life. Nowadays my wife, Pat, ICU nurse, carries most of that bread-on-the-table burden.
Anyway, back in the ’80’s I was working on a crew as we were building a bunch of condos called Blue Ridge Village, near Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina.
That’s where I met Richard. He was a Semper Fi guy who had survived the Nam.
Richard Storie was different from the other guys in our crew . . . a crusty ole fella. I mean, I say crusty ole because he seemed so much older that the rest of us. He drove an incredibly blue old pickup, the early kind with the stand-out wheel fenders and running boards.
I can’t remember if it was a Ford or a Chevy.
Well that was then. This is now. Actually, when I say now I mean, you know, 21st-century, post 9/11 and all that.
Long about 2014, I started writing a fourth novel, which would cover what happened to America during Vietnam.
I was working at our local Lowe’s Home Center. One day, Richard came in and I cornered him and began firing Vietnam questions at him.
Along with his very helpful memories and explanations, Richard gave me a book to read. The Walking Dead, by Craig Roberts and Charles W. Sasser.
As King of Soul got spun out on my keyboard, I lifted a battle scene from The Walking Dead, rewrote it, and included that real-world, real-war scene in the finished novel, 2017.
In honor of our Veterans who have fought for our nation and the free world, in Vietnam and all across the globe, here’s a glimpse of what our guys had to get through in order to make it back Stateside in 1969. . . a scene borrowed from Craig and Charles' Walking Dead, re-reported in chapter 13 of King of Soul:
“Helicopter, this is Black Box Two-Niner . . .Black Box Two-Niner. Can You read?”
No sound, no human sound, no scratchy reply sound was heard, but only the insane rattle of guns punctuated by the periodic whump! of a grenade exploding.
Craig scrambled forward to get a better view. Just ahead of his log, two VC darted across the trail. Suddenly he understood their position was at the place where he had left the satchel boobied with a claymore. He hit the clacker. In a deafening explosion of dirt, rock, smoke, body parts, pink mist , stuff rained out the sky from here to eternity it seemed.
A painfully short respite yielded to approaching death as the VC soon resumed their assault. Nine U.S. by-God Marines fired away into the slow-fast hammer of Viet Cong death being lowered against them—they fired away, into the shadows, into the valley of the shadow of death.
A whine here, a ricochet there, an explosion, a smoky muffling of death’s staccato dance of death and then:
The sound of a chopper.
Craig grabbed the radio and dashed to the center of the LZ. He heard a human voice coming out of the radio, “. . .was that you, Black Box Two-Niner?”
He saw the helicopter. Craig waved his arms like there was no tomorrow.
“Is it a hot LZ?” the voice asked in crackling, fucking miraculous splendor.
“It’s pretty damn warm.”
“Get ready,” came the reply.
The H-34 dropped out of sight beyond a hill. A few eternal moments later, the big lovable green insect came a-flyin’, swooping down low over the mountain of the shadow of death. MARINES was painted on its tail. The blessed bird flared and hovered above those stumps that had earlier been trees. And then there he was—the United States by-God Marine leaped out while his gunner buddy on the chopper kept up the fire cover. Green tracers whizzed all over the damned place, some of them whacking the skin and the glass of the chopper.
Craig was the last of the walking dead nine soldiers to get aboard. And so they were able—by the grace of God and the fierce determination of them US by-God Marines—able to hover the hell out of there. And we were grateful. But we didn’t know it yet, because we could never really know, never truly understand nor appreciate, all that he and his men had done that day: all the hell and high ordnance they had eluded that day, and just how perilously close that day was to being the big chill for them, so damned close to requiring of them their last full measure of devotion. And the appreciation that would later be shown to them was cast into the shadow of a gray granite wall in Washington DC, but that was to come much later. For now, let’s just say it’s good to be alive. At least that’s what Sgt. Shireman said when they got back to base, but he didn’t say it with much emotion. That would come later too.
As we approach Veterans' Day 2020, thanks to our brave soldiers who lay their lives on the line for our United States and the free world.
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