I was 17.
Lean, mean and green.
I became an Air/Naval Gunfire Radio Operator.
Started out with boot camp and training in San Diego.
Conducted exercises in Guam, Japan, The Philippines, Thailand and Okinawa.
Ended up in Viet Nam.
A VC was escaping from a POW guard. I saw this happening. The VC was getting away, running down the wash in front of my tent. I grabbed my M-14. The VC was in my sights. I started pulling the trigger when a pistol cracked. The VC jumped like a deer, arching backward, flopping to the ground. I still held the rifle on the dead deer-man. The guard put his pistol away and ran to him. I had not shot him but I would have. One more second.
There is not a day in my life that I do not think about my time with the Marines or my tour in Viet Nam.
During the day on a Hill near Phu Bai, we lived in tents in the wind and played gourmet food games with the C-Rations and John Wayne can openers.
At night we greeted the insects and darkness and enemy probes, firing at anything that even resembled a movement.
Near Danang, once, a friend had received a letter containing a photo of his wife and newborn child. The next day, while on patrol, he was killed by a VC sniper. We carried him back along with two others.
But the VC sniper, that day, also lost his life.
Rats and children were everywhere in Vietnam.
In Danang we could go to a Catholic orphanage and "check out" a kid for the day. We'd feed them burgers and candy down at the beach then return them like books. They were mutilated children left over from other wars. Many were deformed and retarded but they loved us...at least, they loved our candy and the balloons striped like the US flag.
Home on leave once, I went hunting and spotted a deer a very long distance away. My friend challenged me, the Marine sharpshooter, to plunk the deer using his rifle. I aimed and fired. The single shot through the heart caused the deer to jump, arch backward, and fall just like a VC running in a wash. I have not gone hunting since.
There are many other stories.
