He is in the middle of a green area 50 meters away from a little stage where there is people giving speeches, shouting and singing loud. It’s a shiny and hot day in Washington DC. The White House is just two hundred meters away. I can see it through the green branches. He has light blue half closed eyes, a rounded-mini-ying-yang ear ring in his left ear, a blue cap with an “Impeach Cheney” motto on and some bottoms. He is alone, sitting in his wheelchair. Back aches, you know. He has a big white plastic sign with black letters that says: Veterans for Peace. It also has the drawing of a pigeon on. A peace dove. Some people come and go. Some of them take photographs; some others stop and talk to him. I can see his tiny white hair pony tail, his military hat on his knees, his camouflage jacket from the war, all the medals and buttons pinned on. “I did not vote for his daddy either”. “No, you can’t have my rights, I am still using them”, “Veterans for Peace”.
I can see the light of the sun over his deep wrinkles, his brown-white moustache, over his one-day beard. Over the two military dog tags on his chest; one his own, the other from Ray. His wife gave it to him. She wanted him to have it.
***
It’s February 1965. I am 18 years old. I enlisted with the Air Force when I finished high school. I am in Camp Holloway, advisory compound and airfield. 1st Cavalry Division, first airmobile division in the history of the USA. II Corps Tactical Zone. I am Near Rocket City Pleiku, Gia Lai province, Central Vietnam; two hundred kilometres from South China Sea, fifty kilometres from Cambodia’s border line. Two hundred and fifty miles north of Saigon. It’s the dry season. It’s humid like hell, if that can be said… it’s like taking a hot shower with your clothes on… and sweating… but not as hot as in the south, at least that I’ve been told. I hate it. I think about my north California town everyday.
We are in the central highlands of the country, inhabited mainly by Bahnar and Jarai peoples. The camp is surrounded by forest and little mountains. Here the natives plant mainly tea and coffee. Some of them are VC (Vietcong) I’ve been said.
This morning a gloomy fog covered everything. There was not a single sound. It was almost like a dream.
By night, all of a sudden, the mortars began to fall over us between the drizzling rains, like big green rain drops. Ryan and I took our weapons and occupied our positions in a foxhole we had dug the day before. The soil was very red dark and wet. We could feel it through our pants, those little wet grains. Everybody was running like crazy trying to see where all the bullets and mortars came from. We just saw the flashing lights and the explosions all around. Some of us started to shoot through the fog into the darkness although we could not see anything at all. Some helicopters started to explode. Those mortars were very near. We didn’t know how it was possible: later we realised that they were actually inside the base.
Ryan and I, by the way, were being hit by mortars and small arms fire too. One of them hit us, an 85 millimetre mortar landed just outside of our foxhole. I just I crouched down in the soil, I had my helmet on. Immediately I searched for Ryan, he was lying in the ground. I tried to help him but he was dead, his head blown off. I was fine, just a pain in the neck. I touched it; I had blood in my fingers. Later I realised that the explosion that killed my friend Ryan blew part of his skull into the back of my neck. As I said, I was wearing my helmet but the back of my neck was exposed and a piece of his skull cut me up. Every August since 1966 it gets infected, blisters a little bit, scars over, and then it goes to sleep again. That is my permanent link with my friend Ray.
