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Timothy Lavelle
How about a story?
For a moment let's play "Where's Waldo". This time he is wearing OD (olive drab) green clothing but he is carrying a conspicuous loaf of bread instead of the black n red striped knit stocking cap.
50 years ago, on 30 January 1968, the North Vietnamese Army responded to a recent dare put forth by the commander of US troops, Gen. Westmoreland. In a move to quiet the unrest in 'Murica, Westy had proclaimed that we were winning the war and, to paraphrase his words, "Just wished the enemy would come out and fight". The response of the other side is known as the TET Offensive and was the beginning of the end which came years later.
I was in military intelligence. The mother of a good childhood friend later claimed that as the sole reason we lost the war. We secretly listened to the enemy radio communications, broke (some) of their codes and tracked their company, battalion and sometimes regimental movements. Our field station was about the size of 6 football football fields surrounded by high fences and a mine field. Because we all had security clearances we were never allowed to leave. I came even closer than now to going bonkers there.
Back to the action...The enemy's "coms" went totally silent a few days before TET. So we had no real idea what was going on when...don't trust my memory here but I think it was the 27th NVA Regiment that marched into the old imperial capitol of Hue like a fife and drum corps. To say that we got caught with our pants down...take a few minutes for those we lost and go read "TET Offensive" in wikipedia. I was stationed about ten miles outside Hue then and the ensuiing Battle for Hue was a city destroying affair.
After the Marines retook Hue...so easy to write now 50 years later and so very hard for those young men then...all of us desk jockeys wished we could escape our compound and go see. I had a friend named Scott Clark who, even then, could talk anyone into anything. Many months after this Scott convinced our commanding officer that I required an additional R&R or would likely go crazy. He also convinced the man that he (Scott) would need to chaperone me while "Scott and Tim Do Hong Kong". It worked. He was amazing. BUT I digress, as always.
Scott talked a Navy officer out of his jeep for a few hours. I have never known how. We drove out the front gate, past the star-bunker, turned left on Route One and headed to Hue. We were AWOL and I was somewhere between scared as hell and way excited.
In short order we were at the Perfume River that forms one boundary to Hue. We could not drive across the bridge so we parked and walked across. The city of Hue was maybe the size of Chillicothe with only a very few three or four story buildings...and girls and boys they were shot to shit. We could not see the walled Citadel from there so I can't report on that but I can tell you unequivocally that the Perfume River did not smell like perfume! Everyone we saw looked like they had been thru hell.
On the Hue side of the bridge were a couple of the ubiquitous street vendors. Usually young girls, sitting behind a small glass enclosed case on top of a wheel barrow so they could move from spot to spot...in the case would be packs of cigarettes or warm Coke and these small loaves of bread, maybe 8 inches long looking like abbreviated Italian fare. So I bought a loaf for the ride home.
We were walking back across the bridge to get the jeep and return to captivity when I saw a railroad bridge down river that had been blown up. I wanted to get a picture but in the old days it took two hands to operate a camera so I had to stick that loaf of bread somewhere while I used both arms to hold, focus and shoot.
Let's ascend to 500 feet above this scene. We see on the Hue end of the bridge a small crowd of young and old women pointing at a GI (yer's very truly) and laughing. We see this young man on the bridge, all in green...could this be our Waldo?..intently trying to take a picture.
Can you find Waldo in the war zone? He's the one on the bridge trying to get the photo while glancing sideways at the laughing women and wondering what is so effing funny. All the while he is trying to take the photo with a shortish loaf of break sticking out from between his legs.
I was 19. It took long seconds for me to figure out what they were laughing at and a single split second to grab the loaf out from between my legs. Even less time to blush crimsone. Funny. I guess we were all young once.
Sorry it is so long. I'll delete it in a few days. I think we need to find and pass along humor when ever we can.
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