Loon - Jack McLean [52]
19
APRIL 15.
The day that Andover seniors stood glued to their mailboxes to await decisions from the Ivy League schools.
Actual dates were of little consequence in Vietnam, so the date passed without notice, as did April 16. There were shitters to stir, sandbags to fill, and lines to man. I had no sense of time other than the gentle warming of spring. A supply chopper came in around noon on April 17 and off-loaded two large red nylon bags of mail, twelve cases of C rations, and several cases of ammo. I was eating lunch in the gun pit next to my bunker. Dan Burton brought over a handful of letters. Dan had a mad love back in San Diego and was usually among the first in the squad to pick up our mail from the command post. My mind was on R & R, which was two days off. I was hoping that my parents had sent a money order to help defray expenses.
I read the letters one by one—savoring each for minutes before turning to the next. I always got a lot of mail, and this day was no exception. The money orders arrived, as did a long letter from my father. Other letters came from friends and family filled with news and good wishes. The morale boost was incalculable. Near the bottom of the pile was a fat letter from Harvard University. It had been two years since I’d thought of the fat-thin differential, so I tore it open with no expectation about what might be inside, still smiling from the previous letters from home.
I pulled out a wad of folded paper. In the middle was a document with the Harvard University seal on top.
I had been accepted.
I had no idea what to do or say, so I said nothing for several minutes other than the repeated whisper of “Holy shit.”
“Dan. Hey, Dan. You’re not going to believe this shit.” Dan Burton was engrossed in a letter from his girlfriend, but looked up briefly to acknowledge me.
“Waddayagot, brother?”
“Dan,” I began softly, still unsure of the news myself. “Dan, I got into Harvard.”
Dan got it.
His unconditional grin said it all.
He was as happy as he could be for me and was unabashed about showing it. First he gave me a hug, then swung me around, and then he commenced to share the news with all within earshot. To most of my comrades, he might well have been speaking Greek—such was their grasp of the concept of attending Harvard. Finally, Lieutenant Ladd, my former platoon commander, came by, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, “You know, McLean, it’s not every day that a fuck-ass enlisted marine gets into Harvard.”
He was right, of course, but I wasn’t just an enlisted marine. … I was me, which … to me … made it even more unlikely. It took days to wipe the smile off my face. In Andover it was expected. Here, it was unheard of.
R & R was the most anticipated week of every marine’s Vietnam experience. Those returning from their five days often remarked, not entirely in jest, that they would extend their stay in Vietnam for a year just to get another R & R. For teenage boys who had been in the shit for eight months and, for the most part, never slept with a girl, it was an exquisite experience beyond all imagination.
When one boy went on R & R, it was as though his whole squad went. Weeks before departure, every move and moment would be plotted. Most of the senior guys in my squad had chosen Singapore out of the eight or nine possible destinations. To leverage their considerable experience, I chose Singapore as well.
On April 19, I left the Washout on the morning supply chopper to begin a journey that would take me through Dong Ha to Da Nang for my flight to Singapore.
Arriving in Da Nang later that afternoon, I was overwhelmed by the changes that had occurred in the six months since my arrival in country. They were massive. The war was huge, and Da Nang was at the center of the buildup. Where tent cities had once sprawled, there were now wooden barracks. The dusty roads were paved. The PX could rival any stateside department store. I wandered around for hours feeling like a small-town midwestern boy seeing New