Loon - Jack McLean [86]
The future seemed inconsequential by comparison.
Now I was alone.
Completely alone.
There was a moment on LZ Loon, during a brief lull on the third day when we all knew the end was before us, that I felt fear for the first time—raw fear for my life. I remember wishing desperately at the time that I could disappear—evaporate. Who would know the difference? I was one marine in a country of hundreds of thousands. My presence was inconsequential to the overall fight against encroaching Communism.
Real abject fear.
Now alone on the curb, I began to shake and cried for the first time.
And cried.
Another hour passed while I waited for Ruthie to make the drive out from San Francisco. I stood occasionally to stretch my legs while gazing down the long base approach road for the sight of a car—any car. The road was empty. The sun grew hotter, but the generated heat was unusually dry and felt most comforting. Ever so slowly the memories again began to dull. Increasingly there was little room for them within the sensual assault I was experiencing.
Would I remember?
I took solace in the fact that I had written so many letters home. They would be my record. My memory.
I would not read them again for more than thirty years.
Neither would I cry again, for thirty years.
An oddity of the Vietnam War was that most combat participants did not go over or return as a unit. That had been the case with Charlie Company and me. I showed up on a Tuesday, one of three to report that day, and left on a Friday, the only one to leave. I flew over with a planeload of boys from all branches of the service who were assigned to dozens of different units upon arrival. Months later, I returned home with another group with whom I had no common bond, other than the war from whence we came. Few, if any, marines arrived and departed together.
Although there was only one way for a United States Marine to enter Vietnam, there were three ways to leave. He could come home safely by plane, as I had just done. He could come home in a body bag as so many of my Charlie Company comrades had already done and would continue to do long after I arrived home. The third way home was a medical evacuation after a stay in Delta Med in Dong Ha, one of two hospital ships off the coast of Da Nang, or after a stay in the United States Naval Hospital in Japan. Wayne Wood, Doc Mac Mecham, and dozens of the LZ Loon wounded returned in this manner. We rarely ever saw a seriously medevaced marine again. We’d hear rumors about their location or the extent of their wounds, but most never returned to the field.
While waiting in front of the Travis terminal, I remembered Mike Kilderry. We had affectionately dubbed him Snowball because of his white-blond hair and bright-eyed demeanor. When the first rocket hit LZ Loon, Snowball and I were sitting on the side of our fighting hole smoking a cigarette. We ducked when the round hit, but a tiny piece of shrapnel caught the lower right part of his back, just below his flak jacket. He had a corpsman look at it, and then returned to grab his gear. He was being medevaced for what appeared to be a nothing injury. Minutes later when he arrived at Delta Med in Dong Ha, he was unconscious. He was immediately transferred to another helicopter and flown to the hospital ship Repose off Da Nang.
On July 6, 1968, Mike Kilderry, one of the sweetest souls to ever walk the earth, died.
Those of us who returned standing up came home one by one and evaporated into the country. Each was left alone to fight his own private war, and face a country that was tired of the war and openly antagonistic to those veterans who’d fought in it. I did not have to be called a baby killer more than once to know that to