Yom Kippur

Today is Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement.  The Jews observe this day by fasting and praying for repentance at Synagogue.   Appearing on Gregorian wall calendars in red numerals, it otherwise passes by most non-Semites, who are unaware of its mark on the Jewish calendar as the 10^th day of Tishri.

It passes in significance to most Christians, who have no parallel occasion on which to reflect.  There is Lent and Advent for the Catholics, but these grey days are preparatory to the observance of Christ’s coming to and going from the Earth.  There is no religious or secular day quite like Yom Kippur. 

There should be.  My writings here are a meager attempt to seek forgiveness for the many travesties I personally committed in Viet Nam.  Sure, I performed my duties to the best of my ability, but there were many things I will reveal on these pages which may shock some of you; reach understanding in some of you and bewilder most of you.

We have a saying in the Fellowship: you are as sick as your secrets.  I have been sick for a very long time.  Revealing by attesting, many of you will see me in a new light; another Corky that none of you—friends in recovery, friends in my professional careers, family—have ever seen before.

If I am to heal, I must do this.  If one breaks a limb, the pain is immediate, the suffering prolonged.  If one breaks the spiritual link with God by their transgressions, the pain and the suffering continue unabated; holding the transgressor in a vice grip which only he, and he alone, can break.

In the days to come, I’m going to talk about dope; I’m going to talk about whoring and I’m going to talk about the diminution of humans with whom I interacted. Trauma, for the edification of the uninitiated, is not limited to the aftermath of combat.  Like the Devil of cleric lore, it can insinuate itself into the psyche with nary a twitch on the conscious seismograph. What I did in those unending days, in that dreadful war, traumatized me.

The realization of this, after all the time elapsed from the deed of it, is finally out there for me to see; like pulling off a sock and discovering a festering wound.

Now it is time for you to see.  As Truman so succinctly put it in his Midwest twang, after ordering the A bomb strike on Nagasaki, “I thought about it, slept on it and made my decision.  Let history judge me.”  Amen, Harry.

It begins with my flight to Da Nang.  On June 6^th, 1969, I boarded the specially fitted Braniff jet that was part of the aerial flotilla that gave Viet Nam its iconic title of Commuter War.

Remember those newsreels of MacArthur’s return to the Philippines?  After the initial landing of the 3rd Marines at Da Nang in ‘65 by Higgins Boat, the conventional resources of military transport could not meet the demands of the rapidly escalating War. 

Comes the commercial airlines under lucrative government contract to fly the Boys there and back again.  It was no stroke of luck that Braniff got the bid.  The owner Troy Post was best buddies with Lyndon Johnson.

Three seats on both sides of the aisle, the plane had no empty spaces.  Stewardesses (Yes indeed!) served coffee and soft drinks going, beer returning.  Meals were congenially served in-flight by smiling blonds and brunettes who had made this flight many times before and knew better than to ask if everything was alright.  Nothing from this point onward was going to be all right.

Some of my fellow travelers had come on active service with me at NAS Dallas.  As befits the military penchant for precise scheduling, some of those guys were on my return flight, exactly one year later.  I will speak of them at another time; their stories chilled me, even as we climbed out of Viet Nam airspace.

I once had a conversation with a Braniff pilot who made that run.  Back then, the aircraft were painted in bright cheery color designs by Alexander Calder and other artists (Some of us might remember the Calder jets made works of art).  The pilot recalled that the prettily adorned aircraft exteriors made them that much more of a target for Charlie’s rockets and mortar fire.  During the ’68 Tet Offensive, he recalled, there were several near hits on the Da Nang tarmac. One taxiing jet was hit, and blew up.  It was a return flight, too.  Landing and takeoff protocols became truncated, practically to the touch and go techniques adopted at the siege of Khe Sahn.

But I digress. The inbound flight took us to Okinawa for a stopover before the final leg.  On the ground while the plane refueled, I found a quiet place and smoked the last two joints in my possession.  No passing the old Bogard around, these I shared with no one.  I was scared to death.  The uncertainty of what was to come was paralyzing.  I wasn’t getting stoned for the pleasure of it; I was desperately attempting to anesthetize myself before the plunge into Hades.

Thus, the big Boeing 727 touched down on the runway at Da Nang Air Base and I greeted the dawn of my first day in-country in the unsteady swirl of a marijuana high.

We disembarked to be loaded on a school bus.  As we made our way to Camp Tien Sha, I looked out through the heavy metal mesh that covered all the windows.  I wondered what all that covering was for, but I tried not to give myself an answer to that.  I stared out that bus window to see another country.  It was not the Viet Nam of the six o’clock news back home.  At dawn, the thrum of the Hueys had not yet commenced for the day.  The thundering roar of F-4’s kicking in their afterburners awaited the day’s sorties.  There were no dead bodies lined up in the ditch for a photo-op body count.

No, this was a third world country with people and geese and chickens, trundling along the side of the road as life awakened to another day.  I could have been in Mexico or Sumatra, if I had only the passing scenery as a clue. 

The fear of the unknown was momentarily replaced by the shock of being here.  The shock was exacerbated by a breath-sucking heat beyond any of my experience.  I began to perspire, as if in a sauna.  The sweating was to continue without letup for the next three weeks, until I ‘acclimatized’ (gasp of irony inserted).  Yeah doggies, I was in Viet Nam.  This wasn’t a dream.  I had arrived.