It Started With a Man Walking on the Moon

[1CAVCCO15MED]

On July 20th I was at Phouc Vinh clearing the 1st Cavalry Division to go home. There was a television in the hootch where I was and we had just landed on the moon. As Neil Armstrong got ready to make the first step on the moon, the rockets started raining down. I rolled off my bunk, pulled my mattress over me and watched him step onto the moon as the rockets got closer and closer. The next couple of days every where I went the rockets seemed to follow me. I quit sleeping four days before leaving Vietnam. I got on the freedom bird and lifted into the sky. About an hour later the pilot came on the intercom and said we were now flying over North Vietnam. Huh? I looked down and all I saw was endless jungle. We landed in Honolulu and got off the plane. I had saved a dime to call home for a year and dropped it into a pay phone. It was out of order and took my dime. There was a group there in band uniforms. They had name plates that said they were a patriotic band on the way to Washington. They avoided us in our jungle fatigues. We landed in Oakland and were sent to the Army base there. We were given a steak dinner and I got back in line and ate another steak. They owed me that. When I went to the pay office the guy there gave me $400 and said they didn't have enough cash to give me all my pay and the rest would be sent later. He was robbing me of $4000. I got on another plane now in a dress green uniform. I wasn't a Sergeant but they said they were out of Specialist 5 ranks so I came home in violation of army regulations. I landed at Tri-Cities Airport. The airport limousine driver made me wait a couple of hours on another flight so he had a full van. When we got to town he let kicked me out at the town square saying that was a far as he was taking me. It was only about eight blocks from home so I carried my suitcase and started up Buffalo Street. When I got two blocks from home in front of the Shamrock tobacco shop I saw this long gangly person running toward me. At first I didn't recognize him but suddenly realized it was my brother Donnie. In the year I was in Vietnam he had grown almost a foot and that was the most amazing thing of all. Life It returned 40 years ago today.

[03Fox2/1]

That was a good story, personal and honest, and I feel it represents what many of us went through to some degree. When I rotated home, I didn't have a public event, like walking on the moon, to associate with it but I can see how all of this 40 year celebration about putting a man on the moon can have significance for you in a way that few others can understand. At the time that you rotated to the world I still had five months to go and if I recall correctly, I thought little about all of the attention that the moon walk was given. If anything, it made me feel even more insignificant to my country and it made me feel even more detached from what America was all about. I was still in private mourning for a good buddy that had recently stepped on on booby trap and disappeared in a red mist and I was still wondering why my recent wounds had been slight in comparison and I was already, without knowledge at the time, beginning to suffer from what I would know later as survivors guilt. All this is what goes through my mind when I recall that day in July, 1969. So you see, like you, this celebration of the 40th year anniversary of the moon walk has special significance for me too and like you, I feel the need to remember what's important to me, and it's not a man walking on the moon. What was and is important to me is all of the many unnamed and forgotten heros that fought valiantly and honorably for America while America celebrated putting a man on the moon.
Semper Fi