I just had a very sad journey, 10 hour drive down to Ft. Bragg area and of course 10 hours back to home, with a few final days in between to spend with my teammate, my fellow Green Beret, my friend. Our paths just keep crossing and hitting the same challenges of life, many around the same time. It seemed we always had each other and each other’s back, even when the chips were down, like at Lang Vie when the tanks (not ours) showed up. Sometimes it was hard to tell if we were friends, like at jump school, the morning after a big night out, very hung over, we were jumping with chutes we had just packed ourselves. He was behind me on the aircraft because I was an inch taller than him and third from the door, we had stood up, hooked up, and run through the equipment check, he leaned in real close to my left ear and said: “Sorry, I just realized I packed your chute, good luck”. We both had disaster first marriages, although he went on to wife 2 & 3 while I remained unattached for a long time. His luck changed with wife number 4 and after he met my than girlfriend, Kathleen, he told me to stop being stupid and marry that girl. I did. He helped me bury my son in 1974, a casualty to agent orange, before any of us knew it was a thing. He helped me bury Kathleen in 2013. He has two sons and a daughter, Each with families of their own. Five grand kids with more on the way. We sat with other members of our team, not many left of the original 18, just a handful, we tried to be of good cheer, told tall tails of adventures of our youth, bad memories, like us, softened by the passage of time. Then in an instant, just as in war, he was gone. Later his wife handed me an envelope and told me that he had instructed her not to give them out until it was over. It was a note from him with the two hundred dollars he had borrowed from me while on R&R together in Vung Tau. The note just said: “ I always pay my debts, sorry if it’s a little late, I’ll give Kathleen a kiss for you when I see her, oh and that Bar Girl in Vung Tau that I needed the money for, she gave me crabs”. Like all the members of my team, I don’t remember us a being the bravest or most courageous, we did our jobs and watched out for our teammates, to a man we all move forward when needed. Not because we were willing to die for our follow man, no one wants to die. I never thought of us as a band of brothers. it was more of a group of good friends not wanting to let the other guys down. The things you think of on a long drive home.
