My life as a Vietnam veteran began with a series of coincidences, some pleasant, some not.  The least pleasant ones involved Major Harry Soyster and Specialist 5th Class Larry Budde.

While with Headquarters & Headquarters Battery 2nd Battalion 35th Artillery, I spent considerable time in the battalion's TOC (Tactical Operations Center) and got to know the officers and men at Husky Compound.  Major Soyster's office was right off the TOC and, as the battalion's Operations Officer, he often added information to maps in the TOC that we would use to determine where H&I fires ought to be targeted.  One of the officers in the TOC was Tom Urbanic, an OCS classmate from Cleveland, Ohio; one of the enlisted men working there was an Iowan named Larry Budde, who I regarded highly. 

I was due to rotate out of Vietnam at the end of May '69, but had been called home at the end of April on compassionate leave.  My then-fiance's mother was dying of cancer and wanted to see me before she died.  So, home I went, and glad to do so,  with orders to report to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, after some 30 days of leave, to serve out the rest of my time in the military (I would teach artillery tactics to second-year Cadets at Camp Buckner).  My prospective mother-in-law died two weeks after my return to Sacramento; just before she did, I ended my engagement (I have never regretted my decision to do so, but have always felt shame in its timing and the pain it compounded).

Two weeks before my leave ended, Tom Urbanic, his tour of duty done, stopped off in California to get a feel for the place, then came to Sacramento to keep me company as far as Cleveland on my drive to West Point.

As we were driving through Iowa, we caught an announcement on local radio that Spec Five Larry Budde of such-and-such town, Iowa, had been recently killed in action.  I brought my car to a screeching halt.  How many Spec Five Larry Buddes from Iowa could there be, I wondered.  Tom seemed to be thinking the same thing.  Concluding this Larry Budde was the Larry Budde we knew and liked, we were pretty much shaken up.  We spent a good part of the rest of the drive to Cleveland trying to figure out how Larry could have been killed in the relative safety of Xuan Loc.  Perhaps a mortar attack...  Tom and I each had experienced mortar attacks on Husky Compound.

In mid- to late-June in the Officers Club at West Point, I was lunching with my roommates (coincidentally, two other OCS classmates, Ken Roberts and Tom Kirschenheiter, and my Sacramento Senior High School classmate, Kerry May) when out of the corner of my eye I saw a familiar figure move into the room, on crutches.  Harry Soyster! Turns out he had suffered leg wounds during an NVA breach of Husky Compound (and its Tactical Operations Center) on the night of 18 May 1969.  It was then that Larry Budde and a number of others, including the Battalion's Surgeon, Captain Singer, were killed and many others wounded.

Some particularly notable coincidences...  I would never have suspected Larry's death had I not been driving near his hometown in Iowa and been tuned into local radio at the time his death was judged newsworthy.  I would never have had confirmation of his death had I not been assigned to West Point and run into Harry Soyster whose family home happened to be nearby.  But what makes the whole thing really eerie is that had I not been granted compassionate leave, I would have been at Xuan Loc getting ready to rotate back to The World precisely when Husky Compound and the TOC were overrun...

I consider myself lucky to have survived Vietnam.  I know I was in harm's way on many occasions, and probably many more times than I was aware, and I certainly lucked out in departing Xuan Loc early.

8% of my OCS classmates in Class 36-67A did not make it home.  They were Dave Bolton, Benny Clayton, John Dugan (a subject of Where They Lay, published in 2003), Bill Elbracht, Harry Harrison, Bernard Hodges, Bill Kuhnke and Ed Zager.  I will not forget them.

NOTE:  Lacking a class photo of OCS classmates in Class 30-67B (with whom I started out before getting "set back" to Class 36-67A to correct my deficiencies in gunnery), I cannot determine their casualty rate. 

I know Frank Tamayo, a high-school classmate, also did not make it home.

My military service entitles me to the following distinctions (shown below, from left to right):  the Bronze Star (awarded to me on the parade ground at West Point for meritorious service), the Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal (with three bronze campaign stars, for Counteroffensive Phases V and VI and Tet 69 Counteroffensive), the Republic of Vietnam's Cross of Gallantry with Bronze Star (awarded to me in absentia while I was in hospital) and the Republic of Vietnam's Campaign Medal.

My decorations

Soon after returning to civilian life, I learned quickly to keep quiet about my military service.  I enjoyed neither the abuse some people heaped on me from their supposed moral high-ground, nor the discomfort I caused others who had changed their minds about the War.  So my decorations stayed out of sight, tarnishing there. 

The "forgiveness" Vietnam veterans have been "granted" lately does not remove this tarnish much.  Perhaps the shine will come back when Americans roundly recognize that permitting troops to be sacrificed abroad in their name (and in their name the Government is constituted to work...), then washing their hands of this permission when things get dirty, is no less treasonous than Jane Fonda's cleansing of her soul during August 1972 in the seat of an anti-aircraft gun outside Hanoi.

Vietnam, both the War and the country, continues to interest me, as does its persistence in the American psyche.  I have found much to think about in: