I am leaving . . .

I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains

Sông Cửa Lớn (Cửa Lớn River), An Xuyên Province, Republic of Vietnam

Today is November 30, 1970. This is the day I am leaving Vietnam. The people and places of Vietnam flood through my mind as I think back about my life and death experiences of war in Southeast Asia.

In late 1968, I am a brand new shiny penny, a junior officer aboard an old World War II destroyer, USS FLETCHER (DD 445), home ported at the U.S. Naval Station in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

“Fighting Fletcher” deploys to WESTPAC (Western Pacific) to conduct combat operations in Vietnam.

At first, Fletcher operates in the South China Sea providing naval gunfire support for friendly forces ashore in South Vietnam.

Fletcher later moves north to the Gulf of Tonkin (Vịnh Bắc Bộ – “Northern Bay”) to provide force protection for the carrier strike group of USS HANCOCK (CVA-19) off the coast of North Vietnam. I soon find out that instant death and violent destruction are an ordinary part of carrier operations during war.

“Yankee Station” • Wednesday, February 5, 1969

It is 0 Dark 30 on Yankee Station, about 90 miles off the coast of North Vietnam. I am a young naval officer standing the bridge watch on board a U.S. Navy destroyer underway in the Gulf of Tonkin.

My ship is USS FLETCHER (DD-445), homeported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, call sign “Radish.” Fletcher is part of the carrier strike group of USS HANCOCK (CVA-19), call sign “Rampage,” homeported in Alameda, California.

“Hanna” is an Essex class aircraft carrier. She is the fourth ship of the U.S. Navy to be named in honor of John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress.

On July 4, 1776, John Hancock presided over the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He was also the first governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

U.S. Navy Douglas A-4F Skyhawks of Attack Squadron 55 (VA-55) “War Horses” and Attack Squadron 164 (VA-164) “Ghost Riders,” are the ship’s firepower, enough firepower to rival the air forces of many nations.

These two squadrons are assigned to Attack Carrier Wing 21 (CVW-21), aboard “Hanna.”

Fletcher’s job, and that of our sister destroyers in the carrier strike group, here in the Gulf of Tonkin, is to protect “Hanna” from harm.

Fletcher is in plane guard station, about 2,500 yards astern of “Hanna.”

Our purpose is to serve as a visual reference for the carrier’s Landing Signal Officer (LSO), and to function as plane guard to rescue any ship’s personnel who might fall overboard during flight ops.

Aircraft carrier flight operations are inherently dangerous. We are ever watchful and ready to recover any aircrew whose aircraft may crash or have to ditch in the ocean during carrier flight operations.

The plane guard role is also dangerous. Aircraft carriers often change course and speed to maintain best wind conditions for aircraft take off and landing.

Any lack of awareness or inattention by either ship, especially at night, in extreme weather, or with battle damage, can put the plane guard ship under the bows of a rapidly maneuvering carrier traveling at full speed.

When Fletcher is not in plane guard station, we are miles ahead, or on either side of “Hanna,” fanned out with other destroyers of the carrier strike group.

We are “tin can” destroyer sailors who provide early warning screening, defense in depth, and search and rescue support to protect “Hanna” and her crew from harm.

It is 0203, early morning. Today, Fletcher is in plane guard station, 2,500 yards behind “Hanna.” It is pitch black, except for pinpoints of ship navigation lights.

I am standing the bridge watch on Fletcher when a Vought F-8H Crusader aircraft lands heavily on “Hanna’s” carrier deck and explodes in a huge orange fireball right in front of me.

At first light, we find pieces of fuel cells from the wing tanks, and a piece of a flight helmet, in the thinly scattered debris floating on the surface of the Gulf of Tonkin.

Lieutenant (junior grade) Paul Eugene Swigart, Jr., USNR, a pilot in Fighter Squadron 24 (VF-24) “Fighting Renegades,” Carrier Air Wing 21 (CVW-21), aboard USS HANCOCK (CVA-19), is killed. His body is not recovered. He is 25 years old.

LTJG Swigart is from Seal Beach, California. His MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) is Unrestricted Line Officer, Pilot (1315).

Earlier today, he flew from a base in South Vietnam to land on the flight deck of USS HANCOCK (CVA-19) on Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin about 80 miles east of North Vietnam.

Sunday, February 9, 1969

It is now four days later, 0604 in the morning. We are 125 miles east of North Vietnam. Fletcher is in screen station, five miles off the starboard beam of USS HANCOCK (CVA-19).

A Douglas A-4F Skyhawk from Hancock catches fire during the catapult shot, and crashes into the Gulf of Tonkin. As “Hanna” passes by, the pilot is seen inside his plane, sinking on the starboard side.

Fletcher assists in search and rescue operations in the wreckage area. We find two signal wands, part of the cockpit seat, and some insulation.

Lieutenant Commander Roger Allen Meyers, USN, a pilot in Attack Squadron 164 (VA-164) “Ghost Riders,” Carrier Air Wing 21 (CVW-21), aboard USS HANCOCK (CVA-19) is killed. His body is not recovered. He is 35 years old.

Lieutenant Commander Meyers is from Chicago, Illinois. His MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) is Unrestricted Line Officer, Pilot (1310).

At Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, he is named on a memorial headstone in Memorial Section 3. His name is inscribed in the Courts of the Missing, Court B, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, Hawaii.

His name, ROGER A MEYERS, is inscribed on the black granite Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Panel 33W, Line 94). His name is one of 58,307 names on “The Wall” in Washington, D.C.

No one wants to be a Gold Star Family.

Gold Star Families remember their family members who have died in military service.

As a nation, we honor the ultimate sacrifice of Gold Star Families.

As human beings, we acknowledge the loss, the grief, the need for continual healing of Gold Star Families.

Men and women who die in military service give their last full measure of devotion to the people of the United States. They give the ultimate sacrifice of their lives for the rest of us.

The least we can do is remember them.

This day, I remember U.S. Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) Paul Eugene Swigart, Jr., USNR.

This day, I remember Lieutenant Commander Roger Allen Meyers, USN.

I was there. I remember.

Eventually, Fletcher returns home to “the world” (the United States of America) where Fletcher is decommissioned in San Diego. I volunteer for the U.S. Naval Advisory Group Vietnam.

Duyên Đoàn hai mươi lăm • Coastal Group 25

After months of training in San Diego, in November 1969, I begin my second year of war in Vietnam at Duyen Doan hai moui lam (Coastal Group 25) of the Vietnamese Navy, based at Hon Khoi, a small hamlet north of the city of Nha Trang in Khánh Hòa Province, on the central coast of Vietnam. I serve at CG 25 from November 30, 1969 to August 14, 1970.

Every night is filled with the sounds of artillery and machine gun fire. Parachute flares light up the night. A group of Vietnamese regional force soldiers struggles down the peninsula road, carrying their wounded on stretchers lifted up on their shoulders.

I get on the radio and call “Blue Star Ops” for the “dustoff” (helicopter medical evacuation). Within a few minutes, a Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter, nicknamed “Huey, from the U.S. Army 48th Assault Helicopter Company at Ninh Hoa regional command center arrives overhead.

The chopper pilot calls me to verify that his helicopter will not receive ground fire from the area around the “dustoff” site (the helicopter LZ – landing zone – within our Coastal Group 25 base perimeter).

In a cloud of dust, the “Huey” settles down on the helo pad.

Soon, the chopper is loaded with wounded Vietnamese soldiers, and rises up through a whirlwind of dust, heading east to the U.S. Army field hospital at Ninh Hòa.

A litter of bandages, combat boots, and military clothing lies scattered on the helo pad as the dust drifts downwind, lost in the night.

Our Coastal Group 25 Yabuta junks are small gray wooden boats with eyes painted on the bows so they can find their way in dangerous water.

The roof of the deck shelter of each Yabuta is painted with a large yellow square with a big red X to identify it to friendly aircraft.

Our Yabuta junks are powered by Gray Marine 6-71 diesel engines, exactly the same Gray Marine diesel engines that powered American LCVP amphibious landing craft during the Second World War.

These tough little engines carried U.S. soldiers to the beaches of Anzio and Normandy in Europe, and U.S. marines to their landing beaches on Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the Pacific.

The main armament of our little wooden boats is one single .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a shielded stanchion bolted to the forward deck.

The Vietnamese Navy crew is lightly armed with ordinary small arms, M16 rifles, M79 grenade launchers, and M1911 Colt pistols.

At Coastal Group 25, my Yabuta junk is fired upon by artillery. One day, a bullet zips by, close to my face, from left to right, exactly in front of my eyes. My jeep is hit by rifle fire.

One night I sit with a Viet Cong prisoner who is awaiting transport to district headquarters in Ninh Hoa the next day. We sit together, side by side, eating ice cream and popcorn, and drinking Coke, while watching a John Wayne movie in our hooch (living quarters).

All of this is just part of an ordinary day.

Coastal Group 25’s senior American advisor, a U.S. Navy lieutenant, has a Vietnamese girlfriend in the hamlet outside the base gate.

He and a different Vietnamese family in the hamlet outside the base gate decide that I too should have a Vietnamese girlfriend. Immediately, I say absolutely not. I know it is time to leave.

One day, Coastal Group 25’s senior advisor accidentally shoots a light switch off the wall of our hooch with his .45 while I am standing next to it.

Another day, a Vietnamese Navy Lieutenant nearly shoots his private parts off while jumping onto his motorcycle.

None of this should be part of an ordinary day.

I am living with a dangerous bunch of desperadoes at Coastal Group 25, a little bit of MASH here, a little bit of McHale’s Navy there, with the unrelenting war brutally killing and wounding people all around.

It’s time for a change. I want to be around more competent people.

In late July 1970, with eight months down and four months to go before my service in Vietnam will end in November, I arrange for a chopper flight down to Saigon, and get myself transferred out of Coastal Group 25 into a “heavy unit anywhere in the Delta.”

At the headquarters of U.S. Naval Forces Vietnam in Saigon, in a large, safe, comfortable air conditioned office with 150 or more cubicles, I sign the transfer papers.

As I walk across the large room, eyes follow me. Heads shake slowly in disbelief. Smiling quietly, I gently close the door behind me.

Well, all right then, I will be serving as an advisor in the Vietnamese Navy river forces.

My new unit is Giang Doan Ngan Chan bon moui mot (River Interdiction Division 41). RID 41 is “somewhere in the Delta” on its way to ATSB (Advanced Tactical Support Base) Vĩnh Gia, a “Fort Apache” forward operating base on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. While we are there, I am the temporary officer-in-charge.

We work our way through many adventures at Vinh Gia, before we are sent to the Song Cua Long (Cua Long River) at the very southern tip of Vietnam.

My guys perform exceptionally well, really, in spite of the foggy confusion and usual screw ups of war in Southeast Asia.

Somehow, we live through it all – we survive – life’s adventure continues. Though I am least of my Lord’s creation, He is generous with me, and also with others around me. Through no merit of our own, we are blessed by the merciful grace of God, Himself. Really.

That was then, more than 50 years ago. These many years later, its just ancient history, now. Nobody cares to know anything about any of it, and none of us cares to say too much about it, either.

Eventually, the big day in late November 1970 arrives. I receive orders to leave Vietnam.

On the 30th day of November 1970, I say “goodbye” to my friends. “Goodbye” is such a magnificent word. It is actually a contraction of four words, “God be with you.” Yes, this day, I say goodbye to my guys. They are more than friends, and all of them, better men than I. All of them.

I love my guys. They are a very small, invisible group of exceptional young men from a gathering of states in the USA, valuable advisors to the men of Giang Doan Ngan Chan bon moui mot (River Interdiction Division 41), RID 41, of the Vietnamese Navy.

They are brave, dependable, reliable, trustworthy young men, a true band of brothers, who are quietly, exceptionally, among America’s best. They have saved each other, back and forth, many times.

We live, and fight, and do our best, every day, and every night, in this very remote extremity of the Mekong River delta.

For now, we are living in a temporary time warp, in the farthest back country of South Vietnam, in the middle of nowhere, in a brutal, unforgiving war that is destined to never have a happy ending.

The Mekong River flows from its headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau – “the Roof of the World” – the world’s highest and largest plateau above sea level, north of the Himalayan mountains, south of the Taklamakan Desert.

The great mother river, the Mekong, runs downhill south and southeast from the Tibetan plateau through Southwest China, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and into southern Vietnam.

It is amazing to know that mud on our combat boots, from where we are living now in this out-of-the-way, far-away-from-home, forward operating base we call Solid Anchor in the very southern tip of Vietnam, comes from Mount Everest, Earth’s highest mountain, 5.498427 miles above sea level.

But, today, I am leaving. The weather is cool, the sky is overcast. I wish “all the best” to my men, and pick up my weapon. One of the guys carries my duffle bag. We walk together to the base helicopter pad.

A bag of mail is loaded onto the Bell UH-1 Iroquois “Huey” helicopter. We shake hands all around and wish each other well. I climb aboard and buckle up.

The chopper engine coughs and chokes into life, and whines as it gains power. The chopper blades slowly turn, accelerate, begin to whirr, whup, whup, whup.

The chopper lifts off the helo pad, covered with PSP (Pierced Steel Planking). It circles the helo pad once, gaining altitude. I wave to my men who are waving back to me. Three dark green rubber body bags lay beside the helicopter pad.

The chopper leans into its northwest heading and flies straight toward Tân Sơn Nhut airbase near Saigon.

Flying over the burned brown mud of An Xuyên Province, the words and music of Paul Simon and Art Garfunckle’s song, The Boxer, flood my thoughts.

“In the clearing stands a boxer / And a fighter by his trade. / And he carries the reminders / Of every glove that laid him down / And cut him till he cried out / In his anger and his shame / ‘I am leaving, I am leaving’ / But the fighter still remains.”

The hammering, pounding music bangs in my mind like a door slamming, over and over again. I am alone within my thoughts. Oh, how I want to leave the fighter behind.

Our enemy is sly, cunning, vicious, treacherous. Every living thing is a tool and a weapon. Our enemy is well indoctrinated, fanatic, determined, relentless.

There will be no happy ending to this war. And yet, someday our enemy will become just folks again. Perhaps, we too will become just folks again.

Lord, I am sorry for every person I have hurt, every one. I respect and forgive every person who has tried to hurt me and my friends, every one.

I do not understand Your purpose, Lord. You are so generous with me. For Your own reasons, You are keeping me around to fulfill some further useful purpose on this earth.

What would you have me do? Who would you have me be? Because of You, I have promises to keep.

Back in the world, there will be no more fighting, and I will fight no more, forever. I will do everything in my power to control my emotions, and never fight again.

If it would please You, Lord, if it could be Your will, thank you for helping me to keep my word. Thank You for helping me to fulfill Your many purposes for me in this world.

Thank You, for allowing me to speak with You. I would not be inspired to talk to you, if Your grace did not touch me and surround me with Your presence.

For a couple of days in Saigon, I go through the usual stand down procedures and equipment turn in. Then the big day comes.

With many other soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, I board a chartered jet airliner, to begin the return flight back to the United States of America.

As the big plane lifts off the runway, everybody on board cheers. The flight is long, and thoughtful. We land in Hawaii. The next day, passengers take other flights, each to their own individual destinations.

Eventually, I arrive at San Francisco International Airport. Later, at Treasure Island Naval Station, I complete the paperwork, and am detached from active duty in the U.S. Navy. I immediately join the U.S. Naval Reserve.

The very nice lady who processes my paperwork invites me to her home this evening for dinner. Every day, she interviews thousands of returning sailors. Peut-être qu’elle aime les animaux exotiques. Perhaps she likes exotic animals.

She serves liver and onions. I hate liver, oh God help me, but I am sincerely grateful for her kindness. She wants to know all about Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. With grace and cheerful conversation, I answer all her questions.

She asks me what I intend to do with my life, now that I am back in the USA. I speak of returning home, enrolling in graduate school, becoming ordinary and normal again.

I stay the night. She and her husband go to work the next day. She drives me to the airport, and wishes me well. I thank her for her gracious hospitality, and wish her well.

From San Francisco, I board a flight to Lindbergh Field in San Diego. I am looking forward to seeing Maryann, my girlfriend. She’s a kindergarten teacher in Encinitas, a few miles north of San Diego.

Maryann does not meet me at the airport. She is with her new boyfriend, and refuses to see me. Instead, I am met by her friends, Karen and Alegria. They are lovely young women.

They drive me to their apartment, and tell me that Maryann wants me to go away. I am not meant to make a family with Maryann.

I stay the night, and depart the next day. Karen writes to me often for a month. I do not reply. This is my homecoming. Presque bien . . . almost good . . . with plenty of room for improvement.

I want to fade away, disappear, live in a small town in Montana or Wyoming.

It would be wonderful to become just folks again, love a talented, very smart young woman who actually cares about me, have a beautiful family, and live the rest of my life in peace and quiet.

Can it really be that way?

For the next many years, on each Veterans Day, and many days in between, I stop what I’m doing to remember my guys, and whisper a quiet prayer about my time in Vietnam.

I think about my friends, and the Vietnamese sailors, and marines, and special forces soldiers I used to know. Their faces pass softly in front of me. I am humbled and grateful to have once been in their company. It is a blessing to keep them near, even if only in memory.

I know, for sure, I was exactly where I belonged.

I am well aware, Lord, that I am the least of Your creation. I know it. You know it. Yet, because of You, I have never been unloved. I am profoundly grateful to You, for Your presence in my life. I deserve no consideration at all, yet You are generous with me.

Through no merit of my own, I have fallen into the hands of God.

Please, Lord, never let me fall out of them. In Jesus’ name, amen.