Back in August or September of 1970, after several months of doing a great job at photographing the 30th Artillery Brigade personnel at work and play, because I loved doing it, I had spent all that I was willing to of my own money on the photographic equipment and supplies needed to do those photo assignments. Not only that, I couldn’t deal with the guilt of knowing that my photo lab’s location in the nuclear fallout decontamination chamber compromised our military mission - a mission which I believed in deeply enough to be willing to sacrifice my life for.
Consequently, I applied for an inner-island transfer out of 30th Arty Bgde. An inner island transfer request meant that they couldn’t use my request to send me to some place that I didn’t want to go - like: Vietnam, or back to the states.
When I joined the Army at age nineteen, my entire young life had been lived on the East Coast of the USA. I had hoped to be stationed anywhere about as far away from the East Coast as they could send me, and somewhere overseas. I'd rather have been stationed in Vietnam than on the Eastern Seaboard of America.
I waited about a week for the transfer paperwork to go through proper channels, and then I went into the 30th Arty Bgde Headquarters Battery First Sergeant’s Office and inquired as to the status of my transfer request. The First Sergeant told me that I was “too valuable” and had been denied a transfer.
An E-6 sergeant, army lifer, clerk, working in the office, showed me a printed piece of paper in his hand and said, “But, here, you can sign this, and we can get you to Vietnam in less then two weeks, if you want to put in for that transfer.” Him saying that really pissed-me-off, because he was an army lifer who had never been in, and probably was never going to be in, any war zone.
There happened to be three army office clerk lifers in the First Sergeant’s office on the day that they offered me a transfer to Vietnam, and not one of them had been to, or probably ever going to volunteer for, Vietnam. Each of the three with 6, 8, maybe 12 years of army time behind them, if they were willing to go get into the Vietnam War they would have done so already. I couldn't figure out how anyone could be living their lives completing a 20 or 30 year hitch in the military with a war going on and not go get into that war for at least one tour of duty and help fight that war. The way that one of those three army office clerk lifers in the First Sergeant’s office, who was a Specialist 6th Class, looked back over his shoulder and snickered to number two clerk, an E6 Staff Sergeant, who grinned snidely back at the Spec 6 clerk, and then glanced at the First Sergeant and grinned at him, and then the way that the First Sergeant reacted to them other two clerks by snickering into his cupped hand as he walked away from us and over to the other side of the room, indicated to me that a veiled threat had just been delivered to me.
The unspoken, veiled threat amounted to this: "Crews, you better shut up and get it into your thick head that we ain’t letting you go. We can’t replace you. If you don’t do what we say, no matter whether we get you any camera equipment and photo supplies or not, and especially if you go above our heads out of this brigade to try for a transfer, or if you are stupid enough to complain about your situation to the Army Inspector General or to your Congressman, if you keep it up and push this request for a transfer any further, then we will illegally finagle the paperwork to get you sent to Vietnam just like we illegally finagled the paperwork to get you here in the 30th Arty Bgde. Even though the 1970 Army was only allowed to make you do one overseas tour per three year enlistment, and you are legally allowed to stay on Okinawa if you transfer out of this brigade."
About 99% of the guys who went into the Army, when I did, were terrified of going to Vietnam. I wasn’t exactly terrified of it myself, the intense action and surging adrenaline aspects of war intrigued me. After all, during the year before I had enlisted into the Army I had been a Registered Maine Hunting Guide who specialized in guiding Black Bear hunters. I was familiar with firearms, but we guides had to leave our guns at the hunting lodge when we tracked wounded bears at night, or else we could have been arrested for illegal hunting at night. Of course, by the time we found them wounded bears, we were always hoping to find that they had finally dropped dead from the wounds which they had received from bullets fired by our paying hunters, whom we were guiding at the time. Between June 1st and late October of 1969, I walked unarmed into the deep, dark, nighttime Northern Maine woods, whilst in pursuit of wounded bears, 30 or 40 times while helping other more experienced Maine Guides, and at least 15 to 20 times all-by-me-lonesome. And I 'dug' it.
Some GIs think they will always make it through any war - that they fight in - without receiving any wounds (neither physical nor psychological) and without being taken prisoner by the enemy. Not me though, ever since I was a teenager in high school, I figured that I could be taken prisoner, be wounded, loose limbs, go nuts or die.
I did believe in the Domino Theory, which I had been taught, early on, sometime during my school days. In case that you're not familiar with the Domino Theory, it stated that if the country of Vietnam fully fell into communist hands, so would its neighboring countries. Then the commies would keep taking over more and more countries that are next to or near Vietnam, till they had enough communist soldiers and industrial workers to build up enough strength and power to take over the entire free world.
I have always wanted the whole world to live free. I put my life on the line for that cause, when I enlisted into the Army.
But, I was confused by the news reports I had seen about the deaths of my peers in Vietnam, and the protests against that war. Especially when I learned that Nam War Vets were protesting against the war - I figured that they knew what was really going on over there and whether it was worth Americans being involved in or not. When I was first stationed on Okinawa as an American GI, I wasn’t sure whether or not that the war in Vietnam was helping anyone in any way. That damned war was, and the history of it still is, to say the least, controversial. Because that confusing controversy was muddlin’ up my mind, when I was turned down for that inter-island transfer, I turned down the 30th Arty Bgde’s office clerk's 'kind, generous' offer to allow me to go take my chances in the Vietnam War.
The Army could only make a soldier do one overseas tour of duty per two or three year hitch, so I had the Nam scare beat when the Army assigned me to Okinawa for 18 months.
I am going to share this with you, and if you say that I’m lying, we can "step outside and discuss it":
One day, a few weeks after that 'kind, generous' offer to allow me to transfer to Vietnam, I decided to take them up on it. I had had it. It was over. I was no longer willing to pay my own way through my military service, and could not deal with any more of their photo-lab-in-a-nuclear-fallout-decontamination-chamber-horse-manure.
I went to the PX that evening, after dinner, and bought two cases of cold beer, then went back to my barracks. A friend, who lived in my barracks, had driven me to the PX, and when we walked into our barracks, I told my friend to go ask anyone hanging out in the dayroom if they wanted to drink a beer, I asked two guys coming down the stairs, when I was walking up them, to join us, told them two to check for other thirsty fellows, I banged on some doors and yelled into those rooms about the cold beer offer as I walked down the hallway and then went into my two-man semi-private barracks room and set the beer down on the floor.
It didn’t take but a few minutes for eight or nine of my old and new army buddies to come on into my room. Every guy gratefully grabbed a beer and found a place to sit or stand and lean against something, while they settled in for a welcomed session of sipping suds, swapping stories and relaxing.
Beer can tops popped, and we all took a few sips.
I allowed my guests the comfort of sitting on my bed and my roommate’s bed, he didn’t care if they sat there, others sat on the floor or leaned against a wall, and I casually leaned back against my dresser top.
“I’m going to volunteer for Vietnam in the morning,” I said.
The entire room, uncomfortably, shifted position slightly, with a deep, pained groan.
I didn’t actually know all of the guys whom I was speaking to. Two or three were close friends who were the type of men whom I knew I could trust beside me in combat. That is a measure that most warriors take of their brethren. A few fellows were known by me, but we hadn’t had many conversations together. A few had been on some wild time, Okinawa bar hoppin’ and brothel boppin’ excursions with me. One or two I had never spoken to before. Three of those men had just gotten back from Vietnam, or had been discharged from the U.S. Military Hospital on Okinawa after recovering from war wounds, and had been assigned to the 30th Arty Bgde in the previous several days or weeks.
When I told them all that I was volunteering for Vietnam in the morning, those three Nam Vets instantly became livid with me. One stopped looking at me, or anyone else; he was leaning against the inside of the closed door to my room, and he appeared to nearly curl up into a defensive ball and almost slide down to the floor. Another Nam Vet was standing close to the first, sort of in the corner of the room near the door’s hinges; he folded his arms - tightly - across his chest, twisted his body and looked away from me at a ninety-degree angle, and occasionally glanced sideways at me, in sheer disbelief. The third Nam Vet looked up at me, from where he was sitting on my bed, expelled a deep, tight breath, then barely inhaled another, and angrily said, “Do you know what you’re saying? DO, YOU, KNOW, WHAT, YOU’RE, SAYING? If you volunteer for Nam, and if you survive a year, IF you survive a year, then ALL that you will have done IS to survive a year; and you will have had your buddy’s guts blown all over you, AND you’ll have to kill people you don’t even WANT to kill. Now do you REALLY wanna go to Vietnam?”
My second Nam Vet buddy standing there in the corner of my room, barely muttered single word agreements with the third Nam Vet sitting on my bed, and that second Nam Vet punctuated his own curt, one word statements with hard, serious glances in my direction. The first Nam Vet buddy, who was leaning against my door, never moved or made a sound. He had nearly completely blocked me out of his, pained, conciseness. F.N.G. syndrome - in Vietnam, F-ing New Guys often didn’t live very long; if a guy who had been in Nam for awhile didn’t get to know any new guys, it wasn’t so bad for him when the new guys got wounded or killed. If I was going to volunteer for duty in Vietnam and maybe go off and get myself killed, for what the Nam Vets had devastatingly learned wasn’t worth it, then that Nam Vet leaning against my door didn’t want to know me, either.
My other five or six buddies sitting and standing around there in my room mostly looked down at the floor and barely breathed, because they were, perceptively, quite uptight with me. I had bummed them out.
My reply - to all of those friends in my room - was, “No, no you’re right. I really didn’t understand. I won’t do it. I won’t volunteer."
Their reaction to what I had said about volunteering for Vietnam convinced me that it would have been a foolish waste, of at least part of my young life, if I had volunteered to go to Vietnam, in the late summer of 1970.
Those eight or nine true friends of mine probably saved my life that day.
The fact that Okinawa was a safer and much more fun place to do my overseas tour, than what Vietnam was, has sometimes been and still often is thrown up in my face when I explain to certain people about my illegal assignment to the 30th Arty Bgde. They always say, “You coulda’ gone to Vietnam; what’s your problem?”
I am lucky that the United States Army sent me to Okinawa instead of to Vietnam. This is true.
The only thing is, for me to have passively gone to work everyday, as a photographer for the 30th Artillery Brigade on Okinawa, and to have kept on paying out a big chunk of my personal paycheck money to produce my excellent photographs of them, at work and play, always having to use my own camera gear, would have meant that either I was bribing them or giving into extortion. I couldn’t have lived with that shame.
I was born a soldier - just like many millions of people before me and many millions more to come.
A short time before that evening in my barracks room, when I was talked out of volunteering for duty in Vietnam, I had begun to have problems sleeping. I couldn’t get to sleep until close to daybreak, and my sleep was not restful. A good, solid, restful sleep each night would have been the best possible way to get some relief from the daily insanity of being ordered to complete photographic assignments without the benefits of being given enough equipment and supplies to complete my assignments, and from my deepening, disturbing guilt which came from knowing that the photo lab I worked in negated my missile unit’s ability to respond in full to every conceivable scenario of a communist nuclear attack that the United States Government expected us to be able to respond to, and, hopefully, help thwart.
From that time on, it was a steady slide off the edge for me.
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