Memorial Day Tribute

                                                                             Vietnam

 

In the Army, I was trained to be a Photo Lab Specialist and looked forward to developing film for the Army, even in Vietnam.  But, when I first arrived in country and sent to the 199^th Infantry Brigade, they informed me that the brigade did not have a photo lab.   In training, I had been told that without a lab I would be sent to the front with the “grunts” and required to take pictures as well as fight. I was petrified.  It was a relief when I was sent to the Information Office, the newspaper office, you might say.  There the Lieutenant in charge reassured me that the job was available.  He referred me to the Sargent in charge.  The Sargent in charge said there was one problem.  Someone else wanted the position too.   A photographer, who had been in the field fighting for half a year also wanted the job.  We were both a specialist 4. The job required a Specialist 5.  The Sargent had to decide who would be assigned the position.  He asked us both to go build a bunker outside the building.  Being new in country and army life, I obeyed without question, while the other guy refused and told him off.  I got the job and a promotion which involved collecting the negatives from the photographers in the field then have them developed next door at Long Binh. before delivering the photos to Saigon to be censored (or not).  I would then send them out to UPI and AP to be published in the newspapers in America.  I was working in a newspaper office with reporters.  A great job on a secure base.  One of my extra duties was to travel with the General on Sundays to visit the wounded, from our unit, in the area hospitals.  I could learn to like this job, I decided. I was here in Vietnam, not even a year in service and had been promoted to Photo Lab Specialist 5.  All this was so very new to me, not having been around military people my entire life.  I had received the rank of PFC upon completion of my photo lab training, another promotion to E4 the same day for my grades and now to an E5 a few months after my last one. 

Most days were quiet and normal.  I received the negatives from the photographers in the field, went next door to have them developed while the reporters wrote their stories and once a week, we took a day trip to Saigon to be censored or not.  On weekends we lounged around the pool on our off hours.  Sundays I attended the early interdenominational church services just a few buildings down from our newspaper office and traveled with the General.  This is a story about the one day I will never forget.  April 1, 1970.

                                                                

It was a Friday in Vietnam.  I woke up in the bunker that I called home, the same bunker I helped build, which had assured my working here instead of at the front fighting with the “grunts”.  Aside from a few April Fool's jokes with my friends, the day seemed to be no different than all other Fridays in Vietnam, at first.

            Being the weekend, I was looking forward to Sunday where I knew that after the church service I would go back to the office, gather my camera, and wait for my Sundays with the General.  The General’s aide stopped by to inform me that today, April 1, 1970, a Friday, the General wanted to visit the hospitals today instead of Sunday, be ready in an hour.  This was unusual.  We only visited on Sunday afternoons.

 Brigadier General William Ross Bond was a decent guy.  He wasn't aloof like other Generals I had seen.  He made you feel like you were somebody and that you weren't alone in this war. He spoke TO you and not AT you.  My job was to just silently take pictures of him with the wounded soldiers, so they would have a record of his visit and a picture to send home to anxious loved ones. I always had plenty of Polaroid film on hand for these visits.  I didn't just silently take pictures with General Bond, though, because he encouraged me to also speak and visit with the men.  He felt it was important.  So here we were, the General, his aide, and me making rounds in the hospitals visiting and reassuring wounded men.   I had been doing this for half a year already and it seemed quite ordinary for me, a Specialist 5, and he, a General, to board his helicopter, gunners on each side of us and fly to the wounded every Sunday. We became friends on those flights.  Sometimes we talked about nothing in general, other times about his family or mine.  It was like going on a Sunday drive with a friend. 

                                             So why was today different, I thought. 

                                   

               When the General was ready, I met them at the heliport and off we flew. 

First, we visited one soldier who had been gravely wounded, displaying stitches from neck to groin.  Then another from our unit who had lost a leg.  When I first started these visits, I couldn't look the soldiers directly in the eye because I felt guilty that I was in a secure position in Vietnam, and they had been living in hell.  I became accustomed to visiting and offering a word of prayer. 

We had made several visits when we received a call that the 199^th was fighting further north with several wounded on the ground without a medivac helicopter nearby.  General Bond, without any hesitation, decided that we should leave immediately and help rescue those we could.  It would be extremely dangerous. 

As the helicopter took off Gen. Bond said, “Drop Blair off at the base, first.   We might have some information to send him and he’s without a weapon.”   I was grateful.

 Returning to the office we waited for any information that might come in.  We were anxious.   Two hours later we got word that my friend General Bond was dead along with everyone else on his helicopter.   Gen. Bond had ordered the pilot to land so they could help rescue wounded soldiers.  They were fired upon.  

                     General Bond was carrying a private in his arms when he was shot.  

                           

 Chills ran up and down my spine and I cried.  I had lost a great friend that I only briefly got to see on our Sunday afternoon flights.  I lost friends that were also on the helicopter with the general and his aide.  This thought shook me to my bones knowing that if he had not decided to drop me off first, that I would have been one of the causalities too.  Life stood still.

We had a memorial service at the base later that week.  I felt so guilty.  Why did they die instead of me? This was an experience that many soldiers have when their friends have been killed and they were spared.  I was no different. 

For several years, I lived with that guilt and silently kept it inside. I had bouts of depression. Gradually, I came to terms with my feelings and was able to talk about the war.   

             I am a grateful person that my life was spared.  My faith helped me weather the storm.  I learned to look on the bright side and talk of my Army days as joy and fun.  The dark side doesn't seem dark anymore.  I know what these soldiers feel when they return home without a friend.  I also feel their guilt and pain when I hear their stories.  I am grateful that, but by the grace of God, it wasn't me.

Sometimes I get sad and cry on Memorial Day for I feel the pain so many have suffered. 

I thank you, Lord, for all men and women in the armed forces who put their lives on the line every day to make America the free country we so love.  Thank you for those who died and for their families.  Their sacrifice was not in vain.  

Without General Bond's decision to leave me behind I would not have ever met Frances or been married or had Marty.  I would not have ever met Marty's wife Kristi and seen their two wonderful grandboys Jonah and Micah.   Life would have been so different for my family this memorial weekend. 

                                                    I am a grateful person. 

© Nippy Blair 2015. Posts and pictures on this blog cannot be copied, downloaded, printed, or used without the permission of the blog owner, Nippy Blair.

                

        AUNT DOLLY MAYO

Proverbs 17:22.    A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.

 

  She was a Nazarene preacher’s wife, my great aunt on my mother’s side, my grandmother’s baby sister to be exact: the Hoffpauir branch, the ones from Rayne, Louisiana.   She and her husband were such opposites in so many ways.  She was five feet tall on a good day with the proper shoes on and Uncle Claudius was at least six feet five.  She loved good food, good conversation and lots of laughs while he looked as if bread and water were his only staples. 

They were Jack Sprat and his wife in every sense of the word.

 Uncle Preacher, as we called him, was stern and erect, with a permanent expression that looked like a dried prune.  Don’t know if I ever saw a smile on his face.  He was the kind that probably wore a suit and tie (dark ones of course) to bathe in and certainly wore one to bed.  How he fell in love with Aunt Dolly is a mystery that is still discussed in family circles to this day, or better yet how in the world did she fall in love with someone so stiff and boring.  They appeared to be a total mismatch, but I sensed there was deep love for each other, somewhere.

Aunt Dolly loved a good joke and was constantly creating ways to shock someone, especially her husband.  She adored playing the devil’s advocate.  “Lighten up, Claudius,” she said one weekend when we were visiting, “People are tired of hearing that they are all going to hell every Sunday.  They might listen more to your sermons if you weren’t so stiff.  You must bend, baby.  Bend.  There’s some interesting stuff in that Bible if you would just tell them about that instead of pointing fingers and calling names, condemning them for their sins that they must have done during the week.  They need to hear the Good News, not your wrath.  Preach the New Testament, Claudius,  not the Old.   They need something to discuss over dinner to ease their digestion, for Christ’s sake.”

Uncle Preacher gave a disgusting huff, stood, stretching his six-foot-five frame adding an inch or two, looked directly at Aunt Dolly, with eyes glowing with anger.  He said, “Lucinda Beulah, I’m embarrassed that you have such evil in your heart to say such things in front of the family, and in front of these children.”  Then, looking at us, he continued, “If you will excuse me, I must retreat to my study and spend the rest of the afternoon on my knees praying for your dear aunt’s soul.”

Aunt Dolly just laughed and replied as he exited the room, “Now, family.  What joyful mischief shall we get into now that his lord and master is retreating?  We should do devilish things so he will have a reason to really pray for our souls.  I’m sure he will point fingers at us at church tomorrow.”

Aunt Dolly loved playing the piano and singing.  The louder the better and it had to have a decent rhythm.  None of those droll ole’ hymns for her, no sir.  If she played and sang Bringing in the Sheaves then, honey, they brought those sheaves in a-dancing and a-jiving and rejoicing all over God’s kingdom, and loved bringing them in.  She put a honky-tonk rhythm into everything she played.  I loved her dearly. 

When we got to church Sunday morning, Aunt Dolly received word that the pianist was sick.  Aunt Dolly decided to fill in without informing Uncle Preacher.  As people solemnly filed into the church, expecting to be listening to a quiet hymn , or as Aunt Dolly described it, a funeral dirge,  they were shocked as Aunt Dolly pounded on those keys, singing at the top of her lungs, “I feel like hell.  I feel like hell.  I feel like hell-ping some poor Soul.  Do you feel like hell, yes feel like hell, feel like hell-ping some poor soul?”  The people had something to talk about over dinner that day.

*Note: Aunt Dolly and her sister, my grandmother Ruth George often collaborated on hymns.  Grandma wrote the words and Aunt Dolly the music, peaceful church music.  Not sure if I have a copy of any of them.  Grandma has a book of poems she published titled “Walking on the Glory Road”.      

   

© Nippy Blair 2015. Posts and pictures on this blog cannot be copied, downloaded, printed, or used without the permission of the blog owner, Nippy Blair.

                                   AUNT LUCILLE

Luke 15:8-9 Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp, and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?  And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.’

                                
            Aunt Lucile, my daddy’s baby sister, lost her teeth in the lake, while feeding the ducks one afternoon, at the Blair family reunion and never being one to go down defeated, she decided to retrieve her choppers since they were only a month old, and she had not finished paying for them.

Into the waist deep water she jumped, clothes, shoes, hat, and all.  She began scratching in the mud searching for her teeth.   Aunt Lucille bent over headfirst exposing her large, wet rear looking like the ducks around her as they too bobbed for food.  The rest of the family, noticing the commotion at the lake, gradually moved closer to observe just what that dang-nab fool Lucile is up to this time.

When she came up for air, my daddy, Cecil, said, “Lucille, what the H-E-double-toothpicks you doing in that lake with your large, wet bottom exposed to God Almighty in front of our family at the annual reunion, embarrassing you-know-what out of us?  You can see your drawers for Pete’s sake.”

            “I’m just trying to get my choppers back,” she snapped.   “I was feeding these dang ducks and one nipped me on the finger causing me to say some words I didn’t even know I knew.  That son of a duck made my dadburn teeth fall in the water.  I’ve been looking forward to eating Ella’s fried chicken all day and I ain’t about to go gumming the rest of the afternoon.

My cousins and I wanted to join in the search as well and almost made it into the lake before being harnessed by our parents.  Brother Bobby and cousin Rodney did manage to escape the reaching arms, making a huge splash, soaking a couple of furious ladies.

Again, Aunt Lucille bobbed under searching in the mud, emerging for air several times, before ducking in the water again.  After a bit of wallowing in the now muddy lake, she shouted, “I found them!”   About that time, the duck that nipped her in the first place, spying something shining in her hand, quickly flapped his fat body over and with one swift move swallowed the teeth. 

Everyone fell over laughing.

Aunt Lucille fumed.  “I’ll be danged if that son of a…pardon my French... #%*#*#$%&#…duck keeps me from eating Ella's fried chicken,” she yelled.  “Help me, boys, don’t let that duck get away!”  

 Bobby, Rodney, and Aunt Lucille immediately jumped back into the water, scattering the rest of the flock before they grabbed the culprit that ruined her afternoon.

                   We had roast duck added to the menu before the day was over.

                                                       

 Note:  This story is fictitious, although the characters are real.  Knowing our family this could have really happened.  Right cousins?  Truth!

© Nippy Blair 2015. Posts and pictures on this blog cannot be copied, downloaded, printed, or used without the permission of the blog owner, Nippy Blair.