Almost Home – But SOS

This is somewhat out of order. My first post takes place toward the beginning of my Army experience in Vietnam. This post would be the coda. I'll try to fill out the in-between as I have time.

So! Two tours in Vietnam. I’m still alive; got all my parts intact (on the outside at least). Several of us are headed from one end of the San Francisco airport to a concourse that serves those flights headed east. When it happens One-Last-Time.

As far as we’re concerned, we’re done. We’re about... to be out. One last stop, sign the discharge papers and go home! Headed in the opposite direction, brand new uniform, haircut and shiny single gold bar, a shavetail LT passes about five of us. He’s headed “Over There” we’re headed home. But he can’t resist. Gotta try out that bar on his shoulder.

I don’t know if he even had the intuition to understand the dynamic into which he was about to insert himself. But, for some reason, the fool takes issue with my hair. My buddies and I are completely unaware of his presence until he plants himself in front of me and says something about the length of my hair along with a half-assed order to see a barber before I did anything else in my life. I was in disrespect of the Class A uniform I was wearing (for the first time in two years).

I’d like to spice this story up and give you some accurate dialogue, but in all honesty, I don’t remember the words, just the irony of the moment. To be confronted 24 hours prior to discharge in a civilian airport by a brand new lieutenant after two tours in hell, I, an E-5, was being braced for a haircut.

I am very lucky I was with friends. They put themselves between me and the shavetail and an E-6 Staff Sergeant I was with took the lieutenant aside and ‘splained things to him. He probably saved me a whole lot of grief – and my carefully tended-for-release locks.

A little piece of drama in the middle of a US airport in June of 1970 was about to unfold – or not.

It had the makings of a major problem – for me. I don’t know what my E-6 buddy said to him, but the shavetail turned pale and got his ass away from us quicktime.

According to several websites, in Vietnam during 1970, the average life span of an Army Second Lieutenant in the field was under 4 days. I wonder if he made it that long or if his subordinates fragged him before then?