The Unlikely Lieutenant

I'm 64 years old and a Vietnam Veteran. I was there for 10 months, from October 1970 to July 1971. I was an officer, a First Lieutenant, and perhaps a gentleman. I commanded a detachment of 45 men, young boys actually, and an old first sergeant. I never was in combat, but easily could have been. Fine by me. More on that later.

I also ride a Harley. It's an old loud 1996 FLSTF "Fat Boy" model which my friends say is a very appropriate bike for me to be riding. I wonder what they mean by that? Hmmmmmm. Anyway, I have all the pre-requisite leathers, patches, bandanas and "look" to go with the Harley. Just another one of your middle aged, OK, upper middle aged, dudes who think they're cool while riding around on over priced and very loud motorcycles, all the while envisioning themselves as a bad ass biker. Many a therapist's own Harley has been paid for by countless sessions trying to analyze this phenomenon to a distraught wife who's MBA/Accountant husband now fancies himself as Captain America. Yeah, this is me below. See what I mean. Isn't that the baddest beancounter you've ever seen? Better not fuck with that guy, Mabel.

But I digress. The point of all this is that a big part of the biker scene for guys my age are the Vietnam Veteran clubs and organizations. There's a big national motorcycle club called "Vietnam Veterans MC" another one called "Vietnam Combat Vets MC" and a few others. Note, these are "clubs" and not "gangs" and if you forget this, you'll be reminded with extreme prejudice by some dude who really is a bad ass biker, or his old lady might do it, which is much worse. At rallies, the old "Vietnam vets" gather with a sense of brotherhood, which actually is really cool. When you meet someone who was in Vietnam, you shake his or her hand and say

"Welcome home, Brother (Sister)"

It's nice and makes you feel good. No one ever did that before.

But I didn't want to go, I hated it there, coulda been killed.

So why did you go? Were you drafted?

No, I signed up for ROTC while in college so I wouldn't get drafted (more about this brilliant logical move in a future blog).

So you signed up for the Army, you have nothing to complain about, you knew what could happen.

I know, but . . . . .

My blog, "How I won the war". What was it like for a young 23 year old guy to suddenly be in a real war zone. A lot of it was surreal, overused word to be sure, but pretty accurate. Not everyone who goes in the armed forces is a gung ho super partiot,

"And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I

wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and

guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,

KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and

he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down

yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,

sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it."

I'm sure a lot of the feelings I had, fears and craziness I experienced are also being felt by a lot of our citizen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan today. I'm sure they are. I'm not bragging about having been, although it impresses a lot of my biker buddies. If only they knew, "the rest of the story". Hope you enjoy the journey. It's all true, couldn't make up shit like this.

Peace from the Group W Bench