Lost in Dogpatch

By Gil Rasmussen

If 1967 was the "summer of love," then 1968 was the "year of riots and protests." The NVA Tet Offensive of February 1968 shattered the US government's propaganda theme that the war in Vietnam was going "well" and we were finally seeing the "light at the end of the tunnel." While all of this was going on, those of us in the military sausage-making machine continued to be pushed forward until 575,000 soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors ended up in Vietnam at the height of the military buildup. Every single individual one of us has a story to tell.Lost in Dogpatch: Memories of my unavoidable tour of duty in Vietnam is my story.

I didn't win the Vietnam War by any heroic activities, but I did my duty and it seemed that we were winning when I left!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gil Rasmussen
• Release date: Feb 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386362968

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LEAVING ALASKA

On or about July 14, 1968, I departed the crispy cold environs of Naval Air Station Adak Alaska by greeting the incoming Reeve Aleutian Airways DC 6 Electra, which I normally met with a truck for the purposes of unloading incoming mail. This time, however, the Electra was starting me on my trip home to Long Beach for 30 days leave before I reported for duty in San Diego, in preparation for service in the Republic of Vietnam.

After flying the nearly 1200 miles to the Anchorage International Airport, there was supposed to be a brief stopover before I connected with an Alaska Airways flight to Seattle/Tacoma Airport. However, after boarding the Alaska Airways passenger jet, there appeared to be a loud and boisterous scuffle at the front of the passenger cabin.

Within a matter of minutes, a number of men in blue suits came into the cabin and removed a single male passenger from the compartment. Shortly thereafter, a flight attendant advised the passengers that we would all be required to be exit the airplane and await further instructions, which we all did.

Not long after, we were advised that an Army sergeant, who was flying to the Lower 48 on the same flight, had suddenly shouted. There's a bomb in my bag! and then took a swing at the nearest stewardess. Unfortunately for the sergeant, he was overmatched, as the stewardess had recently received training in a Martial Art and dropped him with a single right cross to his jaw.

The Army sergeant seemed a small, round shouldered, humbled human being as he was led away across the tarmac between two of the blue suits.

Unfortunately, even as I was still anticipating arriving back home with my family that same day, we watched as Alaska Airways personnel unloaded all of our luggage, including my well-organized sea bag, onto a baggage cart and pushed it away from the plane and out to the furthest point of the tarmac, where we watched it sit for several hours until law enforcement personnel were satisfied that the sergeant’s threat of an explosive device in his bag was indeed an empty threat.

Eventually, we were allowed to re-board the airplane and continue our flight from Anchorage to Seattle.

The sad result of the delay while watching to see if my sea bag contained explosives meant that I missed my connecting flight with Western Airlines from Seattle/Tacoma Airport (SeaTac). Instead of enjoying the comfort and pleasure of spending an evening with my family, I ended up trying to find sleep on the intentionally uncomfortable hard structures that passed for chairs in most airports, circa 1968.

The next morning, Western Airlines was able to provide a flight to Long Beach and my 30 day leave was underway.

When I landed at Los Angeles International Airport, I was met by a small retinue of immediate family members, including my mother, my sister Janice, and a good friend from church, Earl Chip Opie. (Chip would later be drafted into the Army where, after a combat stint in South Vietnam, he was medically evacuated from Vietnam to Japan and placed in an isolation chamber, due to a severe malarial infection. (Fortunately for Chip, he recovered from the effects of the malarial infection.)

Now that I was in the presence of my family, it was time to unburden myself of the pent-up information regarding my next duty station. Before I went to the baggage area to pick up my sea bag, it was a good time to make a necessary pit stop at the closest restroom. As Chip had followed me into the bathroom, this was also a good time to relieve some of the pressure on my psyche, as well as my bladder, and I calmly advised Chip of my future service in Vietnam. He took the news in good stride.

After picking up my sea bag, we all piled into my sister's car and began to drive on the Interstate 405 Freeway, heading south for Long Beach.

At this point, my still over-burdened psyche overcame any personal discipline I possessed and I blurted out to the occupants of the car that I was going to Vietnam. Later, my sister told me that she almost lost control of the vehicle when she heard me make my unexpected announcement.

After we survived the trip home, I quickly changed into civilian clothing, located my keys to my 1964 Pontiac Catalina and headed for the nearest McDonald's, seeking comfort and pleasure in a celebration of hamburgers and French fries for the next 30 days.

LAST SUMMER OF INNOCENCE

Prior to my seven-month long service in Adak, I had never been away from my family home for any significant length of time. Upon my return, however, I was a bit more seasoned and experienced than the virginal 20 year old that had left home in December 1967.

For the record, I was still a virgin, given my own extraordinary submission to religious dogma.

One of my psychological concerns, now that I was back in my church-based environment, was that the very limited gene pool among the teenage girls in my church youth group was going to be further reduced during my absence. As a result of my adolescent anxiety, within a matter of days, I proposed marriage to a girl named Shirley, whom I had dated briefly about one year prior. Despite the fact that Shirley was steadily dating the man to whom she is still married, it took two full days for her to decide to reject my proposal, to my utter relief.

Soon thereafter, I noticed that a pretty young teenaged girl, who was a part of my church youth group, had apparently blossomed into a beautiful young woman during my absence in Alaska. True to my now desperate mental status, I invited Dawn out for a hamburger and coke date after a Sunday night church service.

That hamburger and coke encounter became a year of letter writing to the sweetheart of my youth, followed by a genuine proposal of marriage upon my return from Vietnam. Dawn and I were married in 1970, a productive marriage which produced two children.

However, the marriage ended after 37 years, due to the negative effects of 10 years in the ministry (following in my late father's footsteps), and the unseen and un-acknowledged emotional effects of my tour in Vietnam.

Unfortunately, neither of us had the emotional skills to process the significant issues from our childhoods that we each brought to the marriage (Dawn's mother had died while she was a six-month-old baby). Adding the negative effects of ten years in the ministry, as well as my unrecognized reaction to Vietnam, like an emotional corrosion, all of which contributed to the eventual destruction of the marriage.

However, not knowing the future, life permitted the both of us to enjoy the pleasure and wonder that is found in being youthful sweethearts, enhanced by the dramatic and romantic scenario of young love being separated by time and distance for a military obligation.

For the record, on our wedding night, we were both still virgins, given our extraordinary voluntary submission to religious dogma.

REPORTING FOR DUTY

On August 15, 1968, I reported for duty at the Coronado Amphibious base in San Diego, California, in preparation for eventual service and duty in the Naval Support Activity/Danang Republic of Vietnam.

After getting barracks assignments, we were directed to report for an opening meeting of approximately 500 Naval personnel, most of whom were approximately my same age, currently a still tender age of 21 years.

The meeting facilitator opened with a declarative statement, You are all going to Vietnam; not all of you are going to come home! Needless to say, he had everyone's attention from that point forward.

As the indoctrination progressed through the week, we were given lessons in history of the communist intrusion into Southeast Asia. In addition, we were provided contextual cultural information that would impact our lives on a daily basis, once we were in-country. One of the items that appeared to be important to the training staff was a warning not to react negatively to an open cultural tradition of Vietnamese males walking together, holding hands. This conduct, although strange to our American culture, was not to be construed as homosexual behavior.

At the same time, without really changing cultural gears, the facilitator also stated that when we encountered a pedestrian or another vehicle operator on the crowded streets of urban Vietnam, that the operators of those civilian vehicles would presume that they had been observed by the person honking a horn and that they could proceed with caution. Without that knowledge, there would be unavoidable mayhem on the roads in Vietnam.

As it turned out, as I was later assigned to drive a five-ton bobtail truck, carrying mail from the Danang airbase to the Navy post office at Camp Tiensha, the facilitator’s advice was absolutely correct as the local population universally ignored the honking horns of military vehicles, even if the horn was vigorously and repeatedly utilized.

However, I soon learned that the light application to and immediate release of my brake pedal, would emit a loud whooshing sound from the vehicle's air brakes, causing the locals to immediately veer out of the path of my oncoming vehicle, instinctively knowing that it was an American military vehicle, driven by a crazy American operator of questionable cultural and social