Almost Eden

By Richard Taylor

Almost Eden is a love story wrapped in a war. Izzy, the guerrilla girl born of a jungle war in Luzon during World War II, defies her parents' wishes and flies to Vietnam as a Red Cross volunteer. Along the way she meets Abe, a soldier, and falls in love. Their devotion is tested by the most difficult of

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Nov 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781684860111

Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor is Emeritus Professorial Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge

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ALMOST

EDEN

RICHARD

TAYLOR

Almost Eden

Copyright © 2021 by Richard Taylor. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of URLink Print and Media.

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Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021922090

ISBN 978-1-68486-009-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68486-010-4 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-68486-011-1 (Digital)

18.10.21

…it was my job to perform the miracle

of making the war disappear

for boys who had been trained to kill…

…to raise the morale of children

who had grown old too soon watching friends die…

…to take away fear and replace it with hope…

…I was the mistress of illusion…

— Emily Strange, Donut Dollie

"Life isn’t about deserving.

We never deserve what we get, good or bad."

— Izzy Armand

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

— An old proverb

Dedicated to

Those with names on the wall,

the long black scrawl

on the grassy mall ...

And all those others who

left parts of mind or body over there ...

And those who brought

the war home with them ...

And those

who loved them ...

Contents

Foreword

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

FOREWORD

Inspiration for Almost Eden was derived from those who shared the sentiments, the pains, the comradeships of Vietnam. Those who lived and loved during those darkest of days and loneliest of nights. This is part three of a generational saga of love in war ... and afterwards—perhaps the most challenging time.

Eden Lost relates the story of Joshua and Isabella, star-crossed lovers during the Philippine-American War. In Return to Eden, set during World War II, the indomitable spirit and enduring love of the mysterious Isabella from Eden Lost continues and her legacy is passed to a new generation.

Almost Eden, set in the Philippines, Vietnam, and the United States during the Vietnam War, continues the family saga of love and war.

Each of this series can be read and understood alone, but appreciated best if followed in sequence, Eden Lost, Return to Eden, and Almost Eden.

This is a work of fiction based on historical precedents. People, places, and events are adapted to meet the needs of the author and readers ... and of the indomitable strength of Isabella.

Cover photo submitted by Paul Wessman, cavalry brother-in-arms. Rest in Peace—November 8, 2014, Tucson, Arizona.

Rendezvous, Fiddler’s Green.

ONE

From the headlines—In June 1967, U.S. Navy river assault boats and eight hundred men of the 9th Infantry Division killed one hundred sixty-nine Vietcong on the Rach Hui River, nineteen miles south of Saigon. U.S. losses were twenty-eight killed and one hundred twenty-six wounded. Later, North Vietnamese Army (NVA) mortars, rockets, and artillery fired three hundred rounds in eight separate attacks on U.S. positions at Con Thien and Dong Ha. One artillery shell directly impacted a marine outpost, killing nine and wounding twenty-one. In other news, American forces suffered heavy casualties in two separate battles in the Central Highlands. In a sweep near Dak To, four hundred men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade came under heavy attack by NVA machineguns and mortars, killing twenty-six Americans and wounding forty-nine. In still another action, thirty-five soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division were killed and thirty-one wounded five miles from Duc Co.

The patient was bleeding, his face already insipid from shock. At Mayport Naval Station’s hospital emergency room near Jacksonville Beach, a white-clad nurse whispered to the doctor urgently scrubbing for surgery, Izzy’s on the phone, ma’am.

Obviously, I can’t take it now. Take a message. I’ll call her back in an hour.

The chief of the trauma unit soon had the officer stabilized from his boating accident and moved to a treatment room for further analysis. Navy Captain Luci Armand waved off intrusions as she walked into her too small, too sterile, ER office. She crumpled behind a gray metal government-issued desk beneath a mahogany-framed picture of the battleship USS Oklahoma in its heyday. Her father, Commander Hank Blake, stood eternal watch over the sunken ship in this photograph taken in his dress whites three weeks before that day of infamy, December 7, 1941. Luci coursed steady fingers through short-cropped red hair, applied a dab of lipstick, inhaled deeply and sighed, exasperated, through clinched teeth. She flipped through a short stack of notes looking for the one that mattered most. She found it and read through stylish reading glasses—Doctor Armand, call Izzy at grandmother’s house. Her pulse jumped and she breathed deeply, contemplating calmer seas before she called. She pounded 9 too hard for an outside line, waited for a different tone, then punched in a familiar number.

Answered on the first ring. Hello, Mom?

Izzy, what’re you doing there? Why are you in Hawaii? Why aren’t you at school? You’re supposed to be starting med school next week! Have you lost your mind?

Mom ... Mom, give me a chance to tell you…. Mom…. Mom, I’m going to Vietnam.

An open line hummed across a full continent and half an ocean, resonating physical distance and separateness. Mom? Mom? Are you there?

Luci removed her reading glasses and let them dangle around her neck but her pulse still raced. Damn it, Izzy! She slapped the metal desktop with her palm and stood with an impulse to smack sense into her out-of-reach daughter’s head.

You’ll do no such thing! Get your butt back to Harvard and start med school. You can’t be a psychologist or a psychiatrist or psy-anything this way. Have you completely lost it?

Mom ... I must do this. Our boys are getting hurt and somebody has to go. That’s me.

No, it’s not you, Izzy. Your Granddad Joshua left funds for you to go to any school in the country. You have an inherent obligation ... finish what you started!

A red light swirled outside Luci’s door and the duty nurse stuck her head in. Ambulance coming in—training accident!

She wrapped fingers around the phone, and said calmly, under control, Tell Doctor Clark to take it, please. I already have an emergency here. I’ll be there as soon as I finish this.

Don’t you need to go now, Mom? Hopeful.

No! That can wait. This can’t. What’d you think you’d do over there anyway?

Recreational aide, she said. With the Red Cross—the supplemental recreational activities overseas program—SRAO.

Luci pinched the bridge of her nose as the meaning registered…. A donut dollie? You have lost your mind! Are you on pot?

No, no. I need to be there with our guys. This whole war’s crazy, but they’re there. Someone needs to talk to them, and listen mostly. And support them. Help them get through this. Show them someone in this country cares about them. I do. I care.

Izzy, this is crazy! You call your father at his office as soon as we hang up. Try explaining this to him! He’ll fly to Hawaii and snatch your butt back here. Whack some sense into you before you make the worst mistake of your life.

I’m not going to call him. You tell him for me ... please? You can explain it better than me. He won’t understand—I thought you would, at least. This is your life I’m living ... and Isabella’s. You once believed. Why are you deserting us now?

Izzy…. Izzy, what did you just say? What happened? Did you have another dream?

She said to ‘follow my heart.’ She said she’d be with me. Don’t you remember? She came to you when you needed her. Now she’s with me. Please, try to understand.

Please, don’t do this, Izzy. I can’t stand this. I’d be living my war all over again. I don’t know how my poor mother bore it. I didn’t know all I was putting her through. I thought you were smarter than me.

Mom, no one’s smarter than you. You did this and Isabella, too. And Granddad Joshua and daddy. Your dad ... except for Pearl Harbor. I can do this. I want to. I’m flying out in a few hours. Please tell dad I love him. I love you both.

I’ll tell him, sweetheart, but I don’t like this one bit. Tell your grandmother I love her and I’ll call her soon. Please stay safe and come back to me. Write to me. And God bless you ... little guerrilla girl.

I will, Mom. I’ll call as soon as I can. Her spirit is real, you know.

TWO

From the headlines—In July 1967, Defense Secretary McNamara went to Saigon with instructions from President Johnson to review General Westmoreland’s request for two hundred thousand more troops. Only fifty-five thousand were approved. McNamara complained that four hundred sixty-four thousand troops were in Vietnam, but only fifty thousand actively conducted combat operations. At the end of the month a Gallup poll reported 52 per cent of Americans disapprove of Johnson’s handling of the war while 56 per cent believed we were losing or stalemated.

Isabella Elani Armand, Izzy, had completed her undergraduate degree in psychology that long, hot summer and was accepted to medical school in the fall. During the break, she had worked a summer job her mother arranged as a temporary file clerk for the mental health department at Bethesda Naval Hospital, part of an internship. Instead of enrolling, she secretly joined the Red Cross.

It was at the hospital that she encountered her first casualties from Vietnam—marines and special operators who’d been in the thick of the fighting—and she recognized their wounds were more than physical. As a mental health intern, she was permitted to monitor group counseling sessions. It was there she realized she couldn’t wait another four, or more, years for the slow wheels of academia to turn full circle.

That was also when Isabella, her family’s spiritual soul, first appeared to her. Follow your heart, she said and promised to be with you. Izzy had previously dreamed about the legendary lady who watched over her family but that was her first definitive visitation—so vivid and up close.

That was also when she began her quest but the army and navy moved much too slowly. On impulse, she tried the Red Cross. After all, her mother had started as a Red Cross nurse.

When the interviewer asked if her parents would approve, she told them honestly, they would absolutely try to stop her. Although she was over twenty-one, financially independent, and a Harvard pre-med graduate, she was surprised to be immediately accepted.

She endured inoculations for diseases she doubted even existed and secretly began two weeks training in Washington with five other girls, each with two sore arms.

Her parents, Navy doctor Luci Blake Armand and maritime mogul Joseph Armand, had endured worse in World War II and would not approve—exactly why she concealed her plan from them until it was irrevocable.

The Red Cross permitted her to fly commercial at personal expense to Honolulu to visit her surviving grandmother, and her grandfather’s nautical grave in the sunken battleship USS Oklahoma at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Henry Blake’s body had never been recovered from the depths and her grandmother, Elani Kealoha Blake, would never leave her island home near the harbor. Izzy always wept with her grandmother when she spoke of losing her only son, Larry, in a stormy Hawaiian surf and her husband in the Japanese surprise attack. Then her parent’s disappearance in Luzon during Japanese occupation was horrific for Elani but inspiring to Izzy. This was her family history, her genes, and her identity, wrapped in a package of love and war. She intended to open it and make something of it.

There was no retreat. Hawaii was out of reach for Joe to snatch her back before she linked up with five girls of her team on a Military Airlift Command chartered flight to Saigon. When Elani told of waiting years to discover Luci’s fate, it was clear why her mother wanted to hold her back—that eternal umbilical cord between mother and child.

She listened as Elani told again how Joe and Luci met, how they married in the jungle, how their guerrilla girl was born into that war—she knew the story by heart—it was her story, too. Luci and Joe were accidental guerrillas in Luzon, trapped by a Japanese surprise bombardment following the Pearl Harbor attack that killed her grandfather Hank.

Those stories seemed larger than life.

Izzy was always enthralled by her grandfather Joshua’s return to Manila in search of Luci and Joe after fifty years absence, and how he died at Isabella’s grave—a love that transcended time.

She absolutely knew Isabella still loved her as her own child. All this was too surreal for Izzy to explain and only her real mother accepted it as authentic.

§§

Stacked dual headlights on Elani’s pale blue 1965 Mercury coupe were the roadster’s most distinguishing feature as it weaved through city traffic to the international airport. Elani kept her eyes straight ahead, both hands choking the wheel, she navigated silently to the departure terminal with her granddaughter, dreading the forthcoming conspiracy lecture from Luci, avoiding looking toward Izzy, afraid her tear ducts would erupt. She pulled to the curb in the loading-and-unloading-only zone.

Izzy scrambled out first and waved off a hula-skirted girl with an arm full of leis. She shook off Elani’s bid to park and come inside to see her off. They hugged beside the idling car and fought unsuccessfully to smother tears; parting as difficult as anticipated.

Izzy heaved her footlocker and carry-on bag from the trunk and watched her grandmother drive away without daring to look back. She palmed her eyes dry and dragged the heavy trunk in the direction of the terminal—war zones could be terminal.

She stopped hauling and looked up when a shadow blocked her path.

Don’t do that ma’am. Allow me. He was just a skinny school boy, but wearing the uniform of a United States Marine with two rows of colorful ribbons pinned across his chest. Above, his face was deeply tanned and uncompromising.

Izzy blinked away residual moisture from her eyes and issued the smile she’d rehearsed before a mirror during training. She could smile at anything now. But this time it came naturally, although she needed another moment to compose words.

She wasn’t wearing her standard blue skirt, instead bellbottom jeans, cut low at the waist, tight at her thighs, flared from the knees sailor-style, and a white lacey top, blousy in the gentle breeze.

When she realized his age, she marveled at the presence of a young knight already home from battle.

Oh, I’m sure I can manage, she said. "And please don’t call me ma’am. I’m not that old."

Yes, ma’am, he said and easily lifted the trunk. Where’re you taking this?

Pan Am, she said, her eyes searching the departure board. Her flight wasn’t listed. I don’t see ... my flight, she said, frowning.

Where’re you going, ma’am? the young marine asked.

She tried not to show her awe of his ribbons and razorsharp creases in his trousers, two gold stripes on his sleeve. Saigon, she said.

He sat the trunk down and examined her again, making a dubious assessment. Vietnam? Are you going to Vietnam?

Yes, corporal. I’m with the Red Cross and I’m supposed to meet a MAC flight here.

Oh. There’s a special line for military flights. Follow me, ma’am. He lifted the trunk effortlessly and headed for the far end of the counter. Izzy hustled to keep up.

The line was short and the agent knew of the flight, gave her the time and gate to meet it, and after checking the manifest which noted beside her name that she actually would join the flight in Honolulu, printed a boarding pass. The plane’s full, she said. Except for one seat for you. Good luck over there. She assured her the plane would land to refuel and change crews and passengers would disembark.

Izzy had two hours to wait for the other five girls. You could wait at the U.S.O. the marine suggested. That’s where I’m going. I have to wait six hours for my flight to Okinawa.

You’re not going home?

It’s a long story, he said. Besides, the corps’ my home. The marine was welcomed like a prodigal son by a volunteer at the U.S.O. Izzy received a questioning stare—why are you here?—until she introduced herself as Red Cross.

The attendant then asked for help. Would you mind helping me serve coffee and donuts? I’m the only one here.

That’s my specialty, she said. But I’d like to change into my uniform first.

Even before she changed from bell bottoms and sneakers into a powder blue dress and loafers, she changed the television set from hard war news to a channel playing Andy Griffith, Lucille Ball, and Bewitched back-to-back with plenty of commercials. She caught a slight move by the attendant and stared him down, daring him to change it back.

After she’d changed, she greeted service men at the door, offered coffee and donuts, and passed magazines around. They usually went for those featuring cars, motorcycles, guns, or sports but a few secretly swapped those for women’s magazines with ads for perfume, bras, or expensive clothing on beautiful models. One tucked a Playboy inside a Sports Illustrated. Izzy was amused by their antics and found smiling and laughing easier for everyone when she got them talking about home.

After an hour she noticed her forlorn marine aide was still there alone, watching her work and smile, following her every move. He strangely avoided fellow marines and soldiers who came in laughing and joking, keeping to himself. She’d seen them at Bethesda. This one was carrying a burden.

The leather heels of her penny loafers clicked over the tiles until she slid onto the bench beside him, easing close, almost touching. He was surprised, turned to face her.

I never said thank you, she said. That was so gallant of you to help me with my trunk and show me where to go. Thank you.

That was nothing, ma’am.

My name’s Izzy, she said. Say it.

I heard you say that before, he said. Izzy seems like a funny name to me.

Actually, it’s Isabella. But nobody uses a name like Isabella anymore. I was named after someone, but I’ve always been called Izzy. It is a little funny. What’s yours?

Lance Corporal Jones.

I can see that from your stripes and nametag, she softened her barb with another smile. What’s your real name?

Bobby.

Nice to meet you, Bobby, she held out a warm hand softened by Jergens lotion.

He stared at her offered hand, as if a precious gift, an early Christmas present. Then he took her hand, not the forceful grip that lifted her heavy trunk, but gently, as if afraid he’d break it accidently. I haven’t touched ... a woman’s hand ... for a year, he confessed.

Izzy snuggled his hand in both of hers, felt its roughness, calluses, skin dry, broken nails clipped short, yet his touch was soft and tender. She studied it and made an accounting—stains of orange clay that mechanic’s soap couldn’t easily remove, fingers that held a rifle and squeezed a trigger, wrists that might have saved a life or taken one, hardened and still gentle. Only time could change this hand back to its natural state. The back of it dotted with freckles, no wedding band, no class ring—graduation only from boot camp.

So now you have, she said, …held a girl’s hand. Do you have a girl friend at home, Bobby?

Used to, he said. She sent me a letter. I got it at the Rock Pile. Said she couldn’t wait no more. Said she was pregnant. Said she was marrying some guy, a truck driver. Going to drive around the country in his rig ‘til the baby comes. Shit.

I’m sorry, Bobby. I know that hurts. But you know what? I’ll bet it turns out better for you in the long run. Just look at you. A handsome man, a combat veteran, you’re young and have the world on a string. You’ll find another girl fast, or one will find you. Just wait, you’ll see. Where’s home for you?

I don’t know. Anywhere. My old man was a truck driver, too. I hate truck drivers. Always gone. Always drunk if he came home at all. Beat my mom for doing tricks to feed us kids. When she ran off, so did I. Joined the corps. Now that’s my home. They give me clothes, give me shoes, feed me, teach me things, let me be a man. The corps’ my home, you see?

He looked into her eyes with a quizzical expression and said, Can I ask you something?

I can’t marry you, she said and smiled. But you can ask me anything else.

You look like a nice lady. Pretty and educated. Why are you doing this? he said.

He continued, Vietnam’s a shithole ... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that ... habit. It’s a mess. Filthy, stinking, nothing good about it I can see. Just people trying to kill us. We don’t even know why we’re there. So why would you go?

Izzy held his eyes and realized she was still holding his hand. She squeezed it. Because of you, she said. You and all the other guys like us who’re going there. I want to be there with you. That’s why. She smiled again, but this time it was forced.

The U.S.O. volunteer interrupted. I’m sorry, he said. We just found out your flight is on final approach. That word, ‘final!’—so cold, came from the same unsparing lexicon as ‘terminal!’ You might want to meet the other passengers at the gate so you can board with them when it’s called to depart.

Thank you, she said, her eyes still stuck on Bobby, his hand still resting in hers. The sensation was of someone drowning, reaching out for something to hang on to. She said, I have to go now, Bobby. But I know you’ll be fine. Let me hear you say it, she said, pressing his hand tighter.

Thanks for talking to me, ma’am. He pulled back on