Excerpts from LETTER HOME… LEAVING NAM

The airplane touched down in Columbus, Ohio, as the “what will she look like, what will I say”, pinged around in my head. The anxiety grew exponentially. Haven’t seen Caren since I left for Vietnam, twelve months ago. A few pictures she sent looked nothing like the person I had left a year ago. We wrote letters, albeit infrequent at best. I did, after a few months in the “bush”, wrote and asked her to stop writing. The arrival of the red mail bag without any mail for you and the constant thought of her, was weighing too much on my spirit, distracting from what I needed to do, hunt down and kill gooks. 

I feel like I had changed beyond recognition, but would I recognize her. I was thinner having lost almost forty pounds in Vietnam. That can happen with a plebeian diet and walking, continuously walking, through the mountainous jungles. My psychic had also changed. I left, a puerile teen looking to validate my manhood. I would return with a ripened mature attitude. Every problem presented to me would be small compared to what I’ve just been through. Hell, I survived.  

We landed in Ohio, with the airport at Port Columbus more like a grain storage elevator than an international commercial hub it would later become. The airport had two runways and a fence to keep the cows from wandering onto the airport proper. The terminal was one building, a parking lot to accommodate one hundred cars and one baggage collection caracole. No jetway, just steps that abutted the airplane door allowing the passengers to step down onto the tarmac into the terminal area. The terminal doors open up into a long wide access area that allowed people to walk from the parking lot directly to the airplane gate. A set-aside section at the terminal entrance was relegated for the two rental car agencies and the ticket area. The whole terminal corridor was less than a football field in length. 

As I took my first step out of the airplane door, I notices two young women on top of the airport viewing deck frantically waving. My eyes focused on the blonde lass, attired in a white paisley blouse. As I gave a casual head nod to the pair of females, their waving and hoopla became more intense.  This was my homecoming? The first thought was, the night air sure is heavy and that blonde must be Caren, albeit, a few pounds heavier than my pipe dreaming saturnalia. I moved slowly down the steps onto the tarmac. For some reason, my moves were slow and deliberate, head down as if walking point in the jungle looking for booby traps. I saunter across the tarmac into the terminal entrance as the two gals broke contact on the viewing desk and appeared to scurry down to the terminal entrance. 

As I stepped off the tarmac into the terminal, I saw the two ladies coming through the entrance doors. Though they were a good fifty yards from me I could see the profile of my blonde aspirations. Not a remembrance of my paramour, just an average looking girl with an ugly paisley blouse. As she moved through the terminal and came even closer, the waving became more fanatical. Her steps quickened. I remained slow and deliberate still looking for that booby trap. This could certainly turn into a romantic comedy. 

As she careened toward me, I felt our destinies soon would converged. Her nonathletic pace quicken as her portly features became more into view. The classic beauty attributes, perfect skin and shapely body I remembered, was not. Disappointment was replaced with a process in how to extricate myself from this “oh shit” moment. I immediately thought up an “arioso” that would be polite and courteous. My military training would find ways to jettison her, find my high school buddies and get drunk. The idea of carnal reunion was out of the question. The confluence of our two souls wasn’t gonna happen. 

Suddenly a “Vietnam flashback”. A “frag” pattern and blinding smoke engulfed me. It was all surrealistic, something out of a Jefferson Airplane song. Heart beat accelerated, mouth dry and hands sweaty. I continually assessed the battlefield. The closer she came, the more PTSD I became. Within twenty feet of our reunion, I made a command decision, “our reunifying love was not to be”. Within ten feet of my presence, the vision of her was as demoralizing as the 1968 Tet Offensive. This quick paced blonde reality, begin to gallop toward my prophylactic citadel. I decided, with her welcoming arms extended, I would flash a quick hug, peck on the check, casual talk on the ride home and recite “the war was hell, I need time to adjust” proverbial speech. 

Then it happened, the gallop didn’t slow down and the extended arms didn’t widen to embrace. The paisley blouse girl ran right by me. Holly shit! Tactical error, I had just called in an airstrike on my own position. So where was my muse I woolgathered for the last twelve months. 

Being a smart wily combat veteran, I began thinking of a plan to ensure I didn’t make the same mistake twice. Hell, Charlie couldn’t kill me, I wasn’t about to get “blown away” in an airport terminal.  I needed to developed a solid plan for success. I decided to use the airport paging system and paged overhead “Caren Armentrout, please meet your party at the Hertz Rent A Car counter”. The overhead went out a second time then I positioned myself out of sight from the counter. If the next body was a not a nymphet, I was bolting out of the airport. 

I waited, not a few moments, but patiently long enough to see my intended. There she was, Erato incarnate, a vision carved into my many melodic slumbers, an aspiration beyond expectations. She worn a perfectly fitting purple jump suit emblazed with white flowers. Her young body fill out the fashion in a way only a professional runway model could. Her beaut face could launch a thousand ships, or in my case, a thousand Amtac’s. Her hair was effulgent, perfectly styled with every piece in place. She moved to our designated place of rendezvous with a grace and flow of the cultured refinement I first fell in love with. This was her. Before I started to move out of my cover and concealment, I thought of dropping to my knees to ask God “please be this, my destination”. But since I had been asking God for too many things the last twelve months, I opted to take my changes and let him answer someone else’s prayers. 

I than moved toward the beauty. Recognition was instant, not only from any physical present but from the look in her eyes, smile on her face and aura infusing our intended cradling. We hugged, hugged and hugged again. Restive at first then a relaxed, soft velvet caress. Followed by a clasping resembling a tethered mooring of a brake away ship, with an outcry “I’ll never let you go”.  

We spent the next three days and two nights in a tornadic super twister, taking breaks only to order pizza and dine out at that fine culinary establishment, White Castle. She was it, the real thing. Since I had two more years on my enlistment, I would have to go back to Camp Pendleton after my leave was up in three weeks. I didn’t want any more long separations. I asked her to come live with me in California. She said she “wasn’t a hippy” and would not live with anyone without being married. So, I asked her to marry me. Not very romantic but effective. A month later, we were a young married couple living on the beach in Southern Cal trying to figure this “life” contest… fifty years later, point, game, match, championship.