Semper Fi

Philadelphia

I took this photo while aboard a riverboat traveling along the Mekong River near the Cambodian border in January of this year. The sun was setting over the jungle that night, and I remember well waking up in the pitch dark later that night, listening to the sounds of the forbidding land along the shoreline.

 I remember thinking as I looked out into the utter black of the moonless night, that 40 years before, 18 year old GIs were air dropped into the same jungle in the middle of the night, a jungle that was the home playing field for the Vietnamese and Cambodians but totally hostile to the Americans. They must have been terrified between the withering tropical heat and humidity, the danger of malaria and dengue fever, all manner of dangerous reptiles,  swampland--the Florida  Everglades that covered an entire region.

Last week, I was on the train traveling the northeast corridor alot. Trains were full. Maybe because of the time of year, maybe because usage is up. But, in any case, it is an irritant when all I ever want is a seat by myself on the cafe car so that I can write during the trip. En route to Wilmington from D.C., I sat across from an grey haired, slim man, about 5'10", wire rimmed glasses who had a baseball cap with the inscription " Semper Fi". He read his book, ( March by Geraldine Brooks ) while I wrote. But it was lunchtime, and we were right next to the concession, so the lineup of hungry people snaked right past our table the entire trip. 

Somewhere around Baltimore, I heard a man's voice from the lunch line. "Hoo-rah", he said proudly. My table partner looked up and smiled. "What company were you with?",  he asked. The man standing in line stood up a little straighter, put his hands on his ample waistline, and said: " I was with B Company near the DMZ."  They continued their conversation as the line inched toward the counter. Frank, the Marine at my table, had been in DC to visit the Vietnam Memorial, and pay his respects to the three of his buddies who died and were commemorated on the famous wall. He said he had been there twice before but that each time, it meant more to him. I wondered why now? Why had he come back to DC this particular time? Was it an anniversary of one of their deaths? Or the anniversary of the day he returned from his tour of duty? A bit of survivor's guilt maybe?  

The aging Marine standing in line had also been to the memorial. " I did a rubbing of the men that died with me," he began. " I'll never forget them. The rubbings will go on the wall behind my desk at my law office." He was almost to the concession as he added, with a faraway look: " They'll never be forgotten if we say their names every day--every day I remember what happened to them in Nam. Every single day."

I sat quietly for awhile, thinking about the dark nights I spent on the Mekong, and how I had thought about the boys who were just the same age as me, dropped into that netherworld all those years ago. It was an unpopular war, a war I opposed along with countless others because of its dicey beginnings and the now obvious political aspects that made it so hard to win--or even garner consensus from the American people. Nevertheless, I told Frank about my recent trip, about how much empathy I had  for the courage it must have taken to fight an enemy who knew every inch of the lush and dangerous landscape, every waterway, every sound in the jungle. 

Who would have imagined that I would have completed the circle in that way? Opposing the war but not the soldiers' bravery was always my stance. But I never dreamt 40 years ago that I would a) see the Mekong Delta; b)really understand the tremendous sacrifice those boys made in a new way all these years later upon seeing the land; and c) have the confluence of meeting two contemporaries on a random train on an early May day who had just visited their past, remembering  a long ago war fought halfway around the world.

I believe more and more that there are no coincidences in bumping in to random people. Just opportunities for us to deepen our understanding of the unknown connection we have with one another.

MC