Going to Vietnam

Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of my joining the Army. Thus this year, today, marks the fiftieth anniversary of my arriving in Vietnam.

The year in between was hectic. First there was two months of basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Then ten months of flight school, at Fort Wolters, Texas, and Fort Hunter-Stewart, Georgia. On October 21, 1968, when I was all of 19 years old, I got pinned with my warrant officer bars and the next day received my Army Aviator wings and my orders to show up at Travis Air Force Base, California, a month later.

November 1968, home on leave in Texas before going to Vietnam

For a year drill sergeants and TAC officers had berated and humiliated us, calling us the vilest of names. Then I showed up at Travis AFB and it was all "yes, sir" and "no, sir" and politeness and deference. They even said "please" when they asked me to be there two hours before my flight to Tan Son Nhut.

I am old and have forgotten so much in my life, but I remember quite distinctly the unsettling mixture of anxiety and resignation I felt as I boarded the airliner. Of course I knew before I joined that all Army helicopter pilots went to Vietnam but now I was facing the stark reality that it was my time to go.

It was to be a long flight. Travis AFB to Alaska. Alaska to Wake Island. Wake Island to Japan. And finally Japan to Saigon. Lots of time to think, and many of my thoughts came back to a poem by W. B. Yeats, about an Irish pilot in World War I, that distilled my confusion of emotions and feelings into 16 short lines. I've read this poem hundreds of times, before, during, and after my year in Vietnam and each time I marvel at how well Yeats laid out my state of mind.

 An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
 by William Butler Yeats

 I know that I shall meet my fate
 Somewhere among the clouds above;
 Those that I fight I do not hate
 Those that I guard I do not love;
 My country is Kiltartan Cross,
 My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
 No likely end could bring them loss
 Or leave them happier than before.
 Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
 Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
 A lonely impulse of delight
 Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
 I balanced all, brought all to mind,
 The years to come seemed waste of breath,
 A waste of breath the years behind
 In balance with this life, this death.